Trump Jr, Kushner, Manafort to testify before Senate panels on Russia probe Trump says former FBI chief seeking leverage through dirt dossier on him

The three met a Kremlinlinked lawyer to get dirt on Clinton during the presidential polls

WASHINGTON:US President Donald Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr, son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and former campaign aide Paul Manafort are expected to appear before senate committees next week in connection with investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 polls.

Kushner will appear before the senate intelligence committee in a closed-door meeting on July 24, his lawyer confirmed, saying his client “is prepared to voluntarily cooperate and provide whatever information he has on the investigations to congress”.

Trump Jr and Manafort have been invited to testify at an open hearing by the senate judiciary committee two days later. Neither confirmed their appearance, though they said in the past that they were willing to testify and cooperate with the probe.

The committee’s Republican and Democratic leaders Chuck Grassley and Diane Feinstein have said they were prepared “to issue subpoenas, if necessary” to force them to appear if they didn’t comply voluntarily.

These appearances will be the first time that members of Trump’s inner circle will be deposing before congress in connection with the Russia probe, which the president has repeatedly dismissed as a “witch hunt”.

The three are expected to be asked about their contacts with Russians during and after the campaign, especially Trump Jr’s meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who offered damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

Kushner and Manafort had also attended that meeting. Others present at the meeting included Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin — who once worked in Soviet military intelligence.

Kushner might also face questions about his 2016 meetings with Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak and a banker considered close to President Vladimir Putin. He may also be asked about his request to the Russians for a secret back-channel communication system based in a Russian facility in the US to evade American intelligence monitoring. WASHINGTON Donald Trump accused fired FBI director James Comey of trying to create leverage with a dossier alleged to contain compromising information about the president.

Comey’s apparent goal in a pre-inauguration encounter with Trump in which the veteran law enforcement official presented details of the dossier was to pressure the soon-to-be president into letting him keep his job, Trump alleged in an interview to The New York Times.

Trump said that about two weeks before his inauguration in January, Comey and other officials briefed him in New York on what US intelligence agencies say was Russian meddling in the election, with the goal of helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.

According to the president, Comey later pulled him aside and told him about a dossier compiled by a former British spy and alleged to contain embarrassing details about the president, including unsubstantiated claims that Russians possess videos involving Trump and prostitutes.

Trump said he thinks Comey told him about the dossier -which Trump dismissed as “made-up junk” -- to suggest he had something to hold over the president. “In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there,” Trump said.

Asked if he thought Comey was seeking leverage over him, Trump said, “Yeah, I think so.”

Trump fired Comey in May and later said he had the FBI’s Russia investigation in mind when he did it.