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Sekulow on Mixed Messages on Trump Tower Meeting: ‘I Had Bad Information at the Time; It Happens’

‘it’s very important to point out that in a situation like this, you have — over time, facts develop’
By Grabien Staff

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, they actually have pointed to several including conspiracy to — to defraud the United States. That would be one of the possible charges. The aiding and abetting conspiracy. But I want to get to the pretty remarkable shifting of explanations about this meeting. The president denying again that he knew about this meeting. When he first talked about this meeting, he denied having anything to do with statements describing the meeting, describing the meeting in a misleading way, as primarily about adoptions.

Now it’s shifted. Now the president’s saying wait, this was a meeting to get information from our opponents — totally legal. So that’s one — one concession right there. And — and — and I do have to have to ask you about this because we haven’t — I haven’t had you on the program for — for quite a while. And last July, a year ago when I asked you if the president had anything to do with putting out a statement about this meeting at Trump’s tower, you said he wasn’t involved in any way at all. Here’s what you said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEKULOW: The president didn’t sign off on — on anything. He’s coming back from the G20. The — the statement that was released on Saturday was released by Donald Trump Jr. and I’m sure in consultation with his lawyers. The president wasn’t involved in that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: You said the president wasn’t involved in any way at all. Later, Sarah Sanders changed that. She said oh yes, the president weighed in but didn’t dictate anything. And then in January of this year, the president’s legal team, including you, sent a memo to Robert Mueller saying this. You have received all the notes, communications and testimony indicating that the president did dictate a short but accurate response to the New York Times article on behalf of his son.

So why did you deny President Trump’s involvement? When did you learn that the denial wasn’t true?

SEKULOW: Well, let me tell you two things on that one. Number one, as you know, George, I was in the case at that point, what? A couple of weeks. And there was a lot of information that was gathering and as my colleague Rudy Giuliani said, I had — I had bad information at that time and made a mistake in my statement. I’ve talked about that before. That happens when you have cases like this.

As far as when did we correct it, the important part is the information that we’ve shared with the Office of Special Counsel — I’m not going to get into the details — but we were very clear as to the situation involving that trip and the — and the statements that were made to the New York Times. So I think it’s very important to point out that in a situation like this, you have — over time, facts develop.

That’s what investigations do. I agreed to go on your network and others days within being retained on this and had a lot of information to process. I got that one wrong. So what does that mean? Well, for the purpose of, again, an investigation, it doesn’t mean illegality, it doesn’t mean criminality. I think one of the things that we’ve learned here, George, after what now? A — over a year of this investigation is there has been no evidence put forward by anyone at this point that we’ve seen.

And we’ve seen 1.4 million documents, we’ve provided 32 witness interviews of any type of collusion on behalf of the president and the Russians. You know what we have seen, though? One of the most irregular investigations in U.S. history. And I think —

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: — you’ve talked about — you talked about the irregularities —

SEKULOW: — Republican, Democrat or whatever, you can’t — what (ph) you can’t ignore it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: No, I — I understand that and I gave you a chance to —

SEKULOW: Well, you have to (ph) — how can you ignore it?

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