Donald Trump Jr. said he "probably would have done things a little differently" when he met a Russian attorney during his father's presidential campaign after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton, according to interview excerpts released by Fox News on Tuesday afternoon.
But as Trump Jr. found himself at the center of a widening controversy involving the Trump administration's relationship with Russia, the president's son also defended his motivations for taking the June 2016 meeting, telling Sean Hannity, "For me this was opposition research."
The remarks came in Trump Jr.'s first interview since he published old emails Tuesday morning from a friend who said the Russian attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had "official documents and information" that would "incriminate" Clinton "and be very useful to your father" as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."
Trump Jr. had reacted to the promise of damaging information positively, writing back to his friend Rob Goldstone, a music promoter with business dealings in Russia, "If it's what you say I love it." He also forwarded the message to top Trump aides Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner.
"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," Trump Jr. told Hannity on Tuesday. "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."
Trump Jr. said the meeting was "a nothing," adding, "I wouldn't have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff. It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame."
