Donald Trump Jr has been forced to release damning emails that reveal he eagerly embraced what he was told was a Russian government attempt to damage Hillary Clinton’s election campaign.

The stunning disclosure raised questions over whether campaign laws were broken and why senior Trump associates failed to report a hostile act by a foreign power.

Trump Jr also admitted on Tuesday night that he could have handled the situation better but he had not told his father about meeting a Russian lawyer because “it was a nothing”.

The emails show music promoter Rob Goldstone telling the future US president’s son that “the crown prosecutor of Russia” had 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”.

British-born Goldstone adds in the exchange of 3 June 2016: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump.”

Seventeen minutes later, Trump Jr welcomes this with the reply: “If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.”

In a later email, Goldstone describes the Russian lawyer they are due to meet, Natalia Veselnitskaya, as a “Russian government attorney”.

Profile Who is Natalia Veselnitskaya? Show Hide Accusations Natalia Veselnitskaya is the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort at Trump Tower on 9 June 2016. Trump Jr has published emails showing Veselnitskaya was introduced to him as a “Russian government attorney” who had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Background Veselnitskaya is a defence lawyer based just outside Moscow, whose main client in recent years has been Denis Katsyv, a businessman accused of profiting from a major tax fraud uncovered by lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. She fought his case in US courts and mounted a PR campaign to try to clear Katsyv’s name and overturn the “Magnitsky Act” sanctions against Russian officials that followed. The big question Veselnitskaya is not a government official and portrays herself as a lawyer with a private client. The question, then, is how she was able to secure the meeting at Trump Tower during a presidential campaign and why she was introduced to Trump Jr as representing the Russian government.

Trump Jr agrees, adding that he would probably be accompanied by “Paul Manafort (campaign boss)” and “my brother-in-law,” Jared Kushner, husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka and now a senior White House adviser.

The formatting of the emails suggests that Trump Jr forwarded the whole chain to Manafort and Kushner before the meeting the three attended with Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York on 9 June.

On Sunday, Trump Jr had said he had asked Manafort and Kushner to attend but not told them what the meeting was about. An associate of Manafort said on Tuesday that the former campaign chairman claims not to have read to the bottom of the chain of emails forwarded to him and Kushner by Trump Jr about the meeting. Jamie Gorelick, an attorney for Jared Kushner, did not respond to questions about whether Kushner read the emails and why he attended the meeting.

Critics seized on the new disclosures to question why three of Trump’s closest advisers were willing to accept such a meeting instead of alerting authorities to interference by a foreign adversary. Special counsel Robert Mueller and the House and Senate intelligence committees are investigating Russian meddling in the election, thought to include stealing Democratic National Committee emails and the use of social-media bots to spread fake news about Clinton.

My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency. Donald Trump

Trump Jr has offered shifting explanations for the meeting in recent days. In an interview broadcast on conservative Fox News on Tuesday night, he again sought to justify his motives but conceded that he could have handled the situation better.

“In retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently,” he told interviewer Sean Hannity. “Again this is before the Russia mania, this is before they were building this up in the press.

Trump Jr denied that he told his father about the meeting. “It was just a nothing,” he added. “There was nothing to tell. I mean, I wouldn’t have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff. It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame.”

Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders read a short statement from the president at the regular White House press briefing. “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency.”

She then refused to answer several questions on the matter, saying they must be directed to Trump Jr’s legal counsel and outside counsel.

Asked about the president’s reaction to the unfolding drama, Huckabee Sanders replied: “I think the president is, I would say, frustrated with the process, the fact this continues to be an issue and he would love for us to be focused on issues like the economy, healthcare, tax reform, infrastructure.”



‘These emails are explosive’

Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine, a senator from Virginia and member of the foreign relations committee, told MSNBC: “These emails are explosive. This should have set off alarm bells and red lights, and yet what it seemed to do is activate their salivatory glands. This is just wheelbarrows of new evidence for the special counsel and the Senate intelligence committee.”

Trump Jr released the email chain on Tuesday apparently to pre-empt its publication by the New York Times, which, this weekend, first broke the news of his meeting with Veselnitskaya in June last year. Veselnitskaya had promised compromising information about Clinton but apparently failed to deliver.

In a statement posted to Twitter, Trump Jr explained: “To everyone, in order to be totally transparent, I am releasing the entire email chain of my emails with Rob Goldstone about the meeting on June 9, 2016. To put this in context, this occurred before the current Russian fever was in vogue.”

