Donald Trump Jr. was allegedly informed in an email of a Russian government effort to help his father prior to meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, according to a Monday night New York Times report.
It was recently revealed that Trump Jr. had met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer, on June 9, 2016 because she had promised him that she had damaging information that might hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Trump Jr. admitted that he sought the information, but claimed he did not know that the person he was meeting had connections to the Russian government prior to the meeting.
“I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign,” Trump Jr. said. “I was not told her name prior to the meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to attend, but told them nothing of the substance.”
However, it is now being reported that Trump Jr. was told in an email before arranging the meeting that the Russian government was behind the damaging information, according to three NYT sources with knowledge of the email.
The email was allegedly sent by Rob Goldstone, a British reporter who helped Trump Jr. arrange the meeting back in June. According to the three sources, the email indicates that the damaging Clinton information came from the Russian government but does not indicate if they procured the information from the Democratic National Committee hack.
“Obviously I’m the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent… went nowhere but had to listen,” Trump Jr. previously wrote in one tweet about the meeting.
“No inconsistency in statements, meeting ended up being primarily about adoptions,” he said in another tweet, backing up claims he had made that his meeting with Veselnitskaya centered on Russian adoptions. “In response to further Q’s I simply provided more details.”
Goldstone, who allegedly wrote the email to Trump Jr., also denied knowing if the Russian government had anything to do with the information. Interestingly, one of NYT’s sources said it appeared that Goldstone was simply passing along information he had been given by others.
Further attempts by the NYT to reach Goldstone were unsuccessful, leaving questions as to how Goldstone would have authored an email without fully reading or understanding its contents.