Candidate Donald Trump vowed to expose dirt on his political opponents Bill and Hillary Clinton just two days before the controversial 2016 Trump Tower meeting that his former lawyer Michael Cohen insisted Trump knew about.
Trump never delivered on his promise after his eldest son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and then campaign manager Paul Manafort met with attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya in 2016. The men expected to be presented with damaging information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, but the attorney failed to deliver, Donald Trump Jr. told Senate investigators.
His father’s promised speech on the Clintons then sank without a trace.
Trump railed against Hillary Clinton to supporters after he won the New Jersey primary that same week. “I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” he told them. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.” (He announced the Clinton speech in the video above at 7:08)
Donald Jr.′s meeting with Veselnitskaya took place two days later on Thursday, June 9. His father’s promised June 13 speech never occurred, and no explanation was ever offered.
Trump has denied knowing about the Trump Tower meeting in advance.
Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg also told CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this year that Trump knew about the meeting. “He talked about it a week before,” Nunberg added.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon suspected the same thing. “The chance that Don Jr. did not walk these Jumos up to his father’s office on the 26th floor is zero,” he told author Michael Wolff in his book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Bannon has called the meeting “treasonous.”
CNN reported that Cohen is willing to share what he knows about Trump and the meeting with special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller is investigating Russia’s alleged attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election, as well as possible Trump campaign collusion.
