Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr.Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday praised his son, Donald Trump Jr., after he released the “entire email chain” of the conversations in which he set up a meeting with a Russian attorney shortly after his father had won the Republican nomination.

“My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency,” Trump said in a brief statement, which White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders read to reporters during an off-camera briefing and was quoted by The Hill.

Sanders acknowledged that, “the president is, I would say, frustrated with the process of the fact that this continues to be an issue.”

“He would love for us to be focused on things like ... the economy, on healthcare, on tax reform, on infrastructure and that's the place that his mind is and that's what he'd like to be discussing,” she added, according to The Hill.

Trump Jr. released the emails in the wake of a New York Times report that he, along with then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-linked lawyer who promised to provide damaging information on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

On Monday, Trump Jr. said he would be “happy” to speak to the Senate Intelligence Committee about the meeting with the lawyer.

“Happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know,” Trump Jr. tweeted.

He was responding to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who called on him to speak with the panel about the meeting, which took place during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Veselnitskaya denied having "any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton" or offering such information to Trump Jr. in an interview with NBC.