Donald Trump Jr. turned directly to Twitter on Tuesday to publish an email chain that he says lays out how he was offered potentially damaging information about his father's Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, more than a year ago.
In a statement tweeted with the email chain, the president's eldest son said he released his correspondence in order to be "totally transparent" and thought any information he might have been given was potentially part of "political opposition research":
"To everyone, in order to be totally transparent, I am releasing the entire email chain of my events 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 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. 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 was actually agitated by it."
Click on the images below to read the full emails:
