The president calls Trump Jr. a “high-quality person” for releasing his emails

In the wake of Donald Trump Jr.’s email dump Tuesday, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders read a statement from the president defending his son in an off-camera press briefing.

Trump Jr. had tweeted out a stream of emails in which he agreed to meet with a lawyer with connections to the Russian government in an attempt to get damaging information about Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 election.

In the off-camera briefing Sanders said:

I’ve got a quick statement that I will read from the President: "My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency."

And beyond that, I’m going to have to refer everything on this matter to Don Jr.’s counsel and outside counsel, and won’t have anything else to add beyond that today.

Sanders followed up the statement saying beyond "what I read today, I don’t have anything else to add."

Reporters continued to ask further though.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times tweeted that Trump is “frustrated by [the] presence of this story.”

CNN’s White House correspondent Jim Acosta says Huckabee Sanders called accusations of treason and perjury “ridiculous.”

Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News reports that Huckabee Sanders referred all questions to outside counsel.

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