Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. during the presidential campaign said that it seemed he and the others who attended the meeting were eager for information about Hillary Clinton.
“Maybe they had a desire to hear this information. So in what I’d been telling, in that idea, they saw something that interested them,” the attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told NBC’s “Today” in an interview that aired Tuesday. She denied that she had connections to the Kremlin and that she was part of any Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
She added that she wasn’t aware anyone else besides Donald Trump Jr. would be joining the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower in New York. Donald Trump Sr.’s then–campaign adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then–campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, were also in attendance.
“I didn’t know who will be attending this meeting [before it took place]. I only knew that Donald Trump Jr. was willing to meet with me,” Veselnitskaya said. Kushner, she said, “left the meeting after about seven to 10 minutes.” Manafort was “looking at his phone all the time” during the meeting, “reading something.”
When details of the meeting were first reported by The New York Times over the weekend, Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement that he agreed to meet with Veselnitskaya because she “had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton.”
He added, “No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”
According to a Times report Monday evening, he was informed in an email that the damaging information on Clinton he would supposedly receive from Veselnitskaya was part of the Russian government’s effort to support his father’s bid for the presidency. However, Donald Trump Jr.’s newly hired attorney called the Times’ latest reporting “much ado about nothing.”
Veselnitskaya is best known for her work against the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that blocks certain Russian officials’ entrance to the U.S. and their use of the U.S. banking system.
Editor’s note: ABC News has updated this story to correct the original translation provided.
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