1 big thing: Self-debunking Keystone Cops Scenario 
 
 "Bromance": Trump is hugged by French President Emmanuel Macron after yesterday's Bastille Day military parade on the Champs-Élysées in Paris (AP's Michel Euler) 
 
 A seasoned Republican operative told me that when you're working on a campaign and you get an email that says something like "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump," the response is obvious. 
 
 
 
 "I'd stop reading right there," the operative said. "I'd print it out and walk it over to the counsel's office." 
 
 That's why so many Republicans downtown and on Capitol Hill have tried to avert their gaze from "the Russia stuff" by relying on the Keystone Cops Scenario — that this was all incompetence and inexperience: These guys just didn't know what they were doing, and were acting the way they do in business. 
 
 But the Keystone Cops Scenario fell apart yesterday. Don Jr. had told Fox's Sean Hannity on Tuesday, regarding the Russia meeting at Trump Tower: "This is everything. This is everything." 
 
 But it wasn't. As AP and others reported yesterday: "A prominent Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet military officer said he was at [the] meeting between a Russian lawyer and ... Trump's son, son-in-law and campaign chairman last year." 
 
 Rinat Akhmetshin, the Russian-American lobbyist, "said he recognized Kushner and Trump Jr. He also said he recognized Manafort ... He said there were others in the room but he didn't know them." 
 
 Asked about the meeting on Air Force One on Wednesday night, Trump told reporters he "only heard about it two or three days ago." The N.Y. Times had broken the story the previous Saturday. That's four days. 
 
 And remember what may turn out to the be most important two paragraphs of the week, on the front page of Wednesday's Times: 
 
 "As Air Force One jetted back from Europe on Saturday, a small cadre of Mr. Trump's advisers huddled in a cabin helping to craft a statement for the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to give to The New York Times explaining why he met last summer with a lawyer connected to the Russian government. Participants on the plane and back in the United States debated how transparent to be in the statement ... 
 
 "Ultimately, the people said, the president signed off on a statement from Donald Trump Jr. for The Times that was so incomplete that it required day after day of follow-up statements, each more revealing than the last." 
 
 Last night on CNN, Anderson Cooper asked one of President Trump's lawyers, Jay Sekulow, about "the ethical kind of moral argument, is it right to have had this meeting." Sekulow replied: "I think we're making a lot about something that generally is not very significant. Whether there was eight people there or nobody." 
 
 Sekulow, who'll be on all five Sunday shows, later made a point we'll probably hear a lot of: 
 
 "You know what word I want to go on? Here is what word I want to go on. What statute is being violated here? Because at the end of the day, I keep saying this: This is interesting, and I understand why you're covering it. But the fact is no legal violation for the meeting. The meeting itself is not a violation of the law." 
 
 Be smart: The Trumps will try to move the discussion to questions of narrow legality. But when you're running for President or running the country, that's not the only standard. ||||| The translator who attended the June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin is a former State Department contractor, CBS News' Kylie Atwood has learned. 
 
 The translator has been identified as Anatoli Samochornov, who a State Department spokesperson confirmed has done contract work for them. Samochornov is not a State Department employee, the spokesperson said, but has worked with the State Department's Office of Language Services as an interpreter. Samochornov also helped the State Department implement exchange programs when he was working for Meridian International, a nonprofit that has a cooperative agreement with the State Department. 
 
 The Meridian contract under which Samochornov worked to support State Department-sponsored exchanges expired at the end of the fiscal year 2016. 
 
 LinkedIn 
 
 At the June 2016 meeting, Samochornov was working as a translator for Veselnitskaya, who reportedly Veselnitskaya does not speak any English. 
 
 A friend of Trump Jr.'s, Rob Goldstone, sent an email to Trump Jr. about Veselnitskaya, promising information from the Russian government on then-candidate Donald Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr.'s brother-in-law and now-presidential adviser Jared Kushner attended as well as campaign adviser Paul Manafort. 
 
 On Friday, Goldstone said there were more people at the meeting than initially reported. Among the participants, he told the Associated Press, was lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin. Akhmetshin confirmed his participation to The Associated Press on Friday. 
 
 Akhmetshin served in the Soviet military and is suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence. 
 
 Akhmetshin has worked with Veselnitskaya, who secured the meeting with Trump Jr. on the pretense of providing damaging information about Clinton. 
 
 The White House has continued to deal with the fallout from the meeting since its existence was first reported six days ago. CBS News has learned President Trump was briefed about Trump Jr. meeting three days before it was disclosed in the New York Times, though it seems he was not aware there were more people in the room than was first reported. 
 
