Trump emphasized the lawyer his son, Donald Trump Jr., had a meeting with in 2016, was not a Russian government lawyer. Donald Trump said that the meeting was short and it had no result.
"My son [Donald Trump Jr.] is a wonderful young man. He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer, not a government lawyer, but a Russian lawyer. It was a short meeting. It was a meeting that went very, very quickly," Trump told reporters during a news conference in Paris, France.
The US president added that his son's decision to meet with Veselnitskaya was "very standard" in politics.
"I think from a practical standpoint most people would have taken that meeting. It's called opposition research or research into your opponent," Trump said.
The president reiterated that "nothing came of the meeting."
He added that he heard that Attorney General Lynch agreed on the Russian lawyer's visa.
Veselnitskaya has denied any links with the Kremlin and insists that she never had sensitive information about Clinton, nor any intentions of damaging the former presidential candidate's reputation.
On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the media coverage of the Veselnitskaya-Trump Jr. scandal is meant to overshadow Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first bilateral meeting. Previously, he said that he doesn't know who Veselnitskaya is.