Washington, US: Donald Trump’s eldest son said Tuesday he did not tell his father about meeting a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election campaign in which he had hoped to get compromising information on Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump Jr told Fox News that he did not bother to brief his father on his encounter with Natalia Veselnitskaya as it had been a ‘waste’ of time—but wished he had handled things differently in hindsight.

Asked whether he had spoken to his father either before or after the meeting last June ion New York, he told the network’s Hannity show: ‘No. It was just a nothing. There was nothing to tell.’

‘It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame,’ he added.

Earlier in the day, Donald Jr released a series of emails detailing an agreement to the meeting with Veselnitskaya after an intermediary had promised that it could yield ‘sensitive information’ that was ‘part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.’

‘In retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently,’ he said in the interview to Fox, acknowledging he had been hoping to learn damaging information about Clinton, his father’s Democratic challenger in last year’s presidential election.

‘For me this was opposition research, they had something you know maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I’d been hearing about, probably under reported for years not just during the campaign so I think I wanted to hear it out,’ he said.

‘But really it went nowhere and it was apparent that wasn’t what the meeting was about.’