The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed President Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to answer questions about his claim to have just limited knowledge of an ultimately aborted plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, NBC News reported Wednesday.

Trump Jr.'s prior testimony was called into question earlier this year by new testimony from President Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who said he had briefed Trump Jr. repeatedly about the effort to develop a Trump Tower there.

A person close to Donald Trump Jr. blasted the subpoena to CNBC as "an obvious PR stunt from a so-called 'Republican' senator" — Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina — "too cowardly to stand up to his boss [committee ranking Democrat] Mark Warner and the rest of the resistance Democrats on the committee."

That person said people should expect Trump Jr. to fight the subpoena.

Trump Jr. testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017 that "I was peripherally aware" of an effort to build that project in Russia, which was being pursued as his father was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. That effort was not known to the public at the time.

But Cohen in February told a House committee that he had met with both Donald Trump Jr. and his sister, Ivanka Trump, "approximately 10" times to brief them about the Trump Tower plan.

"The company [the Trump Organization] was involved in the deal, which meant that the family was involved in the deal," he testified.

Cohen on Monday began serving a three-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to crimes that included having lied to Congress in 2017 about details of the Trump Tower project.

Cohen originally falsely told Congress that the project was dropped in January 2016 — months before the elder Trump had locked up the GOP presidential nomination — when it actually had continued being pursued through June 2016, when Trump had the nomination well in hand. </s> In 2017, Donald Trump Jr. told congressional investigators that in June 2016 he had informed just two people about his upcoming meeting with a Russian government emissary during which Trump Jr. hoped to obtain incriminating information about Hillary Clinton: his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort. But special counsel Robert Mueller’s report revealed a different story, noting that the president’s eldest son boasted of his efforts during a meeting of campaign staff attended by his brother Eric and sister Ivanka, among others. This apparent contradiction—and concerns that Trump Jr. also was not forthright about his knowledge of the Trump Organization’s pursuit of a Trump tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign—led the Senate Intelligence Committee to subpoena Trump’s eldest son, according to Senate sources.

These discrepancies in the testimony by Trump Jr., who appeared before three congressional committees in 2017, underscore that the Trump-Russia scandal continues to pose a threat to President Donald Trump, his family, and his associates, confounding efforts by Trump and his allies to shut down the controversy.

In a September 7, 2017, interview with staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Trump Jr. faced a slew of questions about his June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with that Russian emissary. One issue was whom he had told about a June 3 email he received from Rob Goldstone, a publicist for Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop singer whose father, Aras Agalarov, was a real estate mogul with Kremlin ties and who was Trump’s partner in the 2013 Miss Universe pageant held in Moscow. A senior Russian prosecutor, Goldstone wrote Trump Jr., had “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father” as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. responded enthusiastically—“If it’s what you say I love it”—and agreed to meet with the Russian representative, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Manafort, then the Trump campaign chair, and Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, also attended the meeting.

Trump Jr. told the Judiciary Committee that he informed “only Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort” about Goldstone’s offer. And he stuck to that claim when a committee lawyer asked if there was anyone else. “No,” Trump Jr. said. “Not to my recollection.” Trump Jr. also said that he recalled telling Manafort and Kushner of the meeting only via email. “I sent them the email and asked if they could attend.”

The Judiciary Committee interview is public. Transcripts of Trump Jr.’s interviews with the House and Senate Intelligence committees, both in December 2017, have not been released. But a Senate source says that Trump Jr. also told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had only alerted Kushner and Manafort about Goldstone’s offer before the meeting.

Mueller’s report, a redacted version of which was released last month, included a different account. It stated that Rick Gates, who was deputy Trump campaign manager, said in interviews with the special counsel’s office that before the sit-down with Veselnitskaya, “Trump Jr. announced at a regular morning meeting of senior campaign staff and Trump family members that he had a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation.” Gates said that Eric Trump, Hope Hicks, Manafort, Ivanka Trump, and Kushner also attended the meeting. Gates also recalled that Trump Jr. claimed the information came from a group in Kyrgyzstan, where Agalarov does business. According to Gates, Trump Jr.’s announcement sparked a discussion, with Manafort warning the group that “the meeting likely would not yield vital information and they should be careful.”

