No problem?

Trump Jr. sees no issue with Trump Tower meeting

WASHINGTON — Questioned intently by a Senate committee, President Donald Trump’s son struck a firmly unapologetic tone, deflected many queries and said he didn’t think there was anything wrong with meeting a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in hopes of election-season dirt on Hillary Clinton, according to transcripts released Wednesday.

Donald Trump Jr., speaking in a closed-door interview last year with the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he did not give much thought to the idea that the June 9, 2016, meeting was part of a Russian government effort to help his father in the presidential race.

“I don’t know that it alarmed me, but I like I said, I don’t know and I don’t know that I was all that focused on it at the time,” Trump Jr. said in response to a question about whether he was troubled by the prospect of Russian support, the transcripts show.

The committee on Wednesday released about 2,500 pages of interview transcripts and other documents tied to the New York meeting, which Trump Jr. attended with the expectation of receiving compromising information after his father’s Democratic opponent.

The transcripts reveal some new details about how the meeting — a key point of interest in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign — came to be arranged and efforts afterward to mitigate the political damage arising from its disclosure.

They also show the disappointment of Trump Jr. and other campaign figures, including brother-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign chairman Paul Manafort, when the meeting failed to yield the harmful Clinton information they thought they’d get — as well as the increasing panic of one of the meeting participants who feared his reputation would be ruined by his role in setting it up.