Donald Trump’s eldest son released emails 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 in a move that jolted Washington.
Later Tuesday, 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 such a nothing. There was nothing to tell,” the son told Fox host Sean Hannity.
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.
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.
Source: AFP
