Updated at 1:05 p.m. ET
Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday tweeted an email exchange that seemed to show the president’s son entertained an offer of Russian government help for his father to be elected president in 2016.
“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” said the text that Trump Jr. posted on Twitter.
In the messages, an intermediary for Russian business allies of the Trumps offer what they call incriminating information about Hillary Clinton. That eventually led to a meeting — set up by music promoter Rob Goldstone — among a Russian attorney, Trump Jr., then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Trump Jr. did not seem bothered by the offer, which brought him and the campaign into a questionable legal area.
“If it’s what you say,” Trump Jr. replied, “I love it.”
It’s illegal under federal law to solicit or accept a campaign contribution from a foreign national or foreign government.
The email thread between Goldstone and Trump Jr. was also forwarded to Kushner and Manafort.
Trump Jr. said in his Twitter post on Tuesday that he was posting the messages “to be totally transparent” and that the Russian attorney with whom he met, Natalia Veselnitskaya, ultimately did not provide Trump Jr. with any opposition research about Clinton.
Goldstone, the music publicist, set up the June 9 meeting at Trump Tower at the request of Russian pop star Emin Agalarov. Agalarov is the son of Aras Agalarov, a Russian real estate mogul with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,” Goldstone wrote in the initial email. “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.”
A month after the meeting and this email thread, however, Trump Jr. shrugged away a question from CNN’s Jake Tapper about the possibility Russians were trying to help his father’s campaign win the election.
“This is, time and time again, lie after lie,” he said. “It’s disgusting, it’s so phony … I can’t think of bigger lies, but that just goes to show you what the DNC and the Clinton camp will do. They will lie and do anything to win.”
President Trump has gone back and forth about his own acceptance of Russian interference in last year’s presidential election. Sometimes he says he believes it took place but that “others” also may have staged cyberattacks against the U.S., and sometimes he calls it a “witch hunt” invented by Democrats as an excuse for Clinton’s loss.
Key members of Congress said they were bothered by Trump Jr.’s disclosures.
“Anytime you’re in a campaign and you get an offer from a foreign government to help your campaign, the answer is no,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters at the Capitol. “That email is disturbing.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., suggested he was not surprised what Trump Jr. had revealed.
“I’ve said many times in the past, there’s another shoe that will drop and there will be other shoes that drop,” he said.
And Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he sees the story inching toward a treason investigation.
“When [Trump Jr.] was approached with this idea, he should have turned it over to law enforcement immediately,” Kaine said. “That’s what anybody should have done.”
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