In February, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, testified before the House Oversight Committee that he overheard a conversation in which he believed Trump Jr. told his father about the meeting in advance. If that is true, it contradicts claims both the president and his son made to investigators.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is also scrutinizing Trump Jr.’s statements about Trump’s efforts during the 2016 campaign to develop a Trump tower in Moscow. As a candidate, Trump claimed he had no business interests in Russia, despite signing a letter of intent regarding this deal and encouraging Cohen to privately pursue the project until at least the summer of 2016. Cohen even sought Russian President Vladimir Putin’s support for the venture, contacting Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to seek help. (Cohen ended up talking to Peskov’s personal assistant and requested assistance in securing financing and land for the project.) Cohen recently began a three-year prison term in part because he lied to Congress in 2017 about the project, in what he says was an effort to align his story with Trump’s false claims. Trump Jr. also downplayed the deal in congressional testimony. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was only “peripherally aware” of the effort. A Senate aide says Trump Jr. made similar claims to the Intelligence Committee. Cohen, by contrast, testified that he briefed Trump Jr. or Ivanka Trump on the Moscow deal “approximately 10 times.”

The Intelligence Committee’s subpoena to Trump Jr., issued more than two weeks ago according to multiple reports, has drawn fierce attacks against the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, from members of his own party. “Apparently the Republican chair of the Senate Intel Committee didn’t get the memo from the Majority Leader that this case was closed,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tweeted on Wednesday, referencing a recent floor speech by Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Burr’s fellow North Carolina Republican, Sen. Thom Tillis, who faces a primary challenge in 2020, also slammed Burr in a tweet. “It’s time to move on & start focusing on issues that matter to Americans,” he wrote. White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on CBS News that it was “bad form” for the committee to subpoena Trump Jr. without giving the White House a “heads-up.”

Trump Jr. appears poised to fight the subpoena. The New York Times reported he may invoke the Fifth Amendment rather than testify. In a statement sent to various outlets, a person close to Trump Jr.—who would not allow reporters to identify him or her—said that “no lawyer would ever agree to allow their client to participate in what is an obvious PR stunt from a so-called ‘Republican’ senator too cowardly to stand up to his boss Mark Warner and the rest of the resistance Democrats on the committee.” The statement also asserted that “there was an agreement between Don and the Committee that he would only have to come in and testify a single time as long as he was willing to stay for as long as they’d like, which Don did.”

A committee spokesperson says there was no such deal with any witness: “Throughout the investigation, the Committee has reserved the right to recall witnesses for additional testimony as needed, as every witness and witness counsel has been made aware.”

It is unclear how aggressively Burr will pursue Trump Jr. On Tuesday, before news of the subpoena, Burr told the Washington Post that he was not inclined to press for the Justice Department to prosecute Trump Jr. or other witnesses facing questions about the veracity of their testimonies for perjury, given that Mueller had declined to charge them. Discrepancies between their testimonies and Mueller’s report apparently “weren’t criminal or they weren’t chargeable,” Burr told the Post, noting that Mueller had access to his own committee’s transcripts. But Burr had also previously said the panel will not tolerate dishonest witnesses. “If you lie to us, we’re going to catch you and we’re going to prosecute you, period, end of sentence,” he said last year. </s> Washington: US President Donald Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and former campaign manager Paul Manafort have been asked to appear before US Senate committees next week to answer questions about the campaign’s alleged connections to Russia, officials said on Wednesday.

The three men are the closest associates of the president to be called to speak to lawmakers involved in probing Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

Trump, who came into office in January, has been dogged by allegations that his campaign officials were connected to Russia, which US intelligence agencies have accused of interfering in last year’s elections.

