BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday it was preposterous that U.S. President Donald Trump’s eldest son was blamed for meeting a Russian lawyer who emails suggest might have had damaging information about Hillary Clinton last year.
Hitting back against accusations of Russian meddling in the 206 U.S. elections, Lavrov asked to be shown “at least one fact” proving Moscow tried to interfere with the democratic process.
“I learned with surprise that a Russian lawyer, a woman, is being blamed and Trump’s son is being blamed for meeting. For me, this is wild,” Lavrov told a joint news conference with his Belgian counterpart in Brussels.
“Because when any person speaks to a lawyer, what problem or threat could there be? I didn’t know about this, I learned about it from television.”
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The emails released by Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday are seen by Trump critics as the most concrete evidence yet that Trump campaign officials welcomed Russian help to win the election.
But Lavrov dismissed the media interest in the email release, saying: “It’s amazing that serious people are making a mountain out of a molehill.”
(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; editing by Ralph Boulton)
