This is the article I read, from the New York Times. She sounds less like a spook and more like a woman who is something of a "lobbyist" for adoption of Russian children. She got her foot in the door for a meeting with this political unknown in hopes of selling her wares. It seems pretty harmless to me and when Kushner earlier said it was "primarily about adoption," he wasn't lying. It was. She didn't actually have dirt on the Hillary campaign.
In a statement on Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. said he had met with the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance. “After pleasantries were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”
He said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children.
“It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Mr. Trump said.
Read that last part again: “the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting.”
Trump Jr. confirmed that he went into the meeting expecting to receive information from the Russian lawyer that could hurt Clinton. That is a breathtaking admission.
Analysis | Donald Trump Jr.’s stunningly incriminating statement to the New York Times
‘This isn’t quite the truth yet’: Ex-US attorney says Trump Jr. is still lying about Russian lawyer
A former U.S. attorney told MSNBC on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Jr. is still lying when it comes to the meeting in June with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who reportedly told Trump Jr. that she had damaging intelligence on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Ex-U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance said, “So, it looks like Trump Jr. is now engaging in what prosecutors call incremental truth telling — when you have a problem that you’re sitting on top of, you tell just as much as you think you have to tell to put yourself into the clear. And then you tell a little bit more, and a little bit more.”
Trump Jr. has given conflicting stories about what Veselnitskaya said in their meeting. At first, he said the conversation was about adoption. Then, on Sunday he admitted that Veselnitskaya had offered to reveal compromising information to him about Clinton, but says that the claims didn’t make sense and that he dismissed them.
Vance said that whatever Trump Jr.’s intentions were, he should have contacted law enforcement when approached by a foreign agent offering access to stolen information.