Trump’s Misleading Defense of Son

President Donald Trump emphasized that an attorney who met with his eldest son during the 2016 presidential campaign was a “Russian lawyer” and “not a [Russian] government lawyer.” That may be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that Donald Trump Jr. agreed to sit down with a “Russian government attorney” as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” according to an email exchange setting up the meeting.

Trump defended his son during a with French President Emmanuel Macron on July 13 in Paris. The U.S. president was responding to a reporter who asked if Trump Jr. — who met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016 under the promise of getting damaging information about Hillary Clinton — should have told the FBI about a Russian attempt to provide the Trump campaign with information rather than accepting the meeting.