Trump Jr emails contradict denials
UNITED STATES: For months, President Donald Trump and his aides have forcefully rejected any suggestion that they sought or received help from Russia to win last year’s election.
But the release yesterday of a 2016 email exchange in which the president’s eldest son welcomed the assistance of a ‘‘Russian government lawyer’’ offered the clearest contradiction of the White House’s denials - marking an escalation in the controversy that has engulfed the Trump presidency.
The email exchange was aimed at setting up a June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr and a Kremlin-connected lawyer who was said to have damaging information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The meeting at Trump Tower was also attended by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
During the email exchange, Trump Jr was told by an intermediary that the ‘‘high level’’ information he would be offered about Clinton was ‘‘part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump,’’ and would be ‘‘highly useful for your father.’’
The younger Trump appeared to relish the opportunity. ‘‘If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer,’’ he wrote back. Trump Jr posted the exchange on Twitter, saying he was revealing the correspondence ‘‘in order to be totally transparent,’’ although the New York Times reported that the disclosure came after the newspaper informed him that it had reviewed the emails and intended to publish their content.
But rather than stemming the scrutiny, Trump Jr’s disclosures yesterday seemed to complicate matters further for the White House and undercut past efforts by the president to rebut allegations that his campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
The email exchange showed clearly that Trump Jr - a key figure in his father’s campaign - had reason to understand that he was accepting the meeting as a way to channel to his father’s campaign information directly from the government of a nation hostile to the United States.
The revelation, coming amid investigations by Congress and a special counsel, sparked immediate calls by Democrats for the meeting participants to testify under oath and raised questions about legal jeopardy that Trump Jr and other associates could face.
The revelation also could heighten pressure on Republicans, many of whom yesterday either dismissed the significance of the Trump Jr email exchange or declined to comment.
‘‘Anytime you’re in a campaign and you get an offer from a foreign government to help your campaign, the answer is ‘no,’ ‘‘ said Senator Lindsey Graham, S.C., one of the few GOP lawmakers to offer criticism, adding that Trump Jr. ‘‘definitely’’ must testify as part of investigations of Russia’s election meddling.
The White House offered a brief defence of Trump Jr, with deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reading a statement from the president in which he said his son ‘‘is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency.’’
US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed a campaign to assist Trump, including the release of hacked emails stolen from Democratic officials.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who took part in the meeting, denied that she had represented the Russian government, suggesting that she sought the meeting on an entirely different subject: Russian adoptions.
The email came from Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who represented Emin Agalarov, whose father, Aras Agalarov, is a major real estate developer close to Putin.
‘‘Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,’’ Goldstone wrote to Trump Jr. ‘‘The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.’’
It is not clear who Goldstone was referring to in his mention of the ‘‘Crown prosecutor.’’ There is no such position in the Russian government.
A spokesman for the president’s lawyer has said that Trump was not aware of the meeting and did not attend. On Fox News, Trump Jr said he did not tell his father about the meeting, saying, ‘‘There was nothing to tell.’’ - Washington Post