There is no such position as crown prosecutor of Russia, but the most likely candidate would be the long-serving prosecutor general, and a long-standing member of Vladimir Putin’s elite, Yuri Chaika.

Goldstone told the Wall Street Journal his reference to the “crown prosecutor” was meant to mean Veselnitskaya. “It’s a language thing,” he said.

He referred questions from the Guardian to his lawyer.

Trump Jr has given varying reasons for why he accepted the meeting, first claiming it was to discuss American adoptions of Russian children, then acknowledging that he was interested in information about Clinton.

The president’s eldest son denies any wrongdoing and tweeted on Tuesday: “Media and Dems are extremely invested in the Russia story. If this nonsense meeting is all they have after a year, I understand the desperation!”

Goldstone told the Associated Press on Monday he set up the meeting on behalf of a client, pop star Emin Agalarov, the son of a Moscow-based developer, Aras Agalarov, who has close ties to Putin and tried to partner with Trump in a hotel project.



Aras Agalarov worked with Donald Trump to bring the Miss Universe contest to Moscow in 2013. Trump appeared in a music video with Emin Agalarov that featured several Miss Universe contestants.

Goldstone’s 3 June email says the Russian government’s support for Trump is “helped along by Aras and Emin”. He asks if Trump Jr wants to speak to Emin about it directly and proposes: “I can also send this info to your father via Rhona” – presumably Rhona Graff, Donald Trump’s longtime executive assistant – “but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.” It is not clear from the emails whether Goldstone did send any of the information to Trump Sr, who has denied all knowledge of the meeting through his lawyer.

Before the publication of Trump Jr’s emails, Veselnitskaya had denied she had gone to the meeting with information about the Clinton campaign. “It’s quite possible that maybe they were looking for such information, they wanted it so badly,” she told NBC, denying that she had any to offer. She also answered “no” when asked if she had ever worked for the Russian government.

Later, Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the US, dismissed the significance of the Trump Jr meeting. “I don’t think anything about it and to be honest there are more serious things to be think about in relation to Russia,” he told the Guardian at a US-Russia Business Council farewell reception in Washington.

Trump Jr was at Trump Tower in New York on Tuesday, according to a police officer at the building.

Eric Trump, Donald Jr’s brother, was spotted in the lobby at around 1.30pm with his wife Lara. Asked by the Guardian if he had any comment on his brother’s emails or knew Goldstone himself, Eric Trump did not respond. He then headed quickly to a gold elevator and headed upwards, staring silently ahead.

The revelations around 39-year-old Trump Jr’s involvement is one of the biggest blows yet in the saga of the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, which the president has dismissed as a “hoax”.

Republicans on Capitol Hill were taken aback but reluctant to weigh in just yet. At least two Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee, Senators John Cornyn and James Lankford, said Trump Jr should testify before the panel, which is overseeing one of three parallel investigations into Russian interference in the US election.

John McCain, a frequent critic of the Trump administration, said there were “many allusions and many stories of meetings and communications”, while noting he expected there was more yet to come.

Richard Burr, the Republican chief of the Senate intelligence committee, said it was “too early to draw any conclusions”.

Timeline: Trump and associates denied Russia involvement at least 20 times Read more

Burr’s Democratic counterpart, Mark Warner, said it was significant that the emails had been forwarded to Kushner and Manafort.

“They’ve got a lot of explaining to do, because all these denials of any knowledge of Russian government involvement seems to be a gross contradiction here,” Warner told Roll Call.

Some of Trump’s most ardent defenders nonetheless stood by the president. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who competed bitterly against Trump for the Republican nomination, blamed the media for fixating on Russia.

“Russia is a significant adversary,” he told reporters. “Part of the irony of this media obsession with Russia is that the Obama administration began with Hillary Clinton bringing the big reset button with Russia.

Norm Eisen, former ethics czar under President Barack Obama, said: “It’s another significant step forward in the investigation of Trump collusion with Russia because it represents an offer to collude and an acceptance of collusion to harm the campaign of Hillary Clinton and intrude upon our democracy.”

He added: “I believe it’s potentially legally actionable but we need to let the investigation play out. I predict it will not be the last bombshell.”

Additional reporting by Shaun Walker in Moscow and Oliver Laughland and Jon Swaine in New York

Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) Here's my statement and the full email chain pic.twitter.com/x050r5n5LQ

Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) Here is page 4 (which did not post due to space constraints). pic.twitter.com/z1Xi4nr2gq

Sign up for the Minute email. Catch up on today’s US politics news in 60 seconds </s> The intermediary, Rob Goldstone, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he proposed a second meeting between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and members of Trump’s team in November 2016. He said he contacted Trump’s longtime executive assistant at the behest of Aras Agalarov, a Russia-based billionaire who knows President Vladimir Putin of Russia personally.

