Trump Jr. tweeted what he claims is the full email correspondence between himself and the music publicist who arranged for the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
In a statement attached to the tweet, Trump Jr. said he was releasing the emails "in order to be totally transparent" about the ordeal. He said the first email was from Rob Goldstone, the music publicist for a Russian pop star with connections to Trump, on June 3, 2016, who says he set up the meeting.
The New York Times reported on Monday that Trump Jr. was told in an email that the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had damaging information about soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. He was also told that this meeting was part of a Russian effort to help his father's campaign.
The emails Trump Jr. shared seem to confirm the Times report.
In the emails, Veselnitskaya is identified as a "Russian government attorney" and Goldstone tells Trump Jr. that she would like to share damaging information about Clinton as "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump."
Goldstone says in an email to Trump that Veselnitskaya "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."
In response to Goldstone's initial email requesting the meeting and promising incriminating information on Clinton, Trump Jr. responded, "If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer."
In that first email, Goldstone wrote that the "crown prosecutor of Russia" met with Aras Agalarov, a wealthy Azerbaijani-Russian developer who brought now-President Donald Trump's Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013, and "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."
Agalarov served as a liaison between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin when Trump was in Moscow in 2013, The Washington Post reported, and Trump appeared in a 2013 music video for Emin Agalarov, the billionaire's pop star son. It was the younger Agalarov who Goldstone was setting the meeting up on behalf of. That meeting was attended along with Trump Jr., Veselnitskaya, then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and now-White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, who is also Trump's son-in-law.
In the emails, Goldstone made it clear on June 7 that the younger Agalarov would not be able to discuss such information with Trump Jr., and instead wanted to know if Trump's eldest son could meet with the "Russian government attorney" who was "flying over from Moscow for this Thursday." Trump Jr. then agreed to an afternoon meeting at Trump Tower on June 9, and later added that Manafort and Kushner would join him.
"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," Trump Jr. said in his statement attached to the tweets. "The first email on June 3, 2016 was from Rob, who was relating a request from Emin, a person I knew from the 2013 Ms. 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," he continued. "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 just said today in the press, the entire meeting was the 'most inane nonsense I ever heard. And I was actually agitated by it.'"
Trump Jr. stated Sunday that the meeting was set up on the premise that the Russian lawyer, Veselnitskaya, would provide damaging information on Clinton, but said that material was never presented. Instead, in what he said was a roughly 30 minute meeting, Veselnitskaya pivoted to discussing the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russians accused of human rights abuses that so enraged Putin that he retaliated by barring US citizens from adopting Russian children.
In an interview with NBC News Tuesday, Veselnitskaya said the members of the Trump team present "wanted" the damaging information "so badly that they could only hear the thought that they wanted."
When The Times broke the story Saturday, Trump Jr. said the meeting was only focused on the adoption issue, and made no mention of the promise of damaging Clinton information. On Monday, Trump Jr. retained Alan Futerfas as his attorney in the matter.
"Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent," Trump Jr. tweeted Monday. "Went nowhere but had to listen."
The Times was set to publish a story on the emails just prior to Trump Jr.'s tweets. The Times called Trump Jr. for comment just prior to publishing, to which he then tweeted out the email correspondence.
Trump's relationship with the elder Agalarov included what the Russian billionaire said was a signed agreement to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, The Post reported, adding that Trump had boasted upon returning from Moscow in 2013 that "almost all of the oligarchs were in the room" at an after party for the pageant, which Agalarov and other investors paid $14 million to host.
"@AgalarovAras I had a great weekend with you and your family," Trump tweeted in 2013. "You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!"
Read the emails here:
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