DONALD TRUMP COMMENDS SON FOR TRANSPARENCY OVER RUSSIAN AFFAIR

American president Donald Trump has lauded his eldest son for being transparent after he released emails on Tuesday showing he embraced Russian efforts to support his father's presidential campaign.

This  shocking disclosure likely to further fuel speculation over Moscow's suspected role in the election.

Trump took to his Twitter to praise his son's transparency, describing him as a quality person.

My son Donald did a good job last night. He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2017

The revelation puts the president's son at the center of a burgeoning scandal involving multiple US investigations into whether Trump associates colluded with Moscow in its efforts to tilt the 2016 election in the Republican's favor.

In a string of emails released on Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr was told by an interlocutor that he could get "very high level and sensitive information" that was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

In response, the 39-year-old — who now runs the family real estate business in his father's stead — wrote back saying: "if it's what you say I love it."

He then set up a meeting with a "Russian government attorney," the emails show.

The email chain was released in its entirety by Trump Jr in a move that jolted Washington, and added fuel to the firestorm swirling over allegations that Trump's campaign team colluded with Moscow to influence the 2016 election.

Nothing to tell

Speaking to Fox News, Trump Jr said he didn't tell his father about the meeting after it failed to yield compromising information about his election rival Clinton.

Trump and Russia: some of the links between the two sides explained here

"It was such a nothing. There was nothing to tell," he said, while appearing to acknowledge the misstep.

"In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently," he admitted.

"For me this was opposition research, they had something, you know, maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I'd been hearing about."

US intelligence agencies concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a mass effort to tilt the election in Trump's favor, including hacking and leaking embarrassing emails from Democrats.

The latest disclosure now thrusts the president's son to the center of multiple investigations by Congress and the FBI as to whether Trump's team was in the know.

Transparent Trump

In a statement accompanying the emails, Trump Jr said he believed the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, "as she has said publicly, was not a government official."

Paul Manafort, then advisor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, also attended the meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016. AFP

Speaking to Fox, he said: "We didn't know who she was before the meeting."

However, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, two of Trump's most trusted campaign officials, attended the meeting.

Trump jumped to his son's defense, saying in a statement: "My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency."

In an interview with CNN late on Tuesday, the president's lawyer Jay Sekulow stressed that Trump had not been aware of his son's meeting with Veselnitskaya until "very recently" and did not know about the emails.

"The president, by the way, never saw an email — did not see the email — until it was seen today," Sekulow said.

"I want to be clear on that."