Journalist Chasing Trump Collusion With Russia Just Can't Believe Trump Jr Got The Scoop

'I chased this story for a year and he just...tweeted it out'.
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Already hailed the “smoking gun”, Donald Trump Jr has released images of an email exchange showing he knew he was meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer to get intelligence on Hillary Clinton.

The US President’s eldest son posted his emails with British publicist Rob Goldstone on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, exchanges which have Trump’s offspring declaring: “I love it.”

Here is page 4 (which did not post due to space constraints). pic.twitter.com/z1Xi4nr2gq

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 11, 2017

But while the news has been greeted like the bombshell that it is, pause for a second to reflect on the fact that arguably the biggest scoop of the Trump era was published by ... Trump’s son and heir.

Score of journalists have been chasing the links between Trump and his advisers and Vladimir Putin’s Government, notably the New York Times - among other exclusives it has disclosed the existence of the meeting, who was preset and what it was about.

But many others have been scenting the trail, including freelance writer Jared Yates Sexton, who couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.

The son of the president just released the smoking gun and the people are laughing about it on the news.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 11, 2017

The bafflement was palpable ...

I chased this story for a year and he just...tweeted it out.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 11, 2017

I...worked on this story for a year...and...he just...he tweeted it out.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 11, 2017

Like. I spent hours and days and weeks and months. And his son just, hit tweet.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 11, 2017

I tracked down sources. Followed so many dead leads. Labored over this. And then, he just, you know, tweeted out the proof.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 11, 2017

Like, so many people out there were trying to track this down. And it just...got delivered on a tweet. What the hell.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 11, 2017

The journalist made clear he wasn’t the only one on the story ...

I'm an independent journalist and I can tell you, there's a lot of us who have just gone after this thing in our free time.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 11, 2017

I've talked to so many people who've put in hours and hours on this story. And sometimes you just feel like it's never going to happen.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 11, 2017

And gave full credit to the New York Times.

For clarification, I wasn't reporting for the New York Times on this story. That team has busted their ass.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) July 11, 2017

But there was plenty of sympathy.

But he tweeted it BECAUSE OF YOU. You are why. Thank you Jared for your hard work. You made this happen.

— Aisha Saeed (@aishacs) July 11, 2017

He released it *because* you did that reporting tho, so there's that. We are grateful either way

— Rosie Spinks (@rojospinks) July 11, 2017

The feeling of getting scooped by a rival outlet is bad. Getting scooped by the person you've targeted for a year sounds just confusing. https://t.co/Wk9ErYOP5W

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) July 11, 2017

“This was a thing that felt like it was going to go on for the rest of the time Donald Trump was in office,” he told the Columbia Journalism Review.

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