text: WASHINGTON—Investigators are re-examining conversations detected by U.S. intelligence agencies in spring 2015 that captured Russian government officials discussing associates of Donald Trump, according to current and former U.S. officials, a move prompted by revelations that the president’s eldest son met with a Russian lawyer last year. 
   
   In some cases, the Russians in the overheard conversations talked about meetings held outside the U.S. involving Russian government officials and Trump business associates or advisers, these... ||||| The younger Mr. Trump said the meeting with the Russian lawyer yielded no useful information about Mrs. Clinton, and instead turned into a discussion about a Russian-American diplomatic dispute. By happenstance or not, in the days and weeks after the meeting with the Russian lawyer, emails purloined from Democratic computers were made public, which investigators tied to Russian hacking. 
   
   As a candidate, the elder Mr. Trump, who had expressed admiration of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, took positions that summer that caused head scratching. He expressed openness to lifting sanctions on Russia that were imposed after its annexation of Crimea, and suggested he might not defend NATO allies that did not spend enough money on their own security. The Republican platform at the party convention in July 2016 was crafted to keep out a call to provide arms to Ukraine to fight pro-Russian separatists. 
   
   The president’s legal team declined to comment about the close timing of some of these events. A White House official said the president’s threat to air allegations about Mrs. Clinton on June 7 was part of a long-planned speech and was not related to his son’s decision to meet with the Russian lawyer. At a briefing on Wednesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, dismissed the latest articles about the emails and meeting as “much ado about nothing.” 
   
   Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that he was not aware of the June 2016 meeting with the Russian lawyer at the time. “No, that I didn’t know until a couple of days ago when I heard about this,” he told Reuters. He did not fault his son for sitting down with the lawyer. “I think many people would have held that meeting,” Mr. Trump said. ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he did not fault his son Donald Trump Jr. for meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential election campaign and that he was unaware of the meeting until a few days ago. 
   
   Asked if he knew that his son was meeting with lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June last year, the president told Reuters in a White House interview: “No, that I didn’t know until a couple of days ago when I heard about this.” 
   
   (Transcript highlights: reut.rs/2sRVuHc) 
   
   Trump Jr. eagerly agreed to meet the woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow’s official support for his father’s campaign, according to emails the son released on Tuesday. 
   
   Seated at his Oval Office desk, Trump said he did not fault his son for holding the meeting, writing it off as a decision made in the heat of an upstart, non-traditional campaign. 
   
   “I think many people would have held that meeting,” Trump said. 
   
   “It was a 20-minute meeting, I guess, from what I’m hearing,” Trump said. “Many people, and many political pros, said everybody would do that.” 
   
   The emails were the most concrete evidence that Trump campaign officials might have been willing to accept Russian help to win the Nov. 8 election, a subject that has cast a cloud over Trump’s presidency and prompted investigations by the U.S. Justice Department and Congress. 
   
   Donald Trump Jr., in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, said: “In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently.” 
   
   U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump in Washington, U.S. July 12, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst 
   
   TRUST PUTIN? 
   
   In the White House interview, the president said he directly asked Russian President Vladimir Putin if he was involved in what U.S. intelligence says was Russian meddling in the presidential campaign and that Putin had insisted he was not. 
   
   Trump said he spent the first 20 or 25 minutes of his more than two-hour meeting with Putin last Friday in Germany on the election meddling subject. 
   
   “I said, ‘Did you do it?’ And he said, ‘No, I did not. Absolutely not.’ I then asked him a second time in a totally different way. He said absolutely not,” Trump said. 
   
   Asked if he believed Putin’s denial, Trump paused. 
   
   “Look. Something happened and we have to find out what it is, because we can’t allow a thing like that to happen to our election process. So something happened and we have to find out what it is,” he said. 
   
   About Putin, he added: “Somebody did say if he did do it, you wouldn’t have found out about it. Which is a very interesting point.” 
   
   Slideshow (3 Images) 
   
   While U.S. intelligence agencies and even members of Trump’s Cabinet have said Russia meddled in the election, Trump has wavered on the subject, at times suggesting that other actors might have been involved. 
   
   Trump equivocated on whether he felt he could trust Putin. He said Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping both look out for their countries’ interests, as he looks out for U.S. interests. 
   
   “I am not a person who goes around trusting lots of people. But he’s the leader of Russia. It is the second most powerful nuclear power on earth. I am the leader of the United States. I love my country. He loves his country,” Trump said. 
   
   As in the past, Trump said there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia. 
   
   “There was zero coordination. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. 
   
   The Republican president said Democrats had used the accusations to justify Clinton’s loss in November, saying: “The White House is functioning beautifully despite the hoax made up by the Democrats.” 
   
   Although he and Putin were able to forge a ceasefire agreement in part of Syria, Trump said their interests collided over other issues. He said his U.S. military buildup and drive to increase U.S. energy production were in direct conflict with Putin, whose nation is dependent on energy exports. 
   
   Their differences made him wonder whether Putin really had supported him last year, as many news reports have suggested. 
   
   “It’s really the one question I wish I would have asked Putin: Were you actually supporting me?”
target: – Investigators are re-examining overheard conversations in which Russian government officials discuss dealings with Donald Trump's associates, given confirmation of Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer, US officials say. Though the conversations were recorded by US intelligence in early 2015, months before Trump announced his campaign for the presidency, investigators are interested in mentions of meetings between Russian officials and Trump associates, some of which reportedly occurred outside of the US, the Wall Street Journal reports. It isn't clear if the associates referred to were involved in Trump's business interests in Russia or later became part of his presidential campaign. Officials say it's commonplace for Russian officials to discuss players with major business interests in the country, Trump among them. Indeed, intelligence agencies initially took little from the conversations. But Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton has since renewed interest. President Trump said Wednesday he only became aware of the meeting with the lawyer "a couple of days ago," per Reuters. Hours after Trump Jr. confirmed the meeting on June 7, 2016, however, Trump promised in a speech to address Clinton's "corrupt dealings" to give "favorable treatment" to "the Russians," in what the White House is calling a coincidence, reports the New York Times.