The US Senate Judiciary Committee said on Wednesday that it had called Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and Manafort to testify on 26 July at a hearing.

The president’s son released emails in early July that showed him eagerly agreeing to meet in 2016 with a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The meeting was also attended by Manafort and Kushner, who is now a senior adviser at the White House.

Kushner is scheduled to be interviewed by the senate intelligence committee on 24 July behind closed doors.

“Working with and being responsive to the schedules of the committees, we have arranged Mr. Kushner’s interview with the Senate for 24 July,” Kushner’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “He will continue to cooperate and appreciates the opportunity to assist in putting this matter to rest.”

A special counsel, Robert Mueller, is also conducting an investigation of Russian meddling in the US elections and any collusion between Moscow and Trump’s campaign.

The issue has overshadowed Trump’s tenure in office and irritated the president, who told the New York Times on Wednesday that he would not have appointed ally and former senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general if he had known Sessions would recuse himself from oversight of the Russia probe.

“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said in the interview.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic member of the judiciary committee, said the committee’s hearing would enable the panel to begin to get testimony under oath.

“There has been an enormous amount that has been said publicly but it’s not under oath, which means that people are free to omit matters or lie with relative impunity,” Whitehouse told CNN.

The senate intelligence committee is conducting one of the main investigations of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US election and possible collusion by Trump associates, but the judiciary committee has been looking into related issues.

The public judiciary hearing on Wednesday will look into rules governing the registration of agents working for foreign governments in the US and foreign attempts to influence US elections.

Chuck Grassley, the committee’s Republican chairman, has said he wanted to question the Trump associates, but has also raised concerns about why the Obama administration allowed Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended the Trump Tower meeting in June, into the US.

He also has called before the committee and threatened to subpoena Glenn Simpson, a co-founder of Fusion GPS, a firm that commissioned former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele to dig up opposition research on Trump, when he was a presidential candidate. Reuters </s> Mary Clare Jalonick and Jonathan Lemire, The Associated Press 

 



WASHINGTON -- The Senate intelligence committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr., calling him in to answer questions about his 2017 testimony to the panel as part of its probe into Russian election interference.

That's according to two people familiar with the subpoena who discussed it on condition of anonymity. It's the first known subpoena of a member of President Donald Trump's immediate family, and a new sign that the Senate panel is continuing with its own Russia investigation even after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on the same subject.

It's unclear if Trump Jr. will comply with the subpoena from the committee, which is chaired by Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina. A person close to the president's eldest son, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter, said Wednesday that Trump has continued to co-operate by producing documents and answering written questions.

The committee had renewed interest in talking to Trump Jr. after Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified earlier this year. Cohen told a House committee in February that he had briefed Trump Jr. approximately 10 times about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow before the presidential election. Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 he was only "peripherally aware" of the proposal.

The panel has also investigated a meeting between Trump Jr., other campaign staff and a Russian lawyer. Emails leading up to the meeting promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Mueller's report, released last month, says Cohen recalled being in Trump's office "when Trump Jr. told his father that a meeting to obtain adverse information about Clinton was going forward." The report notes that Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, that he did not inform his father about the emails or the upcoming meeting.

Cohen reported to federal prison this week to start a three-year sentence for crimes including tax evasion and campaign finance violations related to hush-money payments made to protect his former boss.

A spokeswoman for the committee would not confirm the subpoena. But Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican member of the panel, hinted after Cohen spoke behind closed doors to the Senate intelligence panel that the committee would want to talk to Trump Jr. again. She said senators "clearly need to re-interview some witnesses whose accounts (Cohen) contradicts."

The Senate intelligence committee has been investigating Russian election interference and Trump's ties to Russia for the last two years. The panel is expected to try to call in several witnesses as it winds up its investigation over the next several months.

Burr told The Associated Press last week that he doesn't expect to have any more public hearings and that he hopes to be finished with the investigation by the end of the year.

