'Suspicious Timing': Donald Trump Jr. Questions Elizabeth Warren News That Broke Amid Father's State of the Union Speech

Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, questioned the timing of news that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) listed her race as "American Indian" on her Texas bar registration card in the 1980s, which emerged shortly before his father's State of the Union address.

"Suspicious timing for this to come out," Trump Jr. tweeted along with an image of the registration card, which was uncovered by The Washington Post through an open records request and published in a story on Tuesday evening.

"It's almost like Elizabeth Warren is trying to hide what I've said all along about taking advantage of her fake Native American heritage at the expense of real Native Americans and minorities."

Warren, who is seen as a serious contender for the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential nomination, has long claimed to have Native American ancestry because of stories passed down through her family.

Her critics, including President Donald Trump, who refers to her derisively as "Fauxcahontas," accuse her of pretending to be Native American to advance her career as a lawyer and a law academic, including as a professor at Harvard Law School.

She denies this accusation and an investigation into Warren's career by The Boston Globe found that her ethnicity did not play a role in her success and that she was considered to be a white woman whenever hired by colleges.

In October, Warren released DNA test results showing "strong evidence" that she is somewhere between 1/64 and 1/1,024 Native American. It was a botched attempt to prove she has substantial Cherokee heritage, and so rebut her critics, but its chief effect was to anger the tribe.

On Tuesday, the senator confirmed to the Post that she had apologized to Bill John Baker, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

"I told him I was sorry for furthering confusion about tribal citizenship," Warren said. "I am also sorry for not being more mindful about this decades ago. We had a good conversation."

She also told the newspaper: "I can't go back. But I am sorry for furthering confusion on tribal sovereignty and tribal citizenship and harm that resulted."

Warren did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

President Trump claimed in an interview with The New York Times that he set Warren the "Pocahontas trap" over the Native American ancestry issue.

"I do think Elizabeth Warren's been hurt very badly with the Pocahontas trap. I think she's been hurt badly. I may be wrong, but I think that was a big part of her credibility, and now all of a sudden it's gone," Trump said.