By: Kayla Pasacreta

In the never-ending Trump-Russia saga, today it was revealed that Donald Trump Jr., Trump's son, and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, met with a Russian-government connected lawyer who promised some juicy intel on Hillary Clinton. The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is highly connected to the Russian government. Donald Trump Jr. first said his meeting with her was to discuss adoption programs, but later revealed the meeting was to discuss exclusive intel on Hillary Clinton (ahem, he lied). 

On Saturday, Trump Jr. released the following statement:

After the New York Times dropped the story that the meeting was actually to discuss deets on Hillary Clinton, Trump Jr. caved in and changed his story.

This information is pretty important because it's concrete evidence of ties between Trump's inner circle and Russia. This comes amid Trump reverently denying any collusion between his campaign and Russian intel. On CBS' Face the Nation, when White House spokeswoman Kellyane Conway was asked "Did anyone involved in the Trump campaign have any contact with Russians trying to meddle with the election?" Conway replied, "Absolutely not." Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Susan Collins, stated in response, “Our intelligence committee needs to interview him and others who attended the meeting,” Unsurprisingly, the White House is defending Trump Jr.'s meeting. This morning, Kellyane Conway quipped back while also ignoring the severity of the situation, "I don’t think you had to go very far, respectfully, to find damaging information or negative information about Hillary Clinton. She was a gusher at all times of negative, damaging information."

Based on this definition: many people are certainly raising their eyebrows that the campaign did not collude with Russia. It's no secret that a major part of any campaign is about trying to discredit or find negative information about the opposing candidate. However, in the case of Russia, this meeting seems to confirm yet again that Russia actively made attempts to influence the U.S. election process. Donald Trump Jr. says his father "knew nothing of the meeting or these events.” On this, we must ask: HOW SWAY? How did Mr. Trump possibly not know about these important meetings between his son and senior adviser?

One thing's for sure, the heat is on for Donald Trump's administration about Russia - and giving two different explanations for meetings with Russian connected individuals does not help lower the heat.