GOP rep: Reports of Trump Jr. meeting ‘some condiment on this nothing burger’

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) on Tuesday said the latest story reporting that Donald Trump Jr. was told in an email that harmful information about Hillary Clinton was part of a Russian effort to help his father’s presidential campaign is a condiment on a story that is a “nothing burger.”

“I was asked about this yesterday before this New York Times story, which is now an allegation of maybe some condiment on this nothing burger,” Zeldin told CNN’s “New Day,” referencing a prior story about Trump Jr.’s meeting he had been asked about.

“There are key elements that are missing,” Zeldin said of the latest story from the newspaper, which has reported the emerging details about Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russia lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

{mosads}When asked if it would be “a game changer” if the alleged harmful information about Clinton had been coming from the Kremlin, Zeldin emphasized the need for more information. 

“You need a lot of other information, a lot of other components of this in order to actually state that this is, you know, these are the elements of a crime,” Zeldin said. 

The lawmaker also argued that Trump Jr. would not have cared what nation the potential opposition research was coming from.

“I don’t think that Donald Jr. cares whether you’re Russia, Spanish, you know, black, white, Jewish, Christian,” said Zeldin.

But Zeldin also said United States lawmakers “don’t meet with foreign, hostile governments” in order to obtain information “to damage political opponents.”

“I would presume based on the information that we’ve come into contact with, he was trying to help his father win that campaign against Hillary Clinton,” Zeldin said when asked why Trump Jr. met with Veselnitskaya.

Trump Jr. has denied that he received any harmful information about Clinton from Veselnitskaya.