Fox & Friends falsely claims Russian lawyer Trump Jr. met with had no ties to the Kremlin

Written by Media Matters Staff

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Fox & Friends co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy falsely claimed that the Russian attorney Donald Trump Jr. met with in June 2016, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had no connections to the Russian government. Discussing the release of email correspondence between Trump Jr. and publicist Rob Goldstone about setting up the meeting with Veselnitskaya, Doocy claimed Veselnitskaya is “not a government agent" and Kilmeade said she is “not linked to the Kremlin at all.” According to McClatchy, Veselnitskaya “had ties to [the] Russian government” and American prosecutors found “she threatened action by the Russian security service, the FSB, against a rights group working to expose corruption by Russian government officials.” Additionally, The New York Times reported that "lawyers and others in Moscow’s legal community called [Veselnitskaya] a trusted insider, one who could be counted on to argue and win important high-profile court cases that matter to the government and to one senior, well-connected official in particular." From the July 12 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Well, I mean, the email exchange was put out by Donald Trump Jr. It was been a drip, drip, drip. Evidently the president on Air Force One got word on this. They put together a communication for Saturday's New York Times story. Then it moved on Sunday. And then on Monday it became clear they were going to publish something and they said, “Let me just get this out.” Yesterday they just said, “Let's just get this out ahead of time.” So they publish all of it. I mean, the -- this Rob Goldstone guy basically did everything that a Democrat has accused the Trump's organization of doing, colluding with the government. It says the Russian government wants to help Donald Trump. That basically is what Rob Goldstone wrote. Then he also said something that's so far proven to be erroneous, that this is a Russian attorney. She's not a Russian attorney.

STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Well she is Russian and she's an attorney. She's not a government agent. 

KILMEADE: She's not linked to the Kremlin at all. 

DOOCY: Right.