Since the New York Times revealed on July 8 that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with a Kremlin lawyer at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016; more incriminating details have developed over the week. On the Sunday that followed the initial report, the NY Times reported that Trump Jr. had been "lured" to the meeting with promises that they would be given incriminating information against rival candidate Hillary Clinton.

From that point on, the story began to unravel and perhaps serve as the final nail in the coffin to show that members of the Trump campaign had the intent to collude.

Emails and further confirmation of the story on Trump Tower meeting

In emails obtained by the New York Times, they showed a conversation between Trump Jr and Rob Goldstone which revealed that Trump Jr. had no qualms about getting his hands on incriminating information against Clinton. It was reported that Goldstone arranged the meeting with the Kremlin lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. By this time, Donald Trump Sr. had already won the Republican Party nomination two weeks before.

From the beginning, the report of the meeting was confirmed by the Times reporters through interviews with three White House advisers who were briefed about the meeting and two others who had knowledge of it. As a result, the Trump administration has said that they want to know who leaked out the information, a controversial act they have vowed to crack down on.

Trump Jr. caught in a lie

When the original story broke, Donald Trump Jr. was initially asked for the reason he took the meeting. But he made no mention of Hillary Clinton at the time. He only said that their meeting was to discuss adoption programs. His reasons were that the Trump campaign was trying to learn about adoption programs that were still available to the U.S.

from Russia. This might have been verifiable with concerns about Veselnitskaya's history, and her reported ties to the Russian government.

To provide more depth as to the reason why the Trump campaign would be speaking about an adoption program; it was reported that Veselnitskaya had lobbied against a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 2012 on behalf of the Kremlin. The Magnitsky Act blacklisted Russian officials who were connected to the killing of another Russian lawyer back in 2009 named Sergei Magnitsky. As a form of retaliation for the law, the Kremlin banned the U.S. from adopting children from Russia.

As for the development of the reports over the meeting, Trump Jr. told Sean Hannity on the Sunday after the original story broke that he had revealed everything there was to say about the meeting.

That was until it was revealed that he had been promised incriminating information not just on Hillary Clinton but also on the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Two days before, candidate Trump made an announcement that the following Monday, he would be revealing "major" news on Hillary Clinton. It was on the same day, June 7 2016, that Trump Jr. received the email promising that information at their meeting.

Trump Jr. 'beats' the NY Times

When Trump Jr. was confronted with those facts, he offered a different account via public statement. In his statement he said that an acquaintance from a Miss Universe pageant that Donald Trump held in 2013 -- Rob Goldstone -- made the request that they meet with the Kremlin lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya under the pretense of that information.

The emails also said that the information on Clinton came from the Russian government. Trump Jr. said overall that the meeting only lasted about 20 to 30 minutes and that nothing came out of it. It would later be learned through other reports by the end of the week that there were other people of interest at the meeting.

But as of the Monday that followed, the NY Times was about to release a report with copies of the email conversations between Goldstone and Trump Jr.. When Trump Jr. learned that this was the case, he released them on Twitter in order to beat the NY Times, claiming that he was doing it to be transparent despite reports with more details that he didn't bother to mention until they made the front page.