The follow-up overture is one of the kernels of new information contained in thousands of pages of testimony and exhibits released by the committee, which has been conducting one of the investigations into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians. Agalarov also pushed for the initial get-together, which was organized on the premise that Veselnitskaya would deliver incriminating information on Hillary Clinton to support Trump’s campaign.

The second session never took place. But the invitation shows the determination of Russians with close Kremlin connections to convince the Trump team that the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on a host of Russian officials for human rights abuses, is a mistake. The 2012 law, which froze the bank accounts of some Russian officials and barred them from entering the United States, infuriated Putin.

In a late November 2016 email to Trump’s assistant, Goldstone attached a three-page document marked “confidential” that called for “the launch of a congressional investigation into the circumstances of passing the Magnitsky Act.” He wrote that Agalarov hoped the document would be delivered to “the appropriate team.” Veselnitskaya also attacked the law in the June meeting.

The bulk of records released are transcripts of the committee’s interviews with that meeting’s participants, including the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and members of the Russian contingent led by Veselnitskaya. Most of them have already publicly described their version of events.

Nonetheless, the records reveal some new details about the players involved and what happened after the meeting was reported by The New York Times last summer. Excerpts from the transcripts released by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who is the committee’s ranking minority member, highlight how lawyers for the Trump Organization tried to manage the fallout by coordinating the statement of Goldstone and others.

Donald Trump Jr. acknowledged that his father may have helped draft the statement that he put out to the press after the meeting became public. But on a number of other questions, he drew a blank, including whether his father uses a blocked phone number.

The excerpts selected by the Democrats also underscore how Agalarov previously tried to act as a bridge between the Kremlin and Trump. When Trump hosted the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013, Agalarov sought to organize a meeting with Putin. But a top Kremlin aide called Trump to apologize, saying Putin could not see him because a tardy foreign leader had disrupted the Russian president’s schedule.

The committee tried to interview all the participants of the Trump Tower meeting. But Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chairman who is facing fraud and other criminal charges, declined to testify. Kushner gave the committee a statement.

Veselnitskaya, who is close to Agalarov, initially insisted that she acted independently of the Russian government when she visited Trump Tower. But more recently, she has described herself as an informant for a top Kremlin official, Yuri Y. Chaika, Russia’s prosecutor general.

Other witnesses included Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-born Washington influence-peddler who has worked with Veselnitskaya for years; Irakly Kaveladze, who represented Agalarov; and Veselnitskaya’s translator, Anatoli Samochornov.

By all accounts, the meeting was a disappointment. The Trump campaign officials were disgruntled that Veselnitskaya’s disparaging information about Clinton amounted to no more than allegations of fraud in Russia by several obscure Democratic donors. At one point, Kaveladze testified, Kushner asked, “Why are here and why are we listening to that Magnitsky Act story?”

Goldstone, who said he expected Veselnitskaya to deliver a “smoking gun,” testified that on his way out the door, he told Donald Trump Jr: “This was hugely embarrassing.”

Veselnitskaya seemed unhappy that her message about the Magnitsky Act seemed to fall on deaf ears. “I know she was expecting something else from the meeting, something bigger,” her translator testified.

The Senate committee’s inquiry has not produced any major revelations, and some critics have claimed that the Republicans are more interested in probing whether the federal law-enforcement authorities were biased against the Trump campaign than whether the campaign conspired with the Russian government to try to sway the presidential election.

Two other congressional committees also mounted investigations into Russia’s interference in the electoral process. The House intelligence committee recently ended its inquiry without any consensus. Democrats and Republicans were fiercely at odds over what the evidence showed and whether the inquiry was a waste of effort or cut short for political reasons.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation is still ongoing, but it appears unlikely to produce major new revelations.

Separately, the Justice Department’s special counsel investigation has indicted 19 people, including Manafort, who has pleaded not guilty, and secured five guilty pleas, including three from Trump associates.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times </s> The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday released nearly 2,000 pages of transcripts from interviews the panel conducted with Donald Trump Jr. and other participants of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

The release of the Trump Tower transcripts and hundreds of pages of related materials provides the most comprehensive view yet into the circumstances surrounding the controversial meeting and the details of the roughly 20-minute encounter, in which Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kusher and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort were expecting dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

The meeting — and whether President Donald Trump’s knew about it — has become a central focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as the congressional Russia investigations. Trump Jr. has told House investigators that he did not communicate with his father about the meeting before it happened. The White House has said the President weighed in on a misleading statement his son issued after the meeting became publicly known, more than a year later.

