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WASHINGTON, U.S. – As the scandal involving Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. and his meeting with a Russian lawyer, reportedly to obtain dirt on Hillary Clinton unravels, the President has now come to the defense of his son.

Trump lashed out at the entire scandal and tweeted that the storm over his son’s meeting with the Russian lawyer was “the greatest witch-hunt in political history” and “sad!”

Trump’s tweet came after Donald Trump Jr. released a damning email exchange from last year, revealing his own eagerness to take help from the Russian government to elect his father.

Trump Jr received the emails from Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who represents Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star whose Kremlin-connected family has done business with Trump in the past, who connected Trump Jr. with the Russian lawyer.

Even as The New York Times continued to reveal more on the scandal, after bringing it to the fore over the weekend, on Tuesday, Trump Jr published the emails that showed that Goldstone promised the lawyer would bring from Russia “some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton].”

He said, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump.”

While critics have said that the offer – and Trump Jr’s willingness to go ahead with the meeting – amount to proof of collusion, Trump praised him and said “my son Donald did a good job last night. He was open, transparent and innocent.”

Trump Jr, on his part has denied wrongdoing.

Speaking on Fox News, he said, “In retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently.”

He said the meeting was “a nothing.”

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Trump Sr’s lawyer Jay Sekulow told morning TV shows the president did not find out about the meeting until “very recently.”

Sekulow also said the president was not being investigated by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating links between Trump aides and Russia.

Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying that it was “wild” that Trump’s son was being blamed for speaking with a Russian attorney.

Lavrov, who met Trump last week at the G20 summit in Hamburg, together with Vladimir Putin, said he knew nothing of the meeting with the lawyer.

He said, serious people were trying to “make a mountain out of a molehill.”

What the emails revealed

In what is being seen as the first direct piece of evidence that Trump’s inner circle tried to get damaging information on Trump’s Presidential rival Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton – Trump Jr acknowledged he met a Russian lawyer last year.

In a revelation made by The New York Times, based on confidential government records, two weeks after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination last year, his eldest son arranged a meeting with a Russian lawyer, identified as Natalia Veselnitskaya, who has connections to the Kremlin.

According to interviews and the documents revealed in the report, the meeting took place at the Trump Tower in Manhattan and was also attended by Trump’s campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, as well as the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner – who are both embroiled in their own Russia-related controversies.

As shocking new details emerged about the meeting and the way it was planned, it was revealed that Goldstone sent an email to Trump Jr. pointing to the Russian government as a source of potential information that could damage Clinton.

The report by the Times, that made the revelation cited three people with knowledge of the email as stating that a Russian lawyer had “compromising” information about Hillary Clinton as “part of a Russian government effort” to help the Trump campaign.

The report by The Times came months after Trump along with several of his close aides have adamantly denied that his campaign had a connection to Russia.

However, as the story broke over the weekend, revealing that Trump Jr. was offered potential information from the Russian government to aide his father’s campaign, the White House was forced to switch from denying contact between the Trump campaign and Russia to defending a meeting that President Trump’s eldest son had in the midst of the presidential race with a Russian lawyer.

The White House played down the significance of that encounter even as new details continued to emerge, indicating that the meeting had been arranged at the behest of a Russian family that has ties to the Kremlin.

It was also revealed that the said family had a history of pursuing business deals with President Trump — including preliminary plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow.

In a statement, Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., said that it was “much ado about nothing.”

The statement called the period of May to early June 2016 “an intensely busy time” for Trump Jr.

The statement, more importantly, acknowledged that Goldstone had indeed emailed Trump’s son about alleged wrongdoing from Clinton regarding Russia.

Futerfas said, “The meeting lasted about 20-30 minutes, and nothing came of it. His father knew nothing about it. The bottom line is that Don, Jr. did nothing wrong. I have been representing people in investigatory matters for almost 30 years, and I see nothing here.”

When the Times ran the initial story on Sunday, in which it revealed the June 2016 meeting, Trump Jr. had responded in a statement accepting that he met with the Russian lawyer, identified as Natalia Veselnitskaya, in Trump Tower last June.

Further, Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the President’s legal team, reiterated an earlier statement saying, “The President was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.”