Donald Trump Jr. has offered an evolving set of ad hoc explanations for his meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower last year. When news of the meeting first broke, the president’s son suggested that it was “short,” “introductory,” and focused on the issue of Russian adoptions. When The New York Times reported that he was, in fact, “promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton,” Trump Jr. conceded the point, but dismissed its significance, telling the paper that “no details or supporting information was provided or even offered” and that “it quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.” The Times struck again the following day, reporting that he was told in advance of the meeting that the promised dirt on Clinton was part of an explicit Russian government campaign to help elect his father; Trump Jr.’s lawyer called it “much ado about nothing.” Finally, racing to beat another disclosure, Trump Jr. published his e-mail exchange with the intermediary, Rob Goldstone, who had set up the meeting, including his gleeful response when he was promised “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary”: “If it’s what you say I love it especially in the summer.” (Trump Jr.’s statement in response, which was drafted in part by President Donald Trump on board Air Force One, is currently being probed by the Justice Department, CNN reported Thursday, with investigators seeking to interview people involved in the writing process.)

Now, with special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional investigators focusing on that meeting as part of their probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Trump Jr. is offering a more official explanation for the June 9 rendezvous, which included Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, in addition to an alleged former Soviet intelligence officer, among other attendees whose presence the White House failed to disclose. Interviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, the president’s son volunteered at least two overlapping reasons for the infamous sit-down. One part of his statement, obtained by the Times—positions Trump Jr. as a patriot. He reiterates his claim that he did not collude with the Russian government, and says he merely wanted to determine whether Clinton was qualified for the Oval Office. “To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out,” the eldest Trump son wrote. “Depending on what, if any, information they had, I could then consult with counsel to make an informed decision as to whether to give it further consideration.”

The second part of his defense is straight out of the Kushner legal playbook. Earlier this summer, the president’s son-in-law, who is married to Donald Jr.’s sister, Ivanka, told congressional investigators that he was so busy and overwhelmed by the volume of work he was doing on the campaign that his meetings with Russian officials barely registered. “It was typical for me to receive 200 or more e-mails a day during the campaign. I did not have the time to read every one, especially long e-mails from unknown senders or e-mail chains to which I was added at some later point in the exchange,” Kushner said, claiming that he had not read the e-mail whose subject line was “Russia - Clinton - private and confidential” and outlined the Russian effort to boost the campaign. He said he arrived late and tried to leave early. He wrote off mistakes on his security clearance form as a mistake made by an assistant.

Trump Jr. asserted much the same, describing himself as an inexperienced campaign operative, overwhelmed with the deluge of e-mails and work associated with father’s presidential bid. “I had never worked on a campaign before and it was an exhausting, all-encompassing, life-changing experience. Every single day I fielded dozens, if not hundreds, of e-mails and phone calls,” he wrote in his statement. It’s a savvy legal strategy, which is perhaps why Trump Jr. borrowed it from his brother-in-law: as political neophytes, both can claim to have misunderstood the potential significance of Goldstone’s e-mail, to have entered the meeting with no intention to collude, and to have left it without any wrongdoing.