An opposition researcher says Donald Trump Jr.'s Russia meeting crossed a red line

story transcript

Donald Trump Jr. has justified his meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer as "opposition research," but a man who does such research for a living says that's just not how it works.

U.S. President Donald Trump's eldest son released an email chain Tuesday that shows him discussing plans to hear damaging information from a Russian lawyer about Hillary Clinton. The promised intel was described as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

The president claims he didn't know about the meeting, which was also attended by his campaign manager Paul Manafort, and son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner.

• What a Russian pop star has to do with Trump Jr.'s meeting
• Russia and the Trump administration: a timeline

Brett Di Resta, an opposition researcher who has worked on several Democratic campaigns, says the Trump team should have known better.

Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens guest host Laura Lynch.

If a foreign government comes to you and says, 'I have information on your opponent' ... the answer to that is, "No. I'm not interested."- Brett Di Resta, Democratic opposition researcher

Laura Lynch: Donald Trump Jr. released these emails today in order to be what he called "totally transparent." Do you believe him?

Brett Di Resta: No. If he wanted to be totally transparent, he would have released them a couple days ago, not after it appeared he had told several mistruths.

LL: What do you think his motivation was?

BDR: I think he's trying to get out in front of terrible story. You know, for months, the Trump people have been saying that this is a witch hunt, that this was a hoax ... And now there's verifiable evidence that everything they said up until now was wrong.

LL: Let's dig into these emails a little more. We know the New York Times has been reporting for days that Donald Trump Jr. had this meeting with a Russian lawyer and that he was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. What more do the emails tell us?

BDR: It tells us that they were willing to do whatever it takes to win. 

LL: Where do you see that?

BDR: If a foreign government comes to you and says, "I have information on your opponent" ... the answer to that is, "No. I'm not interested."

LL: But talking about doing anything to win — you're [an] opposition researcher. Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black? Isn't that what you do? 

BDR: What we do is we get all information that is publicly available. That means anything that any member of the public can get their hands on — newspaper articles, documents that are available at county courthouses.

That information is not provided by a foreign government hostile to the United States.

I think there's a huge difference between opposition research and spying. 

LL: But if someone contacted you to say they wanted to discuss incriminating information that they had about a political opponent, wouldn't you accept the meeting?

BDR: No.

You would want to know who this person is. You would do research. You would never take that meeting blind.

I have never taken a blind meeting to accept information because you don't know where that information came from. And researchers have been fired for much less.

You're very careful about what you're doing because anything like that can be harmful to a campaign. Just holding that information can be harmful to a campaign. 

LL: What does it tell you that Paul Manafort, who was Trump's campaign manager at the time, was actually at the meeting?

BDR: It tells me that there's a lot more to this story.

Besides the candidate, the busiest person on a campaign is the campaign manager. The idea that in the middle of the day, Paul Manafort would take time to go sit in a meeting without knowing exactly what the meeting was about and who he was meeting with seems like utter fantasy.

LL: Is it possible that [Trump Jr.] was just an inexperienced political operative and that's why he accepted the meeting?

BDR: I'm not sure that's a legitimate excuse, but it is possible.

It is possible he's naive, but how does that excuse Manafort? Because Manafort's been around forever.

LL: We also know that the president is distancing himself from this, saying that he knew nothing about this meeting. What do you think about that?

BDR: It's possible that he knew nothing about it, but what does that say then that his campaign manager and two most trusted advisors were holding a meeting with a foreign nation and didn't bother to tell him? I mean, that doesn't seem all that flattering either. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For more, listen to our conversation with Brett Di Resta.