Offered Russian aid to 'incriminate Hillary,' Donald Trump Jr. wrote 'I love it'
— -- Donald Trump Jr. has released what he says are screenshots of the full email chain arranging the meeting between him and a Russian attorney who allegedly had damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
The meeting took place at Trump Tower in New York on June 9, 2016, and was arranged by Rob Goldstone, a music producer and an acquaintance of Trump's.
Trump posted a statement on his verified Twitter account about the situation, as well as four pages of purported emails between him and Goldstone, saying in the statement that he was doing so "in order to be totally transparent."
In the messages, Goldstone describes the lawyer as "The Russian government attorney," and her name is not mentioned.
The exchange appears to have begun on June 3, 2016, when Goldstone reached out to the eldest son of then-candidate Donald Trump Sr. In that email Goldstone appears to refer to one of his clients, Emin Agalarov, a singer from Azerbaijan who is the son of a wealthy businessman, Aras Agalarov.
"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting," Goldstone wrote, according to a screenshot.
"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," Goldstone wrote, according to the screenshot.
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump -- helped along by Aras and Emin," Goldstone allegedly continued.
In a subsequent email in the purported chain, Goldstone allegedly wrote that he won't sit in on the meeting but "will send the names of the two people meeting with you for security when I have them later."
The lawyer has been publicly identified as Natalia Veselnitskaya, but the identity of the second person has not been established. Donald Trump Jr. has not referred to a second individual allegedly attending the meeting in any of the multiple statements he has made about it since knowledge of it became public this weekend.
Veselnitskaya spoke to NBC's "Today" this morning and denied that she has connections to the Kremlin or that she was part of any Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Donald Trump Jr. previously confirmed that he invited to the meeting his father's then–campaign adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then–campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Donald Trump Jr. and his father's lawyers said that Donald Trump Sr. was not involved in the meeting, and on Monday, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the elder Trump learned about the meeting only "in the last couple of days."
Donald Trump Jr. has released statements on the meeting and agreed to share information about it with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Along with the alleged emails today, he released an additional statement, which read:
"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. The first email on June 3, 2016 was from Rob, who was relating a request from Emin, a person I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant near Moscow. Emin and his father have a very highly respected company in Moscow. The information they suggested they had about Hillary Clinton I thought was Political Opposition Research. I first wanted to just have a phone call but when that didn't work out, they said the woman would be in New York and asked if I would meet. I decided to take the meeting. The woman, as she has said publicly, was not a government official. And, as we have said, she had no information to provide and wanted to talk about adoption policy and the Magnitsky Act. To put this in context, this occurred before the current Russian fever was in vogue. As Rob Goldstone said just today in the press, the entire meeting was 'the most inane nonsense I ever heard. And I was actually agitated by it.'"
Here are copies of the images posted by Donald Trump Jr. on his verified Twitter account:
