Trump Jr. Releases Full Email Chain About Meeting with Russian Lawyer

CBN
07-11-2017

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WASHINGTON – The president's eldest son, Donald Trump, Jr., has released an email chain that documents him setting up a meeting with a Russian attorney with ties to the Kremlin. The correspondence appeared to offer to incriminate Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

The release of the email chain, allegedly between Trump Jr. and publicist Rob Goldstone, comes after a media firestorm over the controversial meeting which took place at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign.

 
Trump's son says he wasn't the only one at the meeting. Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and Trump's son-in-law and current adviser Jared Kushner were also present.

According to Trump Jr., the man was an "individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign."
 
Meanwhile, Democrats like Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., are voicing concern over the new development.

"This is the first time that the public has seen clear evidence of senior-level members of the Trump campaign meeting with Russians to try to obtain information that might hurt the campaign of Hillary Clinton," he said.
 
In the past, the president's son denied having any contact with Russians about the campaign.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says the campaign never followed up on the meeting and that neither Trump Jr. nor the campaign ever colluded with anyone to influence the election. She says President Trump only recently learned of the meeting.

Trump Jr.'s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, released a statement saying this is "much ado about nothing."

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and a member of the president's legal team, agreed.

"Everybody ignores the fact that the Ukrainians were working with the DNC in support of Hillary Clinton – that gets a pass," he charged. "So a meeting with a lawyer from Russia who said reportedly that she had information about opposition research about Hillary Clinton – and ends up not being the case, by the way. So, no, there's no illegality in the meeting. There was no follow-up and no action taken."

What About the Comey Memos?

The same may not be true for former FBI Director James Comey.

A new report reveals four of the seven memos he wrote after his interactions with President Trump contained classified information.

The revelation, reported by The Hill, undercuts Comey's claim during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last month that he believed the information in the memos was unclassified.

During that testimony, Comey said, "I understood this to be my recollection recorded. My conversation with the president. As a private citizen I felt free to share that I felt very important to get it out."

Comey revealed during testimony that he shared the memos with a Columbia University law professor who then shared those memos with reporters.

The Hill points out that Comey's actions raise the possibility that he broke his own agency's rules and ignored the same security protocols that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for regarding her decision to keep classified documents after leaving the State Department in 2013.

However, Comey's friend disagrees. In an email statement, Columbia University law professor Daniel Rickman told CBN News, "...Jim Comey never gave me a memo that was classified; and the memo whose substance I passed on to The Times has never to my knowledge been classified.  Memos that went to Congress, and not me, may well have been classified."

President Trump responded to the report about Comey by tweeting, "James Comey leaked classified information to the media. That is so illegal!"

Sekulow echoed that charge, saying it's the former FBI chief that should be under investigation.

"James Comey testified that these were his private information, but the government's position is that this was government material," he said. "He then leaked that material to a third party who then leaked it to the New York Times. That's a crime. So the investigation that needs to be going on right now needs to be focusing on James Comey."

Now congressional investigators will look into Comey's memos, trying to figure out where and how they were created. For instance, were they written on an unsecured computer? And when did the government decide that the memos contained classified information - before or after Comey shared them?

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