Donald Trump Jr. told Senate investigators on Thursday that he took a controversial June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer to assess Hillary Clinton's "fitness" to be president.
Trump Jr. said during an interview with Senate Judiciary Committee investigators that the meeting was unfruitful, and maintained that he did not collude with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign, according to a prepared statement obtained by the New York Times. The statement was presented during a closed-door meeting with committee investigators, which Trump Jr. entered early Thursday morning through a private entrance.
President Donald Trump's eldest son had previously admitted to taking a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after an intermediary, Rob Goldstone, intimated to Trump Jr. that Veselnitskaya had compromising information about Clinton. Trump Jr. has publicly offered a variety of justifications for attending the meeting, including discussing Russian adoption policy, but he told the congressional investigators that he was indeed interested in information on Clinton.
"To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character, or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out," he said. "Depending on what, if any, information they had, I could then consult with counsel to make an informed decision as to whether to give it further consideration."
Trump Jr. expressed that he had some misgivings about the meeting that Goldstone had organized, and went in with a great degree of skepticism.
"Since I had no additional information to validate what Rob was saying, I did not quite know what to make of his email. I had no way to gauge the reliability, credibility, or accuracy of any of the things he was saying," Trump Jr. said. "As it later turned out, my skepticism was justified. The meeting provided no meaningful information and turned out not to be about what had been represented."
He also explained his use of the phrase "I love it" to answer Goldstone's offer, suggesting that it was just a particularly ebullient but harmless response.
"As much as some have made of my using the phrase 'I love it,' it was simply a colloquial way of saying that I appreciated Rob's gesture," Trump Jr. said.