Trump Jr. to sing in private Senate panel session
DONALD TRUMP JR. has agreed to testify in private before the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to a report on Tuesday.
President Trump’s eldest son is expected to face questions about his sitdown last year with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, CNN reported.
Trump Jr. turned over 250 pages of documents earlier this month as part of deal he cut after being asked to testify in public in July, according to the network.
The closed-door hearing, likely scheduled for next month, will be Trump Jr.’s first time appearing before a congressional panel as multiple probes and special counsel Robert Mueller look into the Kremlin’s influence on the 2016 election.
Members of the committee originally wanted to have Trump Jr., testify in public and have said that they will still press him to do so.
The President’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and thencampaign manager Paul Manafort, both of whom have testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, were present at the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Moscow-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Investigators working for Mueller are allegedly zeroing in on the President’s role in responding to the initial reports of his son’s meeting with Veselnitskaya and whether he tried to hide its purpose, NBC reported this week.
CNN also reported on Tuesday that Mueller has issued subpoenas to Melissa Laurenza, an attorney who formerly represented Manafort, and Jason Maloni, the former campaign head’s spokesman.
The reported move is Mueller’s latest in Manafort’s direction. The longtime Republican operative worked for Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin Party of the Regions before joining the Trump campaign last June.
Manafort’s foreign work surfaced as an issue two months later as he abandoned the Trump operation amid reports about his work for the party of Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president who was ousted and fled to Russia after rejecting an association agreement from the European Union and turning toward Moscow.
Manafort denied any wrongdoing, though belatedly registered as a foreign agent this summer and in recent weeks has had his Virginia home raided by Mueller’s investigators. Maloni, Laurenza and Manafort’s current lawyer Kevin Downing did not immediately reply to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.