Congressional investigators discover more emails related to infamous Trump Jr. meeting
Congressional investigators have uncovered emails that indicate parties involved in the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower had subsequent communication after their summit, CNN reported Thursday. The meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya has come under the microscope because Trump Jr. accepted the invitation from British publicist Rob Goldstone after being promised Veselnitskaya would provide incriminating information about Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr. has maintained that it quickly became clear Veselnitskaya had no such information and the meeting revolved around the subject of Russian adoption. He has also said that nothing came of the event and he never followed up with any of the attendees. None of the emails CNN reported on Thursday were sent to Trump Jr. directly, but were instead missives sent by Goldstone to Dan Scavino, then a top aide to the Trump campaign and now the White House's social media director, as well as Ike Kaveladze, a Russian who was present at the meeting.
Just days after the meeting, Goldstone apparently forwarded a message to Kaveladze referencing a report about Russia's breach of the Democratic National Committee. He sent the missive while "describing the news as 'eerily weird' given what they had discussed at Trump Tower five days earlier," CNN reported.
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An attorney for Kaveladze said Kaveladze did receive the email but found it to be "odd because hacking was never discussed in the meeting," CNN wrote. Two sources told CNN that when Trump Jr. published the email chain that resulted in the June 2016 meeting, Kaveladze's son emailed his father asking why Trump Jr. was "admitting 'collusion,'" though it is unclear whether the younger Kaveladze was joking.
The other Goldstone email in question urged Scavino to put then-candidate Donald Trump on the Russian social networking site VX. While testifying before Congress on Wednesday, Trump Jr. reportedly said he did not remember the messages in question. Read more at CNN.
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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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