Hope Hicks thought Trump Jr's emails looked 'really bad' -- and Trump told her to cover them up: Mueller

Former Trump White House staffer Hope Hicks encouraged President Donald Trump to authorize the release of Donald Trump Jr.'s emails setting up a meeting with a Russian agent in 2016 -- but Trump told her to keep them secret.

On page 101 of special counsel Robert Mueller's report, Hicks says that she believed the emails in which Trump Jr. said he would "love it" if Russia would leak dirt on Hillary Clinton looked "really bad."

Hicks wanted to get out ahead of the story and encouraged Trump to release the emails and then claim that nothing had actually come of the meeting.

"But the President was insistent that he did not want to talk about it and said he did not want details," the report states.

The contents of the emails eventually started leaking out to the New York Times anyway -- and then Trump Jr. himself infamously posted the full set of emails on his own Twitter account.