In a televised interview on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump’s eldest son denied a meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election campaign had yielded potentially explosive information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“It was just a nothing. There was nothing to tell,” Donald Trump Jr. told Fox News.
“It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes,” he said, adding that he didn’t tell his father about the meeting because it had been inconsequential.
Emails released
Hours earlier, Trump Jr. released an email thread that showed him discussing an offer to receive damaging material on Clinton, his father’s rival in the White House race.
In one reply, at the prospect of Russian help in defeating the Democrat, he said: “I love it.”
Trump Jr. said he had shared the emails “in order to be totally transparent” as accusations of collusion with Russia over the 2016 US presidential race continued to amass.
Here’s my statement and the full email chain pic.twitter.com/x050r5n5LQ — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017
Here’s my statement and the full email chain pic.twitter.com/x050r5n5LQ
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017
In his interview with Fox, the 39-year-old admitted: “In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently,” before conceding that the Russian offer was considered important research on Trump’s rival.
President Trump meanwhile lauded his son’s attempt to fully disclose the dealings: “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency,” Trump said in a statement read to reporters by White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders
