The June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian attorney with Kremlin ties "falls a long way from any hint of collusion" between President Donald Trump and Russia, and even if the president lied about knowing about the meeting, it doesn't matter legally, Fox News host Chris Wallace said Friday.
"So what?" Wallace commented during an appearance on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "It's not admirable. You would hope he wouldn't, but it is not breaking the law lying to the media. He certainly wouldn't be the first president."
Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has claimed that Trump knew about the meeting between his son and a group of Russians during the 2016 campaign, after Trump Jr. was offered information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
The president has denied knowing in advance about the meeting.
"Even the meeting itself, while it certainly doesn't seem praiseworthy that American political candidates or their team would be meeting with a Russian lawyer to try to get dirt on Hillary Clinton that was being offered to them, that falls a long way from any hint of collusion between Trump and the Kremlin," Wallace said.
According to CNN reports, Cohen does not have a tape or other evidence to document his story, but he is expected to testify the meeting and what the president knew.
"Yeah, it would be embarrassing if it turns out to be true," Wallace said. "It isn't helpful to Donald Trump, but it doesn't seem to me it really hurts him in a legal sense."
But even so, the word that could be said, "assuming Cohen is telling the truth now, is that Donald Trump lied back in 2017," Wallace said.
He added he always found it "a little hard to believe" a lawyer connected to the Kremlin would come to Trump Tower in the middle of the campaign, particularly with the claims against Clinton, and nobody would have told Trump at that time.
"But in any case that was the story," Wallace said. "Now Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer and fixer, is saying no, in fact, as a lot of people suspected, back when the meeting happened in may of 2015 -- or 2016, rather, that Trump was told about it. And now supposedly Cohen is willing to tell that to the special prosecutor, special counsel."