Trump lawyer: Secret Service wouldn’t have let Trump Jr. take ‘nefarious’ meeting

President Trump’s outside attorney Jay Sekulow said Sunday that the meeting between the president’s son and a Russian lawyer during the presidential campaign would not have happened if the Secret Service considered it “nefarious.”

“If this was nefarious, why’d the Secret Service allow these people in?” Sekulow asked on ABC’s “This Week.”

But Sekulow suggested the Russians who attended the meeting in Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign officials were vetted.

“The president had Secret Service protection at that point,” he said. “That raised a question with me.”

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Sekulow hit all five Sunday shows defending the president following the revelation of the meeting, the latest in a pattern of Trump campaign officials taking secret meetings with Russians who had possible connections to the Kremlin. Several investigations are looking into whether Russia attempted to influence the result of the 2016 election in Trump’s favort.

He insisted Trump was not aware of the meeting until recently and that the meeting was not illegal.

“The president was not aware of that meeting did not attend that meeting,” Sekulow said on ABC. “Donald Trump Jr. himself said things should’ve been done differently. Having said that again, none of that is violation of the law. That’s more process.”

Last week, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. revealed a chain of emails that led to his meeting with a Russian attorney during the campaign last year who claimed to have damaging information about Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

The meeting included at least one person with alleged ties to the Russian government. Trump son-in-law and now-adviser Jared Kushner, as well as then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, also attended.