The committee on Wednesday released transcripts and hundreds of pages of related material from nine people connected to the meeting. The documents contain a record of closed-door committee interviews with five of the eight meeting attendees, including Trump Jr., British music promoter Rob Goldstone, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, translator Anatoli Samochornov and Ike Kaveladze, a Russian with ties to oligarch Aras Agalarov.

RELATED – Recreating June 9: A very consequential day in the 2016 campaign

In the lead-up to the meeting, Goldstone had told Trump Jr. that Veselnitskaya would provide dirt on Clinton from Russian sources. Trump Jr. responded to Goldstone, “if it’s what you say I love it,” ahead of the meeting, and Kushner and Manafort joined Trump’s son at the meeting. But the participants have said Veselnitskaya did not in fact provide dirt on Clinton, instead focusing on overturning the US sanctions on Russia under the Magnitsky Act that the US passed to punish Russian human rights abuses.

The committee’s documents also included responses from Veselnitskaya, as well as a statement from Kushner and a page of notes from Manafort. The committee also included the formal release of the transcript of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, who was not at the Trump Tower meeting but whose transcript was unilaterally released in January by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

In January, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said he planned to release the transcripts because the committee’s interviews connected to the Trump Tower meetings had wrapped up. Democrats had pressed Grassley to subpoena Kushner for his testimony or schedule a public hearing for Trump Jr., but he chose not to do so following Feinstein’s decision to release the Simpson transcript. </s> WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has lauded the "transparency" of his eldest son over the release of a chain of emails showing a Russian source offering "sensitive information" about his White House rival Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the presidential election.In an email to 39-year-old Donald Trump Jr, who is in the middle of a political storm over his meetings with a Russian source, his music publicist Rob Goldstone said the information "would incriminate Hillary (Clinton) and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father"."My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency," Trump said in a statement which was read out by the White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during her daily news conference.While Trump Jr said he hopes that by releasing these emails would bring an end to the controversy, the opposition political leaders called for investigation and claimed that this is yet another indication of the connection between the Trump campaign and the Russians."Donald Trump Jr has admitted and documented that he, Jared Kushner, and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer with the understanding that she was a Russian government lawyer providing damaging information on Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow's effort to help President Trump's campaign," said Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi."The attempt by these top Trump advisors - to solicit the support of a hostile foreign power to win the American presidency - is unprecedented in our history," he said."The need for Special Counsel Mueller's investigation and our Congressional inquiries to continue has never been more clear."Pending any investigation, no one who participated in the Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya should have access to any classified information, especially material relevant to our national security," Krishnamoorthi said.Senator Ben Cardin, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the email shows that Trump Jr clearly understood the intent of the meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya."Instead of welcoming information from the Russian government, the Trump team should have immediately notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation."I'm not a prosecutor, but I think this is an extremely serious issue and needs to be followed up on by Robert Mueller's investigation and the Congressional Intelligence Committees immediately," Cardin demanded.Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein said these emails are deeply disturbing."They appear to show direct coordination between the Trump campaign and possibly the Russian government itself," she said."There's no escaping it: the Trump Campaign's inner circle met with an agent of a hostile foreign power to influence the outcome of an American election.The American people face a White House riddled with shadowy Russian connections and desperate to hide the truth," said Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi."One after another, senior Trump officials have been caught hiding secret meetings with Russian agents. The incendiary news of the meeting arranged by Donald Trump Jr is a grave development in the investigation of Trump officials' possible collusion with Moscow," she said.The New York Times, which first broke the story, said the emails show just how eager Trump Jr was to accept what he was explicitly told was the Russian government's help in his father's campaign against Hillary Clinton."The Justice Department, as well as the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, is examining whether any of President Trump's associates colluded with the Russian government to disrupt last year's election. American intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian government tried to sway the election in favour of Trump," the report said.The daily claimed that Trump Jr released the entire chain of emails on Twitter after it told him that they were publishing the emails that they had in their possession.Several Congressional committees were reportedly considering to question Trump Jr about his meeting with a Russian offer of providing compromising information about Hillary Clinton.Congresswoman Grace Meng sent a letter to the US Federal Election Commission urging that it perform an official investigation into the actions of the Trump campaign to determine whether they violated federal election and criminal law.Congressman Elijah E Cummings, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said the email chain confirms that the president's son was both aware of and supported the Russian government's efforts to help the president get elected."Our country has a fundamental principle that a foreign adversary should not and cannot interfere with our sacred elections, period. The soul of our very democracy depends on it. I remind my colleagues from both parties--the Constitution does not give Congress the right to remain silent in the face of this threat. We must investigate. And we must act on our findings," he said.The Washington Post said these emails clearly showed that Trump Jr understood he was taking the meeting as a way of channeling information directly from the government of a nation hostile to the United States to his father's campaign."It is the most concrete public evidence to date suggesting that top Trump campaign aides were eager for Russia's assistance in the campaign," the daily reported.Sanders told reporters that President Trump is frustrated that Russia continues to be an issue."I think that the President is, I would say, frustrated with the process of the fact that this continues to be an issue," she said in response to a question."And he would love for us to be focused on things, like the economy, on healthcare, on tax reform, on infrastructure. And that's the place that his mind is, and that's what he'd like to be discussing," Sanders said. </s> Donald Trump, Jr. was keen on receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton during a now infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives and believed his father might have had a hand in the messaging on the meeting's purpose issued in the aftermath, congressional testimony released by the Senate Judiciary Committee showed.

