Flying home from the G20 summit in Germany, Donald Trump personally dictated a misleading statement that said Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children”, according to a new Washington Post report that suggests the president was deeply involved in an effort to obfuscate his son’s activities. Over the next few days, the statement was hurriedly altered and updated to fit with breaking news stories, and Trump Jr. ultimately admitted he had accepted the meeting after receiving an e-mail offering damaging information on Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government’s efforts to strengthen his father’s campaign. His lawyers acknowledged that several other Russians had also attended, including an alleged former spy and a businessman who was once accused by congressional investigators of taking part in an international money-laundering scheme.

The extent of Trump’s personal involvement in crafting his son’s initial response, which was sent to The New York Times, was not previously known. At the time, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow claimed that “the president did not draft the response.” If that turns out to be false, as sources familiar with the situation told the Post, the president could find himself in even deeper legal jeopardy.

The now-infamous meeting, which was also attended by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was originally discovered by Kushner’s legal team as they were working to respond to a congressional request for information on foreign contacts that Kushner had initially failed to disclose. Recognizing an explosive story that would eventually come out, Kushner’s lawyers advocated a more transparent approach, according to the Post. Long before the press found out, they started strategizing, and lawyers for Trump, Kushner, and Trump Jr. discussed varying ways of disclosing the meeting so as to control the inevitable fallout, including the possibility of furnishing a mainstream news organization with all of the information, even the damning e-mails. When word came that the Times was working on a story, and would soon publish, Kushner’s lawyers huddled with director of strategic communications Hope Hicks and White House spokesperson Josh Raffel to formulate a strategy. During breaks in the G20 summit, they decided to stick with a more forthcoming stance.

Instead, the White House ultimately responded with a short, ambiguous, and misleading response, allegedly written in the forward cabin of Air Force One, where the president himself dictated to Hicks, who shared edits between Trump and his son. The resulting four-line statement read: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.”

“Now someone can claim he’s the one who attempted to mislead. Somebody can argue the president is saying he doesn’t want you to say the whole truth.”

News of Trump’s involvement, the Post reports, has been met with surprise and frustration from various aides, who are concerned that the president has exposed himself to heightened legal risk. “This was … unnecessary,” said one of the president’s advisers, speaking to the Post on the condition of anonymity. “Now someone can claim he’s the one who attempted to mislead. Somebody can argue the president is saying he doesn’t want you to say the whole truth.”

Sekulow, the president’s lawyer, responded to a long list of questions from the Post with a one sentence statement: “Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent.”

The latest twist follows a now predictable pattern for the president, whose continual attempts to discredit the federal investigation into Russian election interference, and to distance himself from allegations of collusion between his campaign and Moscow, has only led to his further entanglement. His shock firing of former F.B.I. director James Comey, which he told Russian officials would take the pressure off him, led to allegations of obstruction of justice and the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller. His attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation have only bolstered concerns that he has sought to impede the investigation, as have his open attempts to undermine Mueller, find compromising information about his staff, and politicize his probe. Whatever his intention, such actions have the effect of implicating Trump in the public eye, rather than extricating him from the unfolding Russia scandal.

Trump’s clumsy approach to Russia is so slapstick, it almost seems as though his clownishness is a distraction from another, bigger scandal. But such speculation shouldn’t replace the likely possibility that he is simply uninformed, not realizing how ill-advised it is to draft an inaccurate, Russia-related statement on behalf of his son, and not considering the reality that, as Mueller’s investigation circles ever closer, such actions could hurl him into fractious legal territory, or even end his political career. But, the president didn’t seem too concerned Monday. In a day colored by the Post’s story, and the unceremonious booting of the Mooch, he took to his Twitter: “A great day at the White House!” he wrote. “No WH chaos!”