Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas Donald Trump Jr.

Authored by cnbc.com and submitted by pipsdontsqueak

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.

A source directly familiar with the matter told NBC News that the committee also wants to ask Trump Jr. about what he has claimed to have told colleagues about the Trump Tower New York meeting in June 2016, when he, his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer who purportedly had negative information about Hillary Clinton.

In his Senate judiciary testimony, Trump Jr. claimed he did not tell Manafort or Kushner what the meeting was going to be about, and further claimed he did not tell his father about the meeting at all.

But Cohen has said he recalled being in the elder Trump's office in June 6 or 7 in 2016 when the younger Trump told his father that a meeting to obtain derogatory information about Clinton was going to happen.

And 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.

dubblies on May 8th, 2019 at 21:44 UTC »

Its the same move as Barr. Bring them in, do a sham questioning, reject house requests.

slakmehl on May 8th, 2019 at 21:20 UTC »

Going to be some great topics to question him about, too. Trump Jr appears to have perjured himself to Congress on at least three occasions:

He told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was unaware of any other people associated with foreign governments offering to assist the Trump campaign. The Mueller report confirmed that Trump Jr met with Israeli Joel Zamel, who offered a pro-Trump social media manipulation campaign.

He told the House Oversight Committee he was only "periphally aware" of the Trump Tower Moscow project. Michael Cohen testified under oath that Trump Jr and Ivanka were briefed about 10 times.

He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he "did not recall" discussing the Trump Tower Meeting with his father before it was revealed publicly. Mueller found that Trump was so familiar with it that he in fact personally dictated the public response detailing the purpose and contents of the meeting.

BenderB-Rodriguez on May 8th, 2019 at 20:58 UTC »

If I had to guess this is the Republican majority preempting the house subpoena in an attempt to control the narrative around Jr.