U.S. President Donald Trump 's son was told in an email that he would receive compromising information on Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to aid his father's campaign, the New York Times reported Monday, citing three sources.
The sources told the newspaper that the 2016 email to Donald Trump Jr., which aimed to set up a meeting with a Kremlin-tied attorney, was sent by publicist Rob Goldstone and indicated that the Russian government was the source of the damaging information on Clinton's campaign.
Goldstone didn't immediately return CNBC's emailed request for comment, which was sent outside of office hours.
Goldstone told the New York Times on Monday that he was told that the attorney had damaging information, but denied to the paper that he had knowledge of Russian government involvement.
After the email was described to the New York Times, the report said efforts to reach Goldstone for further comment were unsuccessful.
The meeting also included Trump son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner , and the then-chairman of Trump's campaign, Paul J. Manafort, the report said.
The New York Times reported that when first asked on Saturday, Trump's son said the meeting was primarily about adoptions, with nothing about Clinton mentioned.
But on Sunday, Trump's son issued a statement saying that the "claims of potentially helpful information" on the Clinton campaign were "a pretext" to set up a meeting on adoption of Russian children and a U.S. law blacklisting Russians suspected of human rights abuses.
The younger Trump took to Twitter on Monday to say the two statements weren't inconsistent and that he merely provided more detail later.
Trump Jr.'s attorney, Alan Futerfas, denied that his client had done anything wrong in a statement.
"Don Jr. had no knowledge as to what specific information, if any, would be discussed. Further, at no time was there ever any understanding or commitment that he, or anyone else, would find the information, whatever it turned out to be, to be reliable, credible or of interest, or would even survive due diligence," Futerfas said.