The subpoena puts Burr at odds with some of his Republican colleagues who want to move on after the release of Mueller's findings. The Mueller report said he could not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but he did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a floor speech Tuesday in which he declared "case closed" on the probe.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul took a shot at Burr after the subpoena was reported, tweeting that "apparently the Republican chair of the Senate Intel Committee didn't get the memo from the Majority Leader that this case was closed."

Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., declined to comment on the subpoena.

The subpoena was first reported by Axios.

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report. </s> WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate intelligence committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr., calling him in to answer questions about his 2017 testimony to the panel as part of its probe into Russian election interference.

That's according to two people familiar with the subpoena who discussed it on condition of anonymity. It's the first known subpoena of a member of President Donald Trump's immediate family, and a new sign that the Senate panel is continuing with its own Russia investigation even after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on the same subject.

It's unclear if Trump Jr. will comply with the subpoena. A person close to the president's eldest son, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter, said Wednesday that he has continued to cooperate by producing documents and answering written questions.

The person called the new request a public relations stunt and criticized the chairman of the panel, North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr, for calling Trump Jr. in.

The committee had renewed interest in talking to Trump Jr. after Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified earlier this year. Cohen told a House committee in February that he had briefed Trump Jr. approximately 10 times about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow before the presidential election. Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 he was only "peripherally aware" of the proposal.

The panel has also investigated a meeting between Trump Jr., other campaign staff and a Russian lawyer. Emails leading up to the meeting promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Mueller's report, released last month, says Cohen recalled being in Trump's office "when Trump Jr. told his father that a meeting to obtain adverse information about Clinton was going forward." The report notes that Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, that he did not inform his father about the emails or the upcoming meeting.

Cohen reported to federal prison this week to start a three-year sentence for crimes including tax evasion and campaign finance violations related to hush-money payments made to protect his former boss.

A spokeswoman for the committee would not confirm the subpoena. But Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican member of the panel, hinted after Cohen spoke behind closed doors to the Senate intelligence panel that the committee would want to talk to Trump Jr. again. She said senators "clearly need to re-interview some witnesses whose accounts (Cohen) contradicts."

The Senate intelligence committee has been investigating Russian election interference and Trump's ties to Russia for the last two years. The panel is expected to try to call in several witnesses as it winds up its investigation over the next several months.

Burr told The Associated Press last week that he doesn't expect to have any more public hearings and that he hopes to be finished with the investigation by the end of the year.

The subpoena puts Burr at odds with some of his Republican colleagues who want to move on after the release of Mueller's findings. The Mueller report said he could not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but he did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a floor speech Tuesday in which he declared "case closed" on the probe.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul took a shot at Burr after the subpoena was reported, tweeting that "apparently the Republican chair of the Senate Intel Committee didn't get the memo from the Majority Leader that this case was closed."

Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., declined to comment on the subpoena.

The subpoena was first reported by Axios.

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report. </s> The intermediary, Rob Goldstone, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he proposed a second meeting between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and members of Trump’s team in November 2016. He said he contacted Trump’s longtime executive assistant at the behest of Aras Agalarov, a Russia-based billionaire who knows President Vladimir Putin of Russia personally.

The follow-up overture is one of the kernels of new information contained in thousands of pages of testimony and exhibits released by the committee, which has been conducting one of the investigations into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians. Agalarov also pushed for the initial get-together, which was organized on the premise that Veselnitskaya would deliver incriminating information on Hillary Clinton to support Trump’s campaign.

The second session never took place. But the invitation shows the determination of Russians with close Kremlin connections to convince the Trump team that the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on a host of Russian officials for human rights abuses, is a mistake. The 2012 law, which froze the bank accounts of some Russian officials and barred them from entering the United States, infuriated Putin.

In a late November 2016 email to Trump’s assistant, Goldstone attached a three-page document marked “confidential” that called for “the launch of a congressional investigation into the circumstances of passing the Magnitsky Act.” He wrote that Agalarov hoped the document would be delivered to “the appropriate team.” Veselnitskaya also attacked the law in the June meeting.

