Washington, – President Donald Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that, when the time came, he would accept information that countries such as Russia and China could offer about his Democratic rival in the 2020 elections.
In an interview with ABC, Trump said he would like to hear that hypothetical information that Russia or China can offer. “There’s nothing wrong with listening,” he said.
“If someone called from a country, Norway, ‘we have information about your rival’, oh, I think I would like to hear it,” the president confessed.
“That is not an interference, they have information, I think I would receive it, if I thought there was something wrong, then I would take it to the FBI,” Trump added.
The president also said that members of Congress use this type of practice all the time. “Everyone does it,” he said.
A situation very similar to that described by Trump took place in his 2016 presidential campaign and generated a great controversy.
His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., met in June 2016 at the Trump Tower in New York with a Russian lawyer who allegedly offered him information from the Kremlin to harm his rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr. has acknowledged that he hoped to obtain compromising information about Clinton in that meeting, but that the Russian lawyer did not give him any information at all, despite what a publicist who had interfered in the meeting had promised.
Trump’s advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kuschner, and Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort, who served seven and a half years in jail for various economic crimes, also participated in the meeting.
Just this Wednesday, Trump Jr. returned to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee behind closed doors to talk about that meeting.
Before entering the hearing, Trump Jr. told reporters that he had “nothing to rectify” about his first statement before that committee in 2017, when he said that the lawyer did not provide him with “relevant information.” (EFEUSA).
