President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters that he doesn’t “remember much” about a March meeting with then-campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the FBI about his contacts with people he believed to be close to Russian officials.
In court documents released Monday by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, authorities said Papadopoulos attended a national security meeting with Trump and other foreign policy advisers.
At the meeting, he touted his connections to Russian officials and claimed they “could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump" and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I don't remember much about that meeting,” Trump told reporters at the White House ahead of a trip to Asia. “It was a very unimportant meeting, took place a long time (ago).”
The meeting, which took place March 31, was attended by then Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, who now serves as U.S. attorney general, and J.D. Gordon, a Trump adviser and former Pentagon official, according to The Washington Post.
Gordon told CNN that Trump "heard (Papadopoulos) out" when he offered to set up the meeting. He told the Post that Sessions "shut him down."
“It was a bad idea and the senator didn't want people to speak about it again,” Gordon told the newspaper.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a news briefing earlier this week that she did not believe Trump recalled the March meeting.
The president boasted last week that he has "one of the great memories of all time" while defending his recollection of a call between himself and the widow of a U.S. Army soldier killed in an ambush in Niger. He has faced heavy criticism after Sgt. La David Johnson's widow, Myeshia Johnson, said the president told her that her husband “knew what he signed up for.”
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