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Summary: The Senate Judiciary Committee released the Trump Tower transcripts on Wednesday.Â
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee released nearly 2,000 pages of interviews regarding Donald Trump Jr’s clandestine meeting with a Russian lawyer in June of 2016. The transcripts appeared to show that Don Jr. was hungry for damaging information on Donald Trump’s political rival, Hillary Clinton, but that the Russians had nothing of use.
According to CNN, the pages showed that Don Jr. and Trump’s senior campaign members were eager to obtain dirt on Clinton but were “frustrated and angry” when that information did not materialize.
CNN said that the transcripts had no information in them that would “change the course of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s team and Russia.” However, they did provide context to the controversial meeting.
The transcripts focused on a meeting at Trump Tower between Don Jr., President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya had met with the three men after stating that she could provide them with information about Clinton that would hopefully help Trump’s campaign.
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The meeting was a central focus of Mueller’s probe into whether or not Russia helped Trump win the 2016 election. Don Jr. has said that his father was not aware of the meeting ahead of time.
The Senate Judiciary Committee interviewed nine people connected to the meeting to obtain hundreds of pages. Interviewees include Trump Jr., publicist Rob Goldstone who arranged the meeting, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, translator Anatoli Samochornov and Russian Ike Kaveladze.
On Wednesday, Don Jr. said that the transcripts show that he had cooperated with the investigation.
“I appreciate the opportunity to have assisted the Judiciary Committee in its inquiry,” Trump Jr. said. “The public can now see that for over five hours I answered every question asked and was candid and forthright with the Committee. I once again thank Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Feinstein, as well as other members of the Committee and their staff for their courtesy and professionalism.”
According to NPR, the three biggest takeaways of the released transcripts include the following: 1) The Russians intended to collude with Americans to influence the election, but there is no proof that the Americans reciprocated 2) It is unclear what happened post-Trump Tower meeting and 3) It is unclear what Donald Trump knew beforehand.
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