Donald Trump Jr. says he never told his father, then-candidate Donald Trump, about the meeting he took during the campaign with Russian operatives who’d suggested they had dirt on Hillary Clinton, according to documents released by a congressional probe Wednesday.
The younger Mr. Trump also said he didn’t tell law enforcement about the meeting, saying it didn’t turn out to be substantive enough to raise any red flags.
He said the lack of substance was also why he didn’t tell his father afterward.
“I wouldn’t have wasted his time with it,” the younger Mr. Trump said in an interview with investigators from the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The committee released thousands of pages of documents from its probe into the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower, which was suggested by a business associate of the Trump family.
The younger Mr. Trump said the associate, Rob Goldstone, said he could put the campaign in touch with someone who could “incriminate” Mrs. Clinton over her own “dealing with Russia.”
Mr. Trump said he went into the meeting with skepticism, and said the meeting bore that out....
Mr. Trump also said his seeming enthusiasm for the meeting, conveyed by replying to Mr. Goldstone’s offer of a meeting with “I love it,” was actually “a colloquial way of saying that I appreciated Rob’s gesture.”