The bulk of records released are transcripts of the committee’s interviews with that meeting’s participants, including the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and members of the Russian contingent led by Veselnitskaya. Most of them have already publicly described their version of events.

Nonetheless, the records reveal some new details about the players involved and what happened after the meeting was reported by The New York Times last summer. Excerpts from the transcripts released by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who is the committee’s ranking minority member, highlight how lawyers for the Trump Organization tried to manage the fallout by coordinating the statement of Goldstone and others.

Donald Trump Jr. acknowledged that his father may have helped draft the statement that he put out to the press after the meeting became public. But on a number of other questions, he drew a blank, including whether his father uses a blocked phone number.

The excerpts selected by the Democrats also underscore how Agalarov previously tried to act as a bridge between the Kremlin and Trump. When Trump hosted the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013, Agalarov sought to organize a meeting with Putin. But a top Kremlin aide called Trump to apologize, saying Putin could not see him because a tardy foreign leader had disrupted the Russian president’s schedule.

The committee tried to interview all the participants of the Trump Tower meeting. But Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chairman who is facing fraud and other criminal charges, declined to testify. Kushner gave the committee a statement.

Veselnitskaya, who is close to Agalarov, initially insisted that she acted independently of the Russian government when she visited Trump Tower. But more recently, she has described herself as an informant for a top Kremlin official, Yuri Y. Chaika, Russia’s prosecutor general.

Other witnesses included Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-born Washington influence-peddler who has worked with Veselnitskaya for years; Irakly Kaveladze, who represented Agalarov; and Veselnitskaya’s translator, Anatoli Samochornov.

By all accounts, the meeting was a disappointment. The Trump campaign officials were disgruntled that Veselnitskaya’s disparaging information about Clinton amounted to no more than allegations of fraud in Russia by several obscure Democratic donors. At one point, Kaveladze testified, Kushner asked, “Why are here and why are we listening to that Magnitsky Act story?”

Goldstone, who said he expected Veselnitskaya to deliver a “smoking gun,” testified that on his way out the door, he told Donald Trump Jr: “This was hugely embarrassing.”

Veselnitskaya seemed unhappy that her message about the Magnitsky Act seemed to fall on deaf ears. “I know she was expecting something else from the meeting, something bigger,” her translator testified.

The Senate committee’s inquiry has not produced any major revelations, and some critics have claimed that the Republicans are more interested in probing whether the federal law-enforcement authorities were biased against the Trump campaign than whether the campaign conspired with the Russian government to try to sway the presidential election.

Two other congressional committees also mounted investigations into Russia’s interference in the electoral process. The House intelligence committee recently ended its inquiry without any consensus. Democrats and Republicans were fiercely at odds over what the evidence showed and whether the inquiry was a waste of effort or cut short for political reasons.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation is still ongoing, but it appears unlikely to produce major new revelations.

Separately, the Justice Department’s special counsel investigation has indicted 19 people, including Manafort, who has pleaded not guilty, and secured five guilty pleas, including three from Trump associates.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times </s> • The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday released roughly 2,000 pages of documents on its investigation into a Trump Tower meeting attended by Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer.
• Several aides from President Donald Trump's campaign, including his son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner, met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in June 2016.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday released roughly 2,000 pages of documents on its investigation into a Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, which has drawn scrutiny over what was supposedly discussed.

Several aides from President Donald Trump's campaign, including his son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner, met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in June 2016.

Below are documents of testimonies and information gathered by the committee from the meeting's attendees. </s> The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday released nearly 2,000 pages of transcripts from interviews the panel conducted with Donald Trump Jr. and other participants of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

The release of the Trump Tower transcripts and hundreds of pages of related materials provides the most comprehensive view yet into the circumstances surrounding the controversial meeting and the details of the roughly 20-minute encounter, in which Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kusher and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort were expecting dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

The meeting — and whether President Donald Trump’s knew about it — has become a central focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as the congressional Russia investigations. Trump Jr. has told House investigators that he did not communicate with his father about the meeting before it happened. The White House has said the President weighed in on a misleading statement his son issued after the meeting became publicly known, more than a year later.

