Republicans on Capitol Hill tried to avoid commenting on Russia Wednesday, following the release of Donald Trump Jr.’s emails setting up a 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.
{mosads}While members of the GOP dodged questions about Russian election interference and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, at least one Democrat said Trump Jr. was caught red-handed.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) pounced on the email chain Trump Jr. tweeted out on Tuesday, telling The Hill’s Molly K. Hooper, “it’s more like [getting] caught red-handed, in flagrante delicto. It’s more than a smoking gun — you can see the bullet being fired.”
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) — a former prosecutor — wouldn’t go quite so in her reaction, cautioning her colleagues to “wait until all the facts are out.”
“It certainly didn’t sound right to me that those three guys were going to a meeting on adoption, as it turns out my gut was correct on that,” she added of the meeting that included then-campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Asked if Trump Jr.’s emails are a “smoking gun” in the Russian collusion investigation, House Oversight Committee member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told The Hill, “it’s going to get looked into.”
“Obviously it’s a meeting that I wouldn’t have taken; in hindsight I think, Donald Junior said this, he probably shouldn’t have taken the meeting,” Jordan told The Hill.
Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) refused to speculate on the issue of Russian collusion.
“I’m going to let the other committees, Senate Intelligence Committee, complete their work,,” before coming to a conclusion, he said.