For a while now, the press have been
accusing Donald Trump of having links to
the Russians. These accusations resulted in
investigations which revealed Donald
Trump Jr met with a Russian-linked lawyer
with the hopes of getting “dirt” on Hillary
Clinton.
New York Times reported of a chain of
emails that shows Donald Jr set up meeting
with the Russian lawyer.
After the scandal broke out in the New York
Times, President Trump’s first son sat for
an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity
where he tried to explain his meeting with
Russian-linked lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya
on June 9 last year. The interview comes
hours after it was revealed special counsel
Robert Mueller is keen on reviewing the
president’s son’s emails.
Donald Trump Jr told Hannity, who is a
supporter of his father, that he met the
lawyer because he wanted to know if she
had information or concrete evidence
against Hillary Clinton. He said he had been
reading about scandals on her which had
gone under-reported for years and he
wanted to find out if he could get
information that had to do with those
scandals.
He said: “In retrospect I probably would
have done things a little differently. Again
this is before the Russia mania, this is
before they were building this up in the
press. For me this was opposition research,
they had something you know maybe
concrete evidence to all the stories I’d been
hearing about, probably under reported for
years not just during the campaign so I
think I wanted to hear it out. But really it
went nowhere and it was apparent that
wasn’t what the meeting was about.”
He also admitted: “I’ve probably met with
other people from Russia… not in the
context of actual, a formalized meeting or
anything like that.”
Hannity then asked Donald Jr why he
attended the meeting along with Jared
Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul
Manafort. Donald Jr claimed Kushner left the
meeting after “five to 10 minutes”, and
Manafort was “on his phone pretty much
the whole time”.
“Honestly, my take away when all of this
was going on, is that someone has
information on our opponent,” he said,
referring to Clinton.
Hannity went on to ask Donald Jr if he read
the emails, reported on by the New York
Times on Monday and then published by
Trump Jr himself on Tuesday, between him
and Robert Goldstone, the PR exec who put
together the meeting between Donald Jr
and the lawyer. He admitted he read them
to see if there was interesting information
there and said he has no control over who
sends him emails. He also added that he
was disappointed that the meeting did not
give him the “dirt” he so desperately
wanted on Hillary Clinton.
“I had been reading about scandals that
people were probably underreporting for a
long time so maybe it was something that
had to do with one of those things,” The
39-year-old said. “I mean this was her
perhaps involvement with the Russian
government…so, you know, again, I didn’t
know if there was any credibility, I didn’t
know if there was anything behind it, I
can’t vouch for the information…someone
sent me an email. I can’t help what
someone sends me. I read it, I responded
accordingly, and if there was something
interesting there, I think that’s pretty
common.”