The committee on Wednesday released transcripts and hundreds of pages of related material from nine people connected to the meeting. The documents contain a record of closed-door committee interviews with five of the eight meeting attendees, including Trump Jr., British music promoter Rob Goldstone, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, translator Anatoli Samochornov and Ike Kaveladze, a Russian with ties to oligarch Aras Agalarov.

RELATED – Recreating June 9: A very consequential day in the 2016 campaign

In the lead-up to the meeting, Goldstone had told Trump Jr. that Veselnitskaya would provide dirt on Clinton from Russian sources. Trump Jr. responded to Goldstone, “if it’s what you say I love it,” ahead of the meeting, and Kushner and Manafort joined Trump’s son at the meeting. But the participants have said Veselnitskaya did not in fact provide dirt on Clinton, instead focusing on overturning the US sanctions on Russia under the Magnitsky Act that the US passed to punish Russian human rights abuses.

The committee’s documents also included responses from Veselnitskaya, as well as a statement from Kushner and a page of notes from Manafort. The committee also included the formal release of the transcript of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, who was not at the Trump Tower meeting but whose transcript was unilaterally released in January by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

In January, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said he planned to release the transcripts because the committee’s interviews connected to the Trump Tower meetings had wrapped up. Democrats had pressed Grassley to subpoena Kushner for his testimony or schedule a public hearing for Trump Jr., but he chose not to do so following Feinstein’s decision to release the Simpson transcript. </s> WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, who met with Russians in June 2016 after being promised political dirt about Hillary Clinton, according to people familiar with the committee’s decision.

The younger Mr. Trump is the first of President Trump’s children to be subpoenaed in the continuing congressional investigations into Russia’s 2016 election interference, and the move by the Republican-led committee is a sign that some members of the president’s party are not aligned with his desire for a swift end to all of the Russia inquiries.

News of the subpoena came a day after Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, sought to lower the curtain on the drama in Congress surrounding Russia’s efforts to sabotage the 2016 election. The end of the Mueller investigation, he said, meant “case closed.”

But the subpoena of the younger Mr. Trump shows that the Intelligence Committee, which is under Mr. McConnell’s jurisdiction, is proceeding with its vigorous investigation that — for the most part — has not degenerated into a partisan morass like a parallel investigation by the House. </s> Donald Trump Jr has been forced to release damning emails that reveal he eagerly embraced what he was told was a Russian government attempt to damage Hillary Clinton’s election campaign.

The stunning disclosure raised questions over whether campaign laws were broken and why senior Trump associates failed to report a hostile act by a foreign power.

Trump Jr also admitted on Tuesday night that he could have handled the situation better but he had not told his father about meeting a Russian lawyer because “it was a nothing”.

The emails show music promoter Rob Goldstone telling the future US president’s son that “the crown prosecutor of Russia” had offered “to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father”.

British-born Goldstone adds in the exchange of 3 June 2016: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump.”

Seventeen minutes later, Trump Jr welcomes this with the reply: “If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.”

In a later email, Goldstone describes the Russian lawyer they are due to meet, Natalia Veselnitskaya, as a “Russian government attorney”.

Profile Who is Natalia Veselnitskaya? Show Hide Accusations Natalia Veselnitskaya is the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort at Trump Tower on 9 June 2016. Trump Jr has published emails showing Veselnitskaya was introduced to him as a “Russian government attorney” who had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Background Veselnitskaya is a defence lawyer based just outside Moscow, whose main client in recent years has been Denis Katsyv, a businessman accused of profiting from a major tax fraud uncovered by lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. She fought his case in US courts and mounted a PR campaign to try to clear Katsyv’s name and overturn the “Magnitsky Act” sanctions against Russian officials that followed. The big question Veselnitskaya is not a government official and portrays herself as a lawyer with a private client. The question, then, is how she was able to secure the meeting at Trump Tower during a presidential campaign and why she was introduced to Trump Jr as representing the Russian government.