The 2,500 pages of testimony revealed that British publicist Ron Goldstone, who helped arrange the rendezvous, believed Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who wanted the meet-up in order to share damaging information on Clinton, was “well connected.”

Goldstone's email to Trump Jr. promising him access to the information, which he said was “part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump,” set off a firestorm of speculation that members of the Trump campaign had worked with Russia during the election.

The June 2016 meeting occurred just a couple of months after former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat in London that Russia had damaging information on Clinton.

After WikiLeaks began leaking emails pilfered from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and others affiliated with Clinton, Australia Intelligence reported Papadopoulos's revelations to U.S. intelligence, prompting the FBI to open a probe into Russian meddling. Papadopoulos has since pleaded guilty to lying about his efforts to facilitate communications between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

The Trump Tower meeting between Veselnitskaya and the younger Trump, as well as Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, and former Trump Campaign Manager Paul J. Manafort, has been a target of scrutiny by investigators probing Russian interference and potential collusion.

Despite Veselnitskaya's claims that she acted independently when meeting with the president's inner circle to peddle dirt on Clinton, she reportedly discussed the potentially damaging information with Russia's prosecutor general Yuri Y. Chaika.

Testimony showed that when asked if the president edited or provided input to an issued statement characterizing the meeting as a discussion of Russian adoption, Trump, Jr. said, “He may have commented through [former White House Communications Director] Hope Hicks.” He also said that some of the president's comments might have been incorporated into the final statement, qualifying that it “was an effort through lots of people, mostly counsel.”

The younger Trump told lawmakers he couldn't remember the owner of a blocked number that he called shortly after arranging the Trump Tower meeting. The call lasted 11 minutes. Donald Trump reportedly had a blocked number at his primary residence. "This Trump Tower revelation is either coincidence number 1,739 in the Russia investigation, or something very, very bad happened in 2016," Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., tweeted Wednesday. </s> Thousands of pages of interview transcripts with the participants of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting shed new light on how eager Donald Trump Jr. and senior members of the Trump campaign were to obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton — and how frustrated and angry they were that the material did not come to fruition.

The nearly 2,000 pages of interviews do not appear to contain information that would change the course of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's team and Russia. But the transcripts released by the Senate Judiciary Committee fill in new details about how Trump Jr., President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort were expecting a bombshell from Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Rob Goldstone, the British music publicist who arranged the Trump Tower meeting, told the committee he was anticipating a "smoking gun" from Veselnitskaya when he urged Trump Jr. to take the meeting, even though he thought it was a "bad idea and that we shouldn't do it."

"I just sent somebody an email that says I'm setting up a meeting for someone that is going to bring you damaging information about somebody who was running to become the President of the United States," Goldstone said. "I thought that was worthy of the words 'smoking gun,' yes."

The Senate Judiciary Committee's release Wednesday of the Trump Tower transcripts and hundreds of pages of exhibits provide the most comprehensive view yet into the circumstances surrounding the controversial meeting and the details of the roughly 20-minute encounter, in which Trump's team was expecting dirt from Veselnitskaya.

The meeting -- and whether President Trump knew about it -- has become a central focus of Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as the congressional Russia investigations. Trump Jr. has told House investigators that he did not communicate with his father about the meeting before it happened. The White House has said the President weighed in on a misleading statement his son issued after the meeting became publicly known, more than a year later.

Trump Jr. — who had emailed Goldstone ahead of the meeting about the dirt, "if it's what you say I love it" — told congressional investigators he was interested in "listening to information" about Clinton in the June Trump Tower meeting. "I had no way of assessing where it came from, but I was willing to listen," he said.

