British publicist Rob Goldstone, who set up the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians, told the Sunday Times of London he exaggerated an email promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
"If I'm guilty of anything, and I hate the word guilty, it's hyping the message and going the extra mile for my clients. Using hot-button language to puff up the information I had been given," he said.
Goldstone was working for a Russian oligarch, Aras Agalarov and his son, Emin, last year when he said Emin asked him to reach out to the Trump campaign to offer help.
"Emin [Agalarov] just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting," Goldstone wrote to Trump Jr. on June 3, 2016.
"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
Trump Jr. replied and said his staff had some time and, "if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer."
Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and the- campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended the meeting with four Russians, one of whom was a Kremlin-linked lawyer.
But the focus of the gathering wasn't on Clinton, and instead was about the Magnitsky Act.
The meeting has emerged as a central focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether members of Trump's campaign team colluded with Russian officials during the election. Goldstone will meet with Mueller in the near future.
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