Trump Jr agrees, adding that he would probably be accompanied by “Paul Manafort (campaign boss)” and “my brother-in-law,” Jared Kushner, husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka and now a senior White House adviser.

The formatting of the emails suggests that Trump Jr forwarded the whole chain to Manafort and Kushner before the meeting the three attended with Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York on 9 June.

On Sunday, Trump Jr had said he had asked Manafort and Kushner to attend but not told them what the meeting was about. An associate of Manafort said on Tuesday that the former campaign chairman claims not to have read to the bottom of the chain of emails forwarded to him and Kushner by Trump Jr about the meeting. Jamie Gorelick, an attorney for Jared Kushner, did not respond to questions about whether Kushner read the emails and why he attended the meeting.

Critics seized on the new disclosures to question why three of Trump’s closest advisers were willing to accept such a meeting instead of alerting authorities to interference by a foreign adversary. Special counsel Robert Mueller and the House and Senate intelligence committees are investigating Russian meddling in the election, thought to include stealing Democratic National Committee emails and the use of social-media bots to spread fake news about Clinton.

My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency. Donald Trump

Trump Jr has offered shifting explanations for the meeting in recent days. In an interview broadcast on conservative Fox News on Tuesday night, he again sought to justify his motives but conceded that he could have handled the situation better.

“In retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently,” he told interviewer Sean Hannity. “Again this is before the Russia mania, this is before they were building this up in the press.

Trump Jr denied that he told his father about the meeting. “It was just a nothing,” he added. “There was nothing to tell. I mean, I wouldn’t have even remembered it until you started scouring through this stuff. It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame.”

Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders read a short statement from the president at the regular White House press briefing. “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency.”

She then refused to answer several questions on the matter, saying they must be directed to Trump Jr’s legal counsel and outside counsel.

Asked about the president’s reaction to the unfolding drama, Huckabee Sanders replied: “I think the president is, I would say, frustrated with the process, the fact this continues to be an issue and he would love for us to be focused on issues like the economy, healthcare, tax reform, infrastructure.”



‘These emails are explosive’

Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine, a senator from Virginia and member of the foreign relations committee, told MSNBC: “These emails are explosive. This should have set off alarm bells and red lights, and yet what it seemed to do is activate their salivatory glands. This is just wheelbarrows of new evidence for the special counsel and the Senate intelligence committee.”

Trump Jr released the email chain on Tuesday apparently to pre-empt its publication by the New York Times, which, this weekend, first broke the news of his meeting with Veselnitskaya in June last year. Veselnitskaya had promised compromising information about Clinton but apparently failed to deliver.

In a statement posted to Twitter, Trump Jr explained: “To everyone, in order to be totally transparent, I am releasing the entire email chain of my emails with Rob Goldstone about the meeting on June 9, 2016. To put this in context, this occurred before the current Russian fever was in vogue.”

There is no such position as crown prosecutor of Russia, but the most likely candidate would be the long-serving prosecutor general, and a long-standing member of Vladimir Putin’s elite, Yuri Chaika.

Goldstone told the Wall Street Journal his reference to the “crown prosecutor” was meant to mean Veselnitskaya. “It’s a language thing,” he said.

He referred questions from the Guardian to his lawyer.

Trump Jr has given varying reasons for why he accepted the meeting, first claiming it was to discuss American adoptions of Russian children, then acknowledging that he was interested in information about Clinton.

The president’s eldest son denies any wrongdoing and tweeted on Tuesday: “Media and Dems are extremely invested in the Russia story. If this nonsense meeting is all they have after a year, I understand the desperation!”

