Veteran journalist Dan Rather said on Tuesday that “we the American people deserve to know what in God’s name is happening” after emails were released by Donald Trump Jr. about a meeting he set up during the campaign with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging information about on Hillary Clinton.
“The questions are obvious. The answers are wanting. We the American people deserve to know what in God’s name is happening,” Rather said in a statement on Facebook. “Our legal system demands a presumption of innocence until the evidence proves otherwise. But the evidence is piling up.”
The 85-year-old who anchored “CBS Evening News” from 1981 to 2005 was shocked by Trump Jr.’s email correspondence.
“I have been around a long time. I like to think I have seen a lot. But the revelations of the emails that set up the meeting between Donald Trump. Jr. — and let us not forget both Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner — with an agent of the Russian government is unlike anything I could even have imagined,” Rather said.
“There is still a lot that we do not know. But only a hypocrite, a cynic or a fool could argue that this development can be innocuously explained,” he added.
Trump Jr. released an email chain to Twitter on Tuesday in which a meeting was set up with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya during a correspondence with Rob Goldstone who offered the Trump campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Some critics, have pointed to this as evidence of collusion, and at least one Democratic lawmaker, Sen. Tim Kaine, has said that the ongoing Russia investigation is now a “treason investigation.”
“It is like a carnival mirror is being held up to American democracy, distorting everything we thought we knew into grotesque new shapes. We need a reality check,” Rather said. “This is decision time, especially for our elected officials. Which side of history will you be on?”
Both the House and Senate Intelligence committees are investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and members of those committees have said that they want Trump Jr. to testify before them.
