Emails show follow-up to June 2016 Trump Tower meeting

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Donald Trump, Jr., (L) places a hand on the shoulder of his father, then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, during in a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on November 7, 2016.

Emails sent by Rob Goldstone raise new questions about the topics that were discussed at a controversial June meeting in Trump Tower attended by senior Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer, CNN reported Thursday.

Goldstone, the British publicist who set up the meeting, sent multiple emails in the days that followed to a Russian participant in the meeting and Trump aide Dan Scavino.

In one email Goldstone encouraged Scavino, now the White House’s social media director, to get candidate Trump to join the Russian social network VK, according to CNN. He noted that Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort, who was then Trump’s campaign chairman, were on board with the idea.

CNN reported that it could not find evidence that the page was set up.

In another email, Goldstone forwarded a story about Russia’s hacking of DNC emails. He described the news as “eerily weird” given what was discussed at the Trump Tower meeting less than a week earlier.

A source told CNN that DNC hacking was not brought up at the meeting. Participants of the meeting have also denied that hacking was brought up.

The emails are the first evidence that there was any follow-up to the meeting and raise the possibility that topics were discussed beyond what was previously known. Donald Trump Jr. has previously denied that there was follow-up to the June meeting, and has said that the conversation was primarily about Russian adoptions.

“There wasn’t really follow-up because there was nothing there to follow up,” he told Fox News’s Sean Hannity over the summer.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

When he set up the meeting, Goldstone wrote to Trump Jr. that the Russians offered to provide information “that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”

Trump Jr. told Hannity that the promise of dirt was “puffery” that was intended to get the meeting. “There was probably some bait and switch about what it was really supposed to be about,” he said.

The president’s son was asked about the emails at a congressional hearing Wednesday, according to CNN. He said he was not aware of them or could not recall what they said. None of the emails CNN disclosed were sent directly to Trump Jr., CNN said.

An attorney for Rob Goldstone did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

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