The June 3, 2016, email sent to Donald Trump Jr. could hardly have been more explicit: One of his fatherâs former Russian business partners had been contacted by a senior Russian government official and was offering to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton.
The documents âwould incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,â read the email, written by a trusted intermediary, who added, âThis is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its governmentâs support for Mr. Trump.â
If the future presidentâs elder son was surprised or disturbed by the provenance of the promised material â or the notion that it was part of an ongoing effort by the Russian government to aid his fatherâs campaign â he gave no indication.
He replied within minutes: âIf itâs what you say I love it especially later in the summer.â
Four days later, after a flurry of emails, the intermediary wrote back, proposing a meeting in New York on Thursday with a âRussian government attorney.â
Donald Trump Jr. agreed, adding that he would likely bring along âPaul Manafort (campaign boss)â and âmy brother-in-law,â Jared Kushner, now one of the presidentâs closest White House advisers.
On June 9, the Russian lawyer was sitting in the younger Mr. Trumpâs office on the 25th floor of Trump Tower, just one level below the office of the future president.
Over the last several days, The New York Times has disclosed the existence of the meeting, whom it involved and what it was about. The story has unfolded as The Times has been able to confirm details of the meetings.
But the email exchanges, which were reviewed by The Times, offer a detailed unspooling of how the meeting with the Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, came about â and just how eager Donald J. Trump was to accept what he was explicitly told was the Russian governmentâs help.
The Justice Department, as well as the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, is examining whether any of President Trumpâs associates colluded with the Russian government to disrupt last yearâs election. American intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian government tried to sway the election in favor of Mr. Trump.
The precise nature of the promised damaging information about Mrs. Clinton is unclear, and there is no evidence to suggest that it was related to Russian-government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. But in recent days, accounts by some of the central organizers of the meeting, including Donald Trump Jr., have evolved or have been contradicted by the written email records.
On Monday, Donald Trump Jr. said on Twitter that it was hardly unusual to take information on an opponent. And on Tuesday morning, he tweeted, âMedia & Dems are extremely invested in the Russia story. If this nonsense meeting is all they have after a yr, I understand the desperation!â
The back story to the June 9 meeting involves an eclectic cast of characters the Trump family knew from its business dealings in Moscow.
The initial email outreach came from Rob Goldstone, a British-born former tabloid reporter and entertainment publicist who first met the future president when the Trump Organization was attempting to do business in Russia.
In the June 3 email, Mr. Goldstone told Donald J. Trump Jr. that he was writing on behalf of a mutual friend, one of Russiaâs biggest pop music stars, Emin Agalarov. Emin, who professionally uses his first name only, is the son of Aras Agalarov, a real estate tycoon sometimes called the âDonald Trump of Russia.â
The elder Agalarov boasts close ties to Mr. Putin: his company has won several large state building contracts, and Mr. Putin awarded him the âOrder of Honor of the Russian Federation.â
Mr. Agalarov joined with the elder Mr. Trump to bring the Miss Universe contest to Moscow in 2013, and the Trump and Agalarov families grew relatively close.
When Emin released a music video with a theme borrowed from the television show, The Apprentice, Mr. Trump, then the showâs star, made a cameo appearance, delivering his trademark line: âYouâre fired!â The elder Mr. Agalarov had also partnered with the Trumps to build a Trump hotel in Moscow, but it has never came to fruition.
âEmin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,â Mr. Goldstone wrote in the email. âThe Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.â
He added, âWhat do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?â
There is no such title as Crown Prosecutor in Russia â the Crown Prosecution Service is a British term â but the equivalent in Russia is the Prosecutor General of Russia.
