Few witnesses in the Russia probe have been as eagerly anticipated by the press and congressional investigators as Donald Trump, Jr., the President’s oldest son. Trump, Jr., was whisked into a Capitol Hill hearing room Thursday morning undetected, depriving a crowd of media onlookers a glimpse. So great was the anticipation of his testimony, which was conducted in a closed session, that when a photographer thought he saw the President’s son entering a bathroom door hidden by a wooden panel, the photographer strained to snap a shot.

Over the course of five hours of private testimony and in a nearly eighteen-hundred-word public statement, Trump, Jr., tried to offer a more definitive account of the June, 2016, meeting held at Trump Tower between senior members of his father’s Presidential campaign and a group of Russians promising opposition research about Hillary Clinton. In the statement, Trump, Jr., denied that any collusion occurred, and painted himself as distracted by the “maelstrom” of the campaign and by running the family business. He played down his interest and understanding of an associate’s offer of information from the Russian government. “I did not quite know what to make of his email,” Trump, Jr., said. “I had no way to gauge the reliability, credibility or accuracy of any of the things he was saying.”

Trump, Jr., is now the third person who has testified to Congress about the meeting. Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, and Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and in many ways the de-facto campaign manager, both testified before congressional committees in July. All of the testimony occurred behind closed doors. Manafort, who turned over notes about the Trump Tower meeting to the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been silent about what he told Congress, while Kushner publicly released the opening statement he made to the committee.

One of the questions raised by the three men’s testimonies is the extent to which their accounts of the meeting are consistent. Kushner’s July statement to congressional investigators was notable for how much he assigned responsibility for the meeting to his brother-in-law. “In June 2016, my brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. asked if I was free to stop by a meeting,” Kushner said in his statement. He insisted that the meeting was “a waste of our time” and that he had forgotten about it until it was raised in the press this year.

As the organizer of the meeting, Don, Jr.,’s account was more highly anticipated. He had already made it clear that he had fairly close business and personal connections to the Russians offering their assistance. In November, 2013, the Trump Organization held the Miss Universe pageant, which it co-owned, at a Moscow concert venue that was owned by Aras Agalarov, a Russian real-estate mogul whom the Trump Organization also worked with to find a development project in Russia. Trump, Jr., said that the project never materialized, but the two families stayed in touch. A few months after the pageant, Agalarov’s son, Emin, a Russian musician, performed at a tournament at a Trump golf course in Florida. Trump, Jr., said that he met Emin, and his manager, Robert Goldstone, at the tournament for the first time.

The three men stayed in touch. “Rob would intermittently contact me,” Trump, Jr., noted in his statement to congressional investigators. “For example, when Emin would perform in the New York area, Rob would graciously invite me to attend. Similarly, after my father announced his candidacy, Rob was among the many individuals who would reach out from time to time to congratulate us on winning a primary or to show their support.”

A little more than three years after they met in Florida, on June 3, 2016, with Donald Trump then the presumptive Republican nominee, Goldstone sent Trump, Jr., a now infamous e-mail offering to help take down Hillary Clinton.

“The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning,” Goldstone wrote, referring to the pop singer’s father, Aras Agalarov, “and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump—helped along by Aras and Emin.”

Some intelligence officials have said that this outreach may have been part of a Russian intelligence operation to gauge how susceptible the Trump team was to Russian assistance. Michael Hayden, the former head of the C.I.A., told me earlier this year that this looked like “traditional tradecraft.”

To Trump, Jr., according to his statement on Thursday, it was nothing more than an opportunity to find out if his friends “had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate.” While other campaign professionals have said that they would have immediately notified the F.B.I., Don, Jr., said that he felt he “should at least hear them out,” and then, if they had any relevant information, consult a lawyer.

Trump, Jr.,’s statement also disclosed new details about the extent of his communications with Goldstone and Emin. He said that his phone records indicate that there were three calls between him and Emin, though Trump, Jr., insists that he doesn’t remember talking to Emin, suggesting that perhaps they left each other voice mails. “I simply do not remember,” Trump, Jr., said.

Trump, Jr., downplayed the importance of the widely reported e-mail he sent in response to Goldstone’s offer of information, in which he told the manager, “I love it.” “As much as some have made of my using the phrase ‘I love it,’ it was simply a colloquial way of saying that I appreciated Rob’s gesture,” Trump, Jr., said in his statement.

Trump, Jr., said that he scheduled the meeting with Goldstone for June 9th, and insisted that Goldstone never told him who precisely would be there, except that one of the attendees would be a lawyer. There has long been a mystery surrounding the fact that all of the meeting participants were able to get to Trump, Jr.,’s office without giving their names to anyone in the Trump Organization. Don, Jr., sought to clarify that Thursday. “Because Rob was able to bring the entire group up by only giving his name to the security guard in the lobby, I had no advance warning regarding who or how many people would be attending,” he said in his statement. “There is no attendance log to refer back to and I did not take notes.”

Trump, Jr., also claimed that the Russian lawyer present, Natalia Veselnitskaya, vaguely discussed “something about individuals connected to Russia supporting or funding Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton or the Democratic National Committee,” but when she was pressed for details she switched the topic to the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that sanctioned senior Russian officials and prompted an enraged Putin to ban American adoptions of Russian children. Trump, Jr., said that the topic was completely new to him: “Until that day, I had never heard of the Magnitsky Act and had no familiarity with this issue.”

He said that he ended the meeting and doesn’t recall ever discussing it again. “As we walked out, I recall Rob coming over to me to apologize,” Trump said in his statement. “I have no recollection of any documents being offered or left for us. The meeting lasted 20-30 minutes and Rob, Emin and I never discussed the meeting again. I do not recall ever discussing it with Jared, Paul or anyone else. In short, I gave it no further thought.”

When the meeting was disclosed, in July, by the Times, Don, Jr., rather than give the full account he delivered today, drafted a misleading statement with the help of his father that said the Russians and the Trump campaign “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.” The question that was not answered today is why, when first confronted with questions about the meeting—which Don, Jr., and Jared Kushner have now both presented as harmless and uneventful—did the President and his son lie?