Trump’s credibility dealt blow by his son’s emails on Russia

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump’s credibility took a sharp blow after his son released emails that directly contradict months of assertions that investigations of possible campaign collusion with Russia were nothing more than a partisan “witch hunt.”
Just 173 days in office, Trump already has seen his political clout depleted by a stymied agenda in Congress and approval ratings consistently under 40 percent.
Now, confronted by evidence that Donald Trump Jr. was willing and eager for campaign help from the Russian government, the president faces emboldened Democrats in Congress and Republican lawmakers who may be even more likely to shy away from taking a big political risk on his behalf.
Trump, never one to back down from a fight, was unusually silent on Twitter about the mushrooming controversy over his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton. He had no public events on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, the day he’s set to leave for France for a Bastille Day commemoration.
After his son released the emails on Tuesday, the president issued a one-sentence statement: “My son is a high-quality person, and I applaud his transparency.” On Wednesday morning, the president said on Twitter, “My son Donald did a good job last night” on Fox News. “He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!”

White House Concern
Inside the White House, there is growing concern that there is more trouble to come. “It’s a firestorm here,” one administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
The concern is especially acute for Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner attended the June 2016 meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya along with Trump Jr. and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Of the three, he’s the only one who now holds a White House job and a high-level security clearance.
Trump Jr. forwarded the email chain to Kushner ahead of the meeting that identified Veselnitskaya as a “Russian government attorney” with information that would “incriminate” Clinton, Donald Trump’s campaign opponent. Veselnitskaya hasn’t responded to inquiries from Bloomberg News but has said in interviews with other news organizations that she did not represent the Russian government.
Kushner and his representatives did not respond to requests for comment. A person close to Manafort said that he had disclosed the meeting to congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election. The person said he didn’t know whether Manafort saw or read the email exchange Trump Jr. had forwarded to him.
The younger Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday that he never told his father about the meeting. “There was nothing to tell,” he said, according to excerpts the network released.
Asked whether he had meetings with other Russians, Trump Jr. said, “I don’t even know. I’ve probably met with other people from Russia” but not in formal settings.
While he’s maintained he did nothing wrong and nothing came of the meeting, Trump Jr. said in the Fox interview that he “probably would have done things a little differently.”
The emails the younger Trump posted on Twitter were exchanges with British publicist Rob Goldstone, who set up the meeting on behalf of a client he said was working with the Russian government. Goldstone said the information the lawyer had was “obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for” Trump’s White House bid. It is not clear from the emails that Trump posted why Goldstone thought the information came from the Kremlin.
Goldstone also has not responded to requests for comment. A lawyer for the client he was representing, Russian pop singer Emin Agalarov, said Goldstone may have misunderstood the reason for the meeting and said Agalarov was not representing the Russian government.
Donald Trump Jr. responded in the email exchange: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” He has since said that the meeting with Veselnitskaya yielded no useful information and that most of the 20 to 30 minutes of the meeting was spent talking about adoption policy.