Following two New York Times reports revealing that Donald Trump Jr. had attended a June, 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin who had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, the oldest Trump son appeared on Fox News with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night in a not-particularly-successful attempt to clear the air. “Someone sends me an email. I can't help what somebody sends me,” Trump Jr. said Tuesday night, in his first televised appearance since publishing an e-mail exchange documenting his conversation with the Russian intermediary who promised him damaging information about Clinton. “In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently.”

While Trump Jr. has suggested he did nothing wrong, the e-mail exchange is damning. The message from the intermediary, which was also forwarded to the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, explained that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya would have “very high level and sensitive information” as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” The president’s son responded, “if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” The agreed-to meeting took place in Trump Tower on June 9, just days before WikiLeaks released thousands of stolen Democratic Party e-mails.

When Hannity asked Trump Jr. whether he’d met with any other Russians, the eldest Trump son said that he probably had, adding, “I don’t even know, not in the context of a formalized setting. … Why would I?”

While Hannity appeared at pains to help Trump explain away the meeting, the president’s son did himself few favors. “My takeaway when all of this was going on is that someone has information on our opponent,” he said, trying to justify what would appear to be collusion with a Russian agent during his father’s presidential campaign. “Things are going a million miles an hour. This was 13 months ago, before I think the rest of the world was talking about that, trying to build up this narrative about Russia, so I don't even think my sirens went up, or the antennas went up, at this time because it wasn't the issue that it's been made up to be over the last nine months, 10 months.” Elucidating his thinking before the meeting he took with Veselnitskaya, he said, “Maybe this is something … I should hear them out. ... This was again just basic information that was going to be possibly there. ... I wanted to hear them out and play it out.”

Ultimately, he said, the meeting “was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame,” adding that he would commit to testifying under oath. After plying his viewers with a montage of quotes from Democratic lawmakers speaking out about Trump Jr.’s collusion, Hannity wrapped up his softball interview by saying that he couldn't think of any questions on Russia for the oldest Trump son.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump Jr. took to Twitter, publishing screenshots of his email exchange with publicist Rob Goldstone, who the Trump family knew through the Miss Universe pageant and who has claimed he set up the meeting on behalf of a Russian client who had received “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” Trump Jr. said in a statement on Tuesday that he was releasing the e-mail exchange in order to be “totally transparent.” As The New York Times noted in the story it published minutes after Trump Jr. tweeted, the president’s son released the screenshots to merely preempt the Times story with his own spin.