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Donald Trump Jr. Releases Email Chain About His Meeting With Russian Lawyer

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

We're following reaction to the emails that Donald Trump Jr. posted today on Twitter. They appear to show that the Trump campaign was willing to accept support from the Russian government in defeating Hillary Clinton. The email exchange was between the president's eldest son and a music promoter named Rob Goldstone. Goldstone offered to help set up a meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian attorney, writing, this is obviously very high-level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

Donald Trump Jr. forwarded the email exchange to his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, who's now a senior White House adviser, and to Paul Manafort, who was the campaign chairman at the time. All three attended the meeting. Most Republicans have not said much about the development. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called it disturbing and said, quote, "any time you're in a campaign and you get an offer from a foreign government to help your campaign, the answer is no." And the top Democrat of the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, says the committee wants to talk to the president's son.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARK WARNER: Now the public is for the first time seeing some of these facts and these facts that have shown in the last 24 hours that there clearly was a Russian government effort to discredit Clinton and to help Trump and that Trump officials at the most senior level were aware of that. How high that goes - we've still got questions to ask.

SHAPIRO: We'll have much more on this story elsewhere in the program. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.