TRUMP RUSHES TO SON’S DEFENCE
BODY LANGUAGE BLUES
Donald Trump’s eldest son released emails on Tuesday showing he embraced Russia’s efforts to support his father’s presidential campaign, admitting he would “love” to get dirt from Moscow on Hillary Clinton.
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.”
The 39-year-old Trump — who now runs the family real estate business in his father’s stead — responded “if it's what you say I love it” and set up a meeting with a “Russian government attorney,” according to the emails.
The email chain was released in its entirety by Donald Jr on his Twitter account, in a move that jolted Washington, and added fuel to the political firestorm swirling over allegations that Trump’s campaign team colluded with Moscow to influence the 2016 election.
Later Trump Jr told Fox News that he did not tell his father about the meeting, after the talk failed to yield compromising information about Clinton, Trump’s 2016 election rival. “It was just a nothing. There was nothing to tell,” the son said.
But he also appeared to acknowledge the misstep.
“In retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently,” he said.
“For me this was opposition research, they had something, you know, maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I'd been hearing about,” Trump Jr went on.
“So I think I wanted to hear it out. But really it went nowhere.”
US Intelligence agencies concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a mass effort to tilt the election in Trump’s favor, including hacking and leaking embarrassing emails from Democrats.
THE MEETING at Trump Tower with Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort included at least eight people