President Trump defends Trump Jr.: 'I applaud his transparency'

President Donald Trump praised his son, Donald Trump Jr., who is under fire for meeting with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have compromising information about Trump's Democratic rival in the presidential race, Hillary Clinton. “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency,” President Trump said in a brief statement, which White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders read to reporters during an off-camera briefing.

President Trump had previously remained silent on the growing controversy surrounding the meeting at the height of the campaign. The revelation has shaken the White House, which for months has struggled to contain the fallout from a wide-ranging investigation into Russia’s election-meddling effort in 2016. Sanders acknowledged that, “the president is, I would say, frustrated with the process of the fact that this continues to be an issue.”