Goldstone told the Associated Press on Monday he set up the meeting on behalf of a client, pop star Emin Agalarov, the son of a Moscow-based developer, Aras Agalarov, who has close ties to Putin and tried to partner with Trump in a hotel project.



Aras Agalarov worked with Donald Trump to bring the Miss Universe contest to Moscow in 2013. Trump appeared in a music video with Emin Agalarov that featured several Miss Universe contestants.

Goldstone’s 3 June email says the Russian government’s support for Trump is “helped along by Aras and Emin”. He asks if Trump Jr wants to speak to Emin about it directly and proposes: “I can also send this info to your father via Rhona” – presumably Rhona Graff, Donald Trump’s longtime executive assistant – “but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.” It is not clear from the emails whether Goldstone did send any of the information to Trump Sr, who has denied all knowledge of the meeting through his lawyer.

Before the publication of Trump Jr’s emails, Veselnitskaya had denied she had gone to the meeting with information about the Clinton campaign. “It’s quite possible that maybe they were looking for such information, they wanted it so badly,” she told NBC, denying that she had any to offer. She also answered “no” when asked if she had ever worked for the Russian government.

Later, Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the US, dismissed the significance of the Trump Jr meeting. “I don’t think anything about it and to be honest there are more serious things to be think about in relation to Russia,” he told the Guardian at a US-Russia Business Council farewell reception in Washington.

Trump Jr was at Trump Tower in New York on Tuesday, according to a police officer at the building.

Eric Trump, Donald Jr’s brother, was spotted in the lobby at around 1.30pm with his wife Lara. Asked by the Guardian if he had any comment on his brother’s emails or knew Goldstone himself, Eric Trump did not respond. He then headed quickly to a gold elevator and headed upwards, staring silently ahead.

The revelations around 39-year-old Trump Jr’s involvement is one of the biggest blows yet in the saga of the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, which the president has dismissed as a “hoax”.

Republicans on Capitol Hill were taken aback but reluctant to weigh in just yet. At least two Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee, Senators John Cornyn and James Lankford, said Trump Jr should testify before the panel, which is overseeing one of three parallel investigations into Russian interference in the US election.

John McCain, a frequent critic of the Trump administration, said there were “many allusions and many stories of meetings and communications”, while noting he expected there was more yet to come.

Richard Burr, the Republican chief of the Senate intelligence committee, said it was “too early to draw any conclusions”.

Timeline: Trump and associates denied Russia involvement at least 20 times Read more

Burr’s Democratic counterpart, Mark Warner, said it was significant that the emails had been forwarded to Kushner and Manafort.

“They’ve got a lot of explaining to do, because all these denials of any knowledge of Russian government involvement seems to be a gross contradiction here,” Warner told Roll Call.

Some of Trump’s most ardent defenders nonetheless stood by the president. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who competed bitterly against Trump for the Republican nomination, blamed the media for fixating on Russia.

“Russia is a significant adversary,” he told reporters. “Part of the irony of this media obsession with Russia is that the Obama administration began with Hillary Clinton bringing the big reset button with Russia.

Norm Eisen, former ethics czar under President Barack Obama, said: “It’s another significant step forward in the investigation of Trump collusion with Russia because it represents an offer to collude and an acceptance of collusion to harm the campaign of Hillary Clinton and intrude upon our democracy.”

He added: “I believe it’s potentially legally actionable but we need to let the investigation play out. I predict it will not be the last bombshell.”

Additional reporting by Shaun Walker in Moscow and Oliver Laughland and Jon Swaine in New York

Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) Here's my statement and the full email chain pic.twitter.com/x050r5n5LQ

Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) Here is page 4 (which did not post due to space constraints). pic.twitter.com/z1Xi4nr2gq

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Donald Trump Jr., son of U.S. President Donald Trump, is subpoenaed to testify before the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the Trump Tower Moscow project and his Russian contacts in June 2016.