Trump Jr. also said he did not inform his father about the meeting ahead of time, because he didn't want to bring him "unsubstantiated" information.

And when the damaging information didn't materialize, as Veselnitskaya focused on US sanctions on Russia under the Magnitsky Act that the US passed to punish Russian human rights abuses, the testimony gives new insight into how Trump's team reacted.

"Jared Kushner, who is sitting next to me, appeared somewhat agitated by this and said, 'I really have no idea what you're talking about. Could you please focus a bit more and maybe just start again?'" Goldstone said of Kushner, who was not interviewed by the committee. "And I recall that she began the presentation exactly where she had begun it last time, almost word for word, which seemed, by his body language, to infuriate him even more."

But there is also discrepancy between the meeting participants about how long Kushner was present. While Kushner and Trump Jr. have said the now-White House senior adviser left in the middle of the meeting, others who were there told the committee they remembered Kushner staying the whole time.

The committee on Wednesday released transcripts and hundreds of pages of related material from nine people connected to the meeting. The documents contain a record of closed-door committee interviews with five of the eight meeting attendees, including Trump Jr., Goldstone, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, translator Anatoli Samochornov and Ike Kaveladze, a Russian with ties to oligarch Aras Agalarov.

Following the documents' release, Trump Jr. said the transcripts show he "answered every question asked."

"I appreciate the opportunity to have assisted the Judiciary Committee in its inquiry," Trump Jr. said in a statement, "The public can now see that for over five hours I answered every question asked and was candid and forthright with the Committee. I once again thank Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Feinstein, as well as other members of the Committee and their staff for their courtesy and professionalism."

The committee's documents also included responses from Veselnitskaya, as well as a statement from Kushner and a page of notes from Manafort. The committee also included the formal release of the transcript of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, who was not at the Trump Tower meeting but whose transcript was unilaterally released in January by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

In January, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said he planned to release the transcripts because the committee's interviews connected to the Trump Tower meetings had wrapped up. Democrats had pressed Grassley to subpoena Kushner for his testimony or schedule a public hearing for Trump Jr., but he chose not to do so following Feinstein's decision to release the Simpson transcript. </s> Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has released congressional testimony transcripts and other material related to the committee's inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer.

President Trump's son Donald Trump Jr., former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner and Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya were among those attending the meeting that raised questions about the role Russian interference played in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump Jr. told told Senate investigators in September 2017 that he had agreed to a meeting with Veselnitskaya who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton because he wanted to determine her "fitness" for office.

Grassley signaled that he wanted to release the transcripts from interviews of his committee's investigation into the June 2016 meeting back in January.

In total, the transcripts and related documents are approximately 2,500 pages. CBS News will be posting the highlights from the material, which was released just after 9 a.m. ET.

Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he couldn't remember whether he had discussed the Russia investigation with his father, according to transcripts released Wednesday of his interview with the panel.

Trump Jr. deflected multiple questions during the interview, including whether he discussed the Russia probe with his father. He also said he didn't think there was anything wrong with attending the Trump Tower meeting in which he was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. </s> In 2017, Donald Trump Jr. told congressional investigators that in June 2016 he had informed just two people about his upcoming meeting with a Russian government emissary during which Trump Jr. hoped to obtain incriminating information about Hillary Clinton: his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. But special counsel Robert Mueller’s report revealed a different story, noting that the president’s eldest son boasted of his efforts during a meeting of campaign staff attended by his brother Eric and sister Ivanka, among others. This apparent contradiction—and concerns that Trump Jr. also was not forthright about his knowledge of the Trump Organization’s pursuit of a Trump tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign—led the Senate Intelligence Committee to subpoena Trump’s eldest son, according to Senate sources.

These discrepancies in the testimony by Trump Jr., who appeared before three congressional committees in 2017, underscore that the Trump-Russia scandal continues to pose a threat to President Donald Trump, his family, and his associates, confounding efforts by Trump and his allies to shut down the controversy.

In a September 7, 2017, interview with staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Trump Jr. faced a slew of questions about his June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with that Russian emissary. One issue was whom he had told about a June 3 email he received from Rob Goldstone, a publicist for Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop singer whose father, Aras Agalarov, was a real estate mogul with Kremlin ties and who was Trump’s partner in the 2013 Miss Universe pageant held in Moscow. A senior Russian prosecutor, Goldstone wrote Trump Jr., had “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” as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. responded enthusiastically—“If it’s what you say I love it”—and agreed to meet with the Russian representative, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chair, and Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, also attended the meeting.

