Emails Show Trump Jr. Knew Russia Was Working to Support Trump Campaign

Updated at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday

Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday posted online an email exchange that seemed to show the president's son entertained an offer of Russian government help for his father to be elected president in 2016.

"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump," said the text that Trump Jr. posted on Twitter.

In the messages, an intermediary for Russian business allies of the Trumps offers what they call incriminating information about Hillary Clinton. That eventually led to a meeting between a Russian attorney and Trump Jr., then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Trump Jr. did not seem bothered by the offer, which brought him and the campaign into a questionable legal area.

"If it's what you say," Trump Jr. replied, "I love it."

Trump Jr. said in his Twitter post on Tuesday that he was posting the messages "to be totally transparent" and that the Russian attorney with whom he met, Natalia Veselnitskaya, ultimately did not provide Trump Jr. with any opposition research about Clinton.

Here's my statement and the full email chain pic.twitter.com/x050r5n5LQ

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017

Here is page 4 (which did not post due to space constraints). pic.twitter.com/z1Xi4nr2gq

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017

Below, the text appears in chronological order; headers were added by NPR. See the text as tweeted here, combined into one pdf. NPR journalists have annotated the text below with context and analysis.

[AnnotatedTrumpJrEmails]

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