Grassley: Trump Jr.’s exchanges with WikiLeaks ‘very innocuous’

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Tuesday the exchanges between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks prior to the 2016 presidential election seem “very innocuous.”

“I read those emails. He only responded to two or three of them, and they were very innocuous. So I don’t even know why you’d be asking about him if you read them,” Grassley told CNN.

President Trump’s eldest son confirmed Monday that he received numerous direct messages on Twitter from WikiLeaks. The correspondence was largely one-sided, with Trump Jr. only responding to a few messages.

Here is the entire chain of messages with @wikileaks (with my whopping 3 responses) which one of the congressional committees has chosen to selectively leak. How ironic! 1/3 pic.twitter.com/SiwTqWtykA

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 13, 2017

In one instance, the anti-secrecy group suggested Trump Jr. should leak one of his father’s tax returns to the organization in order to improve the perception of the site’s impartiality. In another message, WikiLeaks pushed Trump Jr. to tell his father not to accept the election results if he lost.

Trump Jr. did not respond to either solicitation.

{mosads}

The correspondence was reportedly given to lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

While Democrats have been calling for Trump Jr. to testify in a public hearing before the committee, Grassley said Tuesday that the messages don’t make that any more likely to happen.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is one of multiple congressional committees in the midst of separate investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Special counsel Robert Mueller is also leading a probe into Russian influence and possible ties to the Trump campaign.