His son Donald Trump Jr. has come under intense scrutiny since The New York Times last weekend published a story detailing his meeting, along with then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and adviser Jared Kushner, with a Russian lawyer.
– President Trump was on Twitter Sunday morning defending his eldest son and taking aim at two of his favorite targets: Hillary Clinton and the media. In a series of posts starting around 6am, Trump wrote, "HillaryClinton can illegally get the questions to the Debate & delete 33,000 emails but my son Don is being scorned by the Fake News Media?" And: "With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!" Donald Jr. came under scrutiny last week after releasing emails confirming he took a meeting last year with a Russian lawyer promising damaging information about Clinton, Politico reports. That meeting has raised more questions about collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. President Trump also tweeted a "thank you" message to former campaign adviser Michael Caputo "for saying so powerfully that there was no Russian collusion in our winning campaign." On Friday, Caputo told CNN that he "never once" heard anyone in the campaign discuss Russia. "No one ever breathed the word 'Russia' to me," he said. "The idea that somebody at that campaign would have had the forethought and the treachery ... or the resources to go out and do this is laughable." Caputo, who resigned from the Trump campaign last June, has strong ties to Russia, advising then-President Boris Yeltsin's re-election campaign and doing PR work for a media company owned by Vladimir Putin's government. Caputo's interview was conducted before Donald Jr. released his emails.