Secret Service rejects claim by Trump lawyer that agents screened Trump Jr. meeting
The Secret Service (USSS) is rejecting the suggestion by President Trump's attorney, Jay Sekulow, that its agents would have vetted the people who attended the June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer offering compromising information on Hillary Clinton.
"We confirm that he was not a protectee of the USSS at that time," USSS Mason Brayman said of the meeting.
Because the president's eldest son was not a protectee at that time, the Secret Service wouldn't have screened anyone he was meeting with.
In an interview Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Sekulow suggested the Secret Service should have prevented the meeting.
"I wonder why the Secret Service, if this was nefarious, why the Secret Service allowed these people in," he said. "The president had Secret Service protection at that point, and that raised a question with me."
The meeting was held at Trump Tower and was attended by Trump Jr., then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and translator Anatoli Samochornov.