 Initially, Trump Jr. and Kushner confirmed they attended, but said they discussed a disbanded U.S.-Russian adoption program. On Sunday, Trump Jr. confirmed he had been promised information "helpful to the campaign" and he had asked Manafort and Kushner to "stop by." Then on Tuesday, Trump Jr. posted to Twitter the emails where he wrote "I love it" after Goldstone wrote a Russian lawyer wanted to pass on negative information about Clinton and stated that the discussion was part of a Russian government effort to help the GOP candidate. 
 
 CBS News has confirmed Kushner has revised his paperwork for a White House security clearance twice. The last revision mentioned Veselnitskaya, though Kushner's attorney contends that disclosure was not legally required, and that Kushner was not introduced to others at the June 2016 meeting. 
 
 Earlier this week, Trump Jr. hired a new lawyer, Alan Futerfas, to handle Russia-related matters. ||||| Washington (CNN) The June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort included at least eight people. 
 
 The revelation of additional participants comes as The Associated Press first reported Friday that a Russian-American lobbyist named Rinat Akhmetshin said he also attended the June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr. CNN has reached out to Akhmetshin for comment. 
 
 So far acknowledged in attendance: Trump Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Akhmetshin and publicist Rob Goldstone, who helped set up the meeting. A source familiar with the circumstances told CNN there were at least two other people in the room as well, a translator and a representative of the Russian family who had asked Goldstone to set up the meeting. The source did not provide the names. 
 
 Akhmetshin is a registered lobbyist for Veselnitskaya's organization, which has focused on lobbying Washington to overturn the Magnitsky sanctions, according to lobbying records. The Magnitsky Act allows the US to withhold visas and freeze the assets of Russians thought to have violated human rights. Veselnitskaya founded a group purporting to seek the removal of Moscow's ban on the adoption of Russian children by US citizens, which it put in place in retaliation for the Magnitsky Act. She has also sought to repeal that law. 
 
 Earlier this year, Sen. Charles Grassley had written a letter to John Kelly, the secretary of Homeland Security, describing Akhmetshin as "a Russian immigrant to the United States who has been accused of acting as an unregistered agent for Russian interests and apparently has ties to Russian intelligence." Grassley was requesting "all information" on Akhmetshin's immigration history. 
 
 Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who has been lobbied by Akhmetshin, told CNN earlier this year that the lobbyist is someone with "an ulterior motive" who is "involved with people who've got an agenda" and has "international connections to different groups in Russia." When asked if he thought Akhmetshin was connected to the Russian security services, Rohrabacher said: "I would certainly not rule that out." 
 
 On Friday, Akhmetshin denied to The Washington Post that he was ever an intelligence agent but said he did serve two years in a Soviet military unit that handled counter-intelligence. 
 
 "At no time have I ever worked for the Russian government or any of its agencies. I was not an intelligence officer. Never," he told the Post. 
 
 Akhmetshin also told the AP the meeting was "not substantive" and he "actually expected more serious" conversation. 
 
 "I never thought this would be such a big deal to be honest," the AP quotes Akhmetshin. 
 
 The lawyer for Donald Trump Jr. has not responded. The White House has not commented yet either. 
 
 NBC was first to report the extra person at the meeting. 
 
 On June 9, 2016, Trump Jr., met with Veselnitskaya. He accepted the meeting on the premise that he would be offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton. 
 
 According to tweets published by Trump Jr. earlier this week, Goldstone sent him an email pointing to "a Russian government attorney" as the source of potential information that could damage Clinton. 
 
 "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump," Goldstone, who represents the son of an Azerbaijani-Russian businessman close to Russian government, wrote in the email to Trump Jr. 
 
 "If it's what you say I love it," Trump Jr. replied, according to an email he released. 
 
 This story has been updated with additional reporting.
– The number of people who attended a meeting in which Donald Trump Jr. had been promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton continues to grow. CNN reports there were at least eight people at the June 2016 meeting—two more than previously believed. A source says the unreported attendees were a translator and a representative of the Russian family that asked publicist Rob Goldstone to set up the meeting. CBS News identifies the translator as former State Department contractor Anatoli Samochornov. He worked as an interpreter for the State Department in the past but was serving as translator for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at the time of the meeting. Axios argues that the increasing number of attendees at the June 2016 meeting is important because it gives Robert Mueller's special investigation more people to target in order to figure out what was said at the meeting. The prior reported attendees are: Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Goldstone, Veselnitskaya, and Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin. Akhmetshin served in the Russian military and is rumored to be connected to Russian intelligence, which he denies. Trump Jr. accepted the meeting with Veselnitskaya after being told she had information damaging to Clinton. In an emailed response to Goldstone regarding the potential information, Trump Jr. wrote, "I love it."