TRUMP JR RELEASES RUSSIA EMAILS
Trump didn’t know about meeting, claims president’s son
DONALD Trump’s eldest son released emails on Tuesday showing he embraced Russian efforts to support his father’s presidential campaign, a shocking disclosure likely to further fuel speculation over Moscow’s suspected role in the election.
The revelation puts the president’s son at the centre of a burgeoning scandal involving multiple United States investigations into whether Trump associates colluded with Moscow in its efforts to tilt the 2016 election in the Republican’s favor.
In a string of emails released on Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr was told by an interlocutor that he could get “very high level and sensitive information” that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.
In response, the 39-year-old — who now runs the family real estate business in his father’s stead — wrote back saying: “If it’s what you say I love it.”
He then set up a meeting with a “Russian government attorney”, the emails show.
The email chain was released i n its entirety by Trump Jr in a move that jolted Washington, and added fuel to the firestorm swirling over allegations that Trump’s campaign team colluded with Moscow to influence the 2016 election.
Speaking to Fox News, Trump Jr said he didn’t tell his father about the meeting after it failed to yield compromising information about Clinton.
“It was such a nothing. There was nothing to tell,” he said, while appearing to acknowledge the misstep.
“In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently.
“For me, this was opposition research. They had something, you know, maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I’d been hearing about.”
US intelligence agencies concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a mass effort to tilt the election in Trump’s favour, including hacking and leaking embarrassing emails from Democrats.
The latest disclosure now thrusts the president’s son to the centre of multiple investigations by Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as to whether Trump’s team was in the know.
In a statement accompanying the emails, Trump Jr said he believed the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, “as she has said publicly, was not a government official”.
Speaking to Fox, he said: “We didn’t know who she was before the meeting.”
However, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, two of Trump’s most trusted campaign officials, attended the meeting.
Trump jumped to his son’s defence, saying in a statement: “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency.”
Trump Jr initially said his meeting with the lawyer was related to adoptions, but then offered shifting explanations as more details emerged.
Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate Tim Kaine described the revelations as moving toward more serious charges of perjury and “potentially treason”.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden went further, saying the emails “show there is no longer a question of whether this campaign sought to collude with a hostile foreign power to subvert America’s democracy”.
Vice-President Mike Pence appeared to distance himself from the matter, with his office saying he was unaware of the meeting.
But some Republicans said the email contact and the meeting raised a red flag.
“The fact he took the meeting is problematic.
“That email is problematic,” said Senator Lindsey Graham.
The White House refused to answer queries on the matter on Tuesday, referring reporters to legal counsel. AFP