Trump Jr. told the Judiciary Committee that he informed “only Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort” about Goldstone’s offer. And he stuck to that claim when a committee lawyer asked if there was anyone else. “No,” Trump Jr. said. “Not to my recollection.” Trump Jr. also said that he recalled telling Manafort and Kushner of the meeting only via email. “I sent them the email and asked if they could attend.”

The Judiciary Committee interview is public. Transcripts of Trump Jr.’s interviews with the House and Senate Intelligence committees, both in December 2017, have not been released. But a Senate source says that Trump Jr. also told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had only alerted Kushner and Manafort about Goldstone’s offer before the meeting.

Mueller’s report, a redacted version of which was released last month, included a different account. It stated that Rick Gates, who was deputy Trump campaign manager, said in interviews with the special counsel’s office that before the sit-down with Veselnitskaya, “Trump Jr. announced at a regular morning meeting of senior campaign staff and Trump family members that he had a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation.” Gates said that Eric Trump, Hope Hicks, Manafort, Ivanka Trump, and Kushner also attended the meeting. Gates also recalled that Trump Jr. claimed the information came from a group in Kyrgyzstan, where Agalarov does business. According to Gates, Trump Jr.’s announcement sparked a discussion, with Manafort warning the group that “the meeting likely would not yield vital information and they should be careful.”

In February, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, testified before the House Oversight Committee that he overheard a conversation in which he believed Trump Jr. told his father about the meeting in advance. If that is true, it contradicts claims both the president and his son made to investigators.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is also scrutinizing Trump Jr.’s statements about Trump’s efforts during the 2016 campaign to develop a Trump tower in Moscow. As a candidate, Trump claimed he had no business interests in Russia, despite signing a letter of intent regarding this deal and encouraging Cohen to privately pursue the project until at least the summer of 2016. Cohen even sought Russian President Vladimir Putin’s support for the venture, contacting Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to seek help. (Cohen ended up talking to Peskov’s personal assistant and requested assistance in securing financing and land for the project.) Cohen recently began a three-year prison term in part because he lied to Congress in 2017 about the project, in what he says was an effort to align his story with Trump’s false claims. Trump Jr. also downplayed the deal in congressional testimony. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was only “peripherally aware” of the effort. A Senate aide says Trump Jr. made similar claims to the Intelligence Committee. Cohen, by contrast, testified that he briefed Trump Jr. or Ivanka Trump on the Moscow deal “approximately 10 times.”

The Intelligence Committee’s subpoena to Trump Jr., issued more than two weeks ago according to multiple reports, has drawn fierce attacks against the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, from members of his own party. “Apparently the Republican chair of the Senate Intel Committee didn’t get the memo from the Majority Leader that this case was closed,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tweeted on Wednesday, referencing a recent floor speech by Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Burr’s fellow North Carolina Republican, Sen. Thom Tillis, who faces a primary challenge in 2020, also slammed Burr in a tweet. “It’s time to move on & start focusing on issues that matter to Americans,” he wrote. White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on CBS News that it was “bad form” for the committee to subpoena Trump Jr. without giving the White House a “heads-up.”

Trump Jr. appears poised to fight the subpoena. The New York Times reported he may invoke the Fifth Amendment rather than testify. In a statement sent to various outlets, a person close to Trump Jr.—who would not allow reporters to identify him or her—said that “no lawyer would ever agree to allow their client to participate in what is an obvious PR stunt from a so-called ‘Republican’ senator too cowardly to stand up to his boss Mark Warner and the rest of the resistance Democrats on the committee.” The statement also asserted that “there was an agreement between Don and the Committee that he would only have to come in and testify a single time as long as he was willing to stay for as long as they’d like, which Don did.”

A committee spokesperson says there was no such deal with any witness: “Throughout the investigation, the Committee has reserved the right to recall witnesses for additional testimony as needed, as every witness and witness counsel has been made aware.”

It is unclear how aggressively Burr will pursue Trump Jr. On Tuesday, before news of the subpoena, Burr told the Washington Post that he was not inclined to press for the Justice Department to prosecute Trump Jr. or other witnesses facing questions about the veracity of their testimonies for perjury, given that Mueller had declined to charge them. Discrepancies between their testimonies and Mueller’s report apparently “weren’t criminal or they weren’t chargeable,” Burr told the Post, noting that Mueller had access to his own committee’s transcripts. But Burr had also previously said the panel will not tolerate dishonest witnesses. “If you lie to us, we’re going to catch you and we’re going to prosecute you, period, end of sentence,” he said last year. </s> Epics/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — The Senate Judiciary Committee this morning released testimony and documents providing new inside accounts of the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting between top campaign aides to Donald Trump and Russian emissaries promising damaging political “dirt” on his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

The roughly 2,500 pages of newly released Senate interviews provide the most detailed look to date into what happened at the June 9, 2016 meeting in the offices of Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, decided earlier this year he would permit the release the 2,500 pages of transcripts, a decision welcomed by Democrats.

