Meetings like the one Donald Trump Jr. had with a Russian lawyer happen "every day in a campaign," Corey Lewandowski said Wednesday.
"It is a courtesy meeting to sit down for 10 or 15 minutes to listen to what people have to say. When you find out that it's not relevant, you walk away and say thank you for your time and move on," Lewandowski told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program.
"If this was a meeting that had any information relevant to the campaign or could have potentially impacted the outcome of the election, I would have been made aware of it, President Trump would have been made aware of it. Neither one of us knew anything about the meeting because it was a nothing meeting," said Lewandowski, who was Donald Trump's campaign manager at the time of the meeting.
"Not one Republican, not one Democrat, can say that it had anything to do with the election," he added.
Lewandowski defended Trump Jr.'s release of the email chain, saying the meeting was "completely transparent."
The mainstream media's focus on Russia is undermining the administration's efforts, he continued, and "this is a giant distraction from the mainstream media, a story about nothing… It's a story only because the mainstream media wants to make it a story."
On Saturday, Lewandowski slammed CNN and other media outlets for their coverage of Trump, saying "this is, once again, CNN not trying to report the news but to be the news. And I think at the end of the day they will lose."
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.