Secret Service Says Trump Lawyer Is Liar Liar Pants On Fire (TWEET)

One of Donald Trump Jr.’s latest attempts to justify his Russian meeting was shot down mere hours after his legal team offered it to the press. Trump legal team member Jay Sekulow made the excuse on his Sunday morning talk show circuit, saying:

“Well, I wonder why the Secret Service, if this was nefarious, why the Secret Service allowed these people in… The president had Secret Service protection at that point, and that raised a question with me.”

Here’s Sekulow on ABC saying just that:

So, if the Secret Service approved it, why are we making such a big deal?

Because the Secret Service didn’t approve the meeting. In fact, Donald Trump Jr. didn’t even have a Service detail when the meeting took place in June of 2016. In fact, they quickly denied that they had. Secret Service spokesman Mason Brayman released a statement within hours of the claim:

“Donald Trump, Jr. was not a protectee of the USSS in June, 2016. Thus we would not have screened anyone he was meeting with at that time.”

Oops. So much for that, eh?

At the time, the Secret Service said that only candidate Donald Trump himself was under Secret Service protection, and that they were only concerned about threats of physical harm. A 14-year veteran of the Secret Service who talked to the Huffington Post explained:

“At that stage, we would only screen for physical threats, we were not at the stage to be in a counterintelligence posture.”

So that’s the nice way of saying liar liar pants on fire, I think. Emails released by Trump Jr. last week showed that he was more than eager to meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after she promised compromising information on Hillary Clinton. Since then, he’s been looking for a way to explain the meetings away without looking like a traitor.

This one didn’t work, Don. Try again.