“Let’s get them out there for everyone to see,” Grassley (R-Iowa) told reporters in January.

Trump Jr. said he welcomed the chance for the public to review his testimony.

“I appreciate the opportunity to have assisted the Judiciary Committee in its inquiry,” he said n a statement to ABC News. “The public can now see that for over five hours I answered every question asked and was candid and forthright with the Committee.”

The planned gathering occurred two weeks after then-candidate Trump locked up the Republican nomination. Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign chairman Paul Manafort all gathered with a Kremlin-connected lawyer and her entourage in Trump Tower in Manhattan after being promised damaging political “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

The June 9 meeting quickly emerged as a key early focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election interference. It was initially pitched to Trump Jr. in an email from music publicist and former tabloid reporter Rob Goldstone who reached out at the request of Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, who befriended Trump when his father agreed to sponsor the 2013 Miss Universe pageant. The Agalarov family is prominent in Moscow development circles and holds close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told the Senate in written answers to question that she had no idea if Trump Jr. knew her background.

“Whether Mr. Trump Jr. knew anything about me and my name is unknown to me,” she said.

Veselnitskaya later revealed in an interview on NBC and in emails obtained by ABC News that – contrary to her earlier denials of Russian government ties to Senate Judiciary Committee investigators – she is, in fact, closely linked to top Kremlin official, Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor general. “I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” she told NBC. “Since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.” The revelation raised new questions about the purpose of the June meeting, which Trump Jr. initially explained away as being merely about Russian adoptions.

Numerous questions have swirled around the controversial private meeting since it first came to light, particularly after the eldest Trump son’s shifting stories about the purpose of the meeting once it became known to reporters.

The Russian participants have largely maintained identical descriptions of the day’s events. Scott Balber, a New York lawyer who represents the Agalarovs and one of the meeting’s participants, Ike Kaveladze, told ABC News “the meeting itself was a big nothing.”

Of Goldstone’s promise of dirt, Balber said: “I think he has said publicly that he quote ‘goosed the story’ for the purpose of getting the folks in the Trump campaign to agree to the meeting.”

The first reports about the meeting, initially in the New York Times on July 8, 2017, sent off shock waves, as it was the first known private meeting between Russian nationals and Trump officials during the campaign.

When Trump Jr. first found out about the New York Times story, he said the meeting was about adoptions and mentioned nothing about a promise of political dirt on his father’s political rival. When the Times presented material to the contrary, the Trump son released a statement saying, “After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

Trump Jr. then said the Russian lawyer turned the focus to Russian adoptions.

President Trump and his staff have insisted he was not involved in the meeting, but the Washington Post in late July 2017 reported that the President dictated his son’s first misleading statement about the meeting to the New York Times, saying the meeting was about adoptions and not campaign-related issues.

After the incident, Trump’s legal team spokesman, Mark Carrollo, according to Michael Wolf in his book “Fire and Fury, “seeing no good outcome — and privately confiding that he believed the meeting on Air Force One represented a likely obstruction of justice — quit.” ABC News first reported that Mueller sought an interview with Corallo afterward.

But Trump Jr. revised his account on Twitter soon after the Times broke the story, publishing his full e-mail exchange with Goldstone, including where he responded, “I love it” when offered the damaging information on Clinton. But – Trump Jr. said in the posting accompanying the release that he thought the information was simply “Political Opposition Research.”

He then went on Fox News’ Sean Hannity show with something of a mea culpa saying, “’In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently,” in reference to the meeting.

Kushner met behind closed doors for two hours with Senate investigators in late July 2017, telling reporters afterward of the handful of meetings he took with Russian officials, including at Trump Tower, “All of my actions were proper and occurred in the normal course of events of a very unique campaign,” adding unequivocally, “I did not collude with Russians, nor do I know of anyone in the campaign who did.”

Along with Veselnitskaya and her translator, Anatoli Samochornov, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, Goldstone, and Russian businessman Kaveladze attended the meeting.
Donald Trump Jr. discloses emails in which he and Rob Goldstone discuss gathering opposition research against Hillary Clinton through a June 2016 meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.