A Russian lawyer said she was summoned to Trump Tower during last year's presidential campaign to meet with Donald Trump jnr and asked if she had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
Natalia Veselnitskaya told NBC's Today show that she received a phone call from a man she did not know and was told to meet Mr Trump jnr.
She said she did not have information on the Clinton campaign and has never worked for the Russian government.
"All I knew was that Donald Trump jnr was willing to meet with me," she said through a translator.
On Mrs Clinton, she said: "It's quite possible that maybe they were looking for information.
"They wanted it so badly."
The interview is Ms Veselnitskaya's first public comment since Donald Trump jnr acknowledged that he made time for the meeting hoping to get information on Mrs Clinton, his father's Democratic presidential opponent.
The president's son has said the meeting was arranged by an acquaintance he knew through the 2013 Miss Universe pageant Trump held in Moscow.
On Monday, Mr Trump jnr tweeted sarcastically: "Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent... went nowhere but had to listen."
According to the NBC interview, Ms Veselnitskaya suggested she did not initiate the meeting; she said she was lobbying against US sanctions affecting Moscow but was not acting on behalf of the Kremlin.
She said Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, also attended the meeting but left after a few minutes.
Paul Manafort, then Mr Trump's campaign chairman, was there too but never participated and spent much of the meeting on his phone, she said.
It was not clear from the NBC report who in the meeting asked her for information on Mrs Clinton.
The circumstances surrounding the meeting, and a report by The New York Times late on Monday that Mr Trump jnr was told ahead of time that the Russian government was the source of damaging information on Mrs Clinton, have fuelled new questions about the Trump campaign's possible ties to Moscow, which are being scrutinised by federal and congressional investigators.
The Times reported that Mr Trump jnr, who was a key campaign adviser to his father, was told the Russian government was behind the information on Mrs Clinton in an email from music publicist Rob Goldstone.
The Times cited three unnamed people with knowledge of the email.
Mr Goldstone spoke to The Associated Press earlier on Monday to confirm he had set up the meeting on behalf of his client, Emin Agalarov, but he did not disclose the contents of the email described by The Times.
In a statement, Mr Trump jnr's New York-based lawyer Alan Futerfas called the Times report "much ado about nothing", although he acknowledged his client had received an email from Mr Goldstone to set up a meeting with the purpose of passing along damaging information on Mrs Clinton.
His statement did not dispute the Times report on the email.
Mr Futerfas said Mr Trump jnr was not told the specifics of the information and nothing came of the meeting.
"The bottom line is that Don jnr did nothing wrong," Mr Futerfas said in the statement, noting that the younger Trump has not been contacted by any congressional panel or Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office.
The White House referred questions to the president's son.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Mr Trump's outside legal team, would not comment on the Times story, reiterating only that Mr Trump "was not aware of and did not attend the meeting".
Mr Trump Jr also said on Twitter he was willing to work with the Senate intelligence committee, one of the panels probing possible campaign collusion, "to pass on what I know".
Lawmakers on the committee from both parties said they indeed wanted to talk with the president's son.
