On Sunday morning, the president tweeted:
Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018
The tweet represents a significant shift in how the president is characterizing the Trump Tower meeting. On July 8, 2017, Trump dictated a statement issued by his son Donald Trump Jr. that the Trump Tower meeting was “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.”
On the same morning as the new tweet, Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s lawyers, went on ABC News and retracted an earlier claim he made that the president had no role in the statement issued by Donald Trump Jr. “I had bad information at that time and made a mistake in my statement ... over time facts develop,” Sekulow said.
Pres. Trump's attorney Jay Sekulow on previously denying that the president was involved in putting out a statement on the Trump Tower meeting: "I had bad information at that time and made a mistake in my statement ... over time facts develop" https://t.co/P6iz1j1VA4 #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/YRPBfqxAiq
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 5, 2018
Sikulow’s statement, combined with the president’s tweets, creates an intriguing timeline of events:
1) On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign officials meet with a Russian group led by Natalia Veselnitskaya to get opposition research on Hillary Clinton.
2) On July 8, 2017, the president dictates a statement giving a false account of that meeting. His lawyer Jay Sikulow subsequently make the false statement that Trump had no role in dictating that false statement.
3) On August 5, 2018, Trump admits the meeting was about collecting opposition research and Sikulow admits Trump had a role in crafting the false statement.
If Robert Mueller wants to pursue an obstruction of justice charge against Trump and others in his White House, he has a lot of material to work with.