The Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. regarding statements he made to Congress in 2017 about a plan to build a Trump Tower building in Moscow.
The president’s eldest son told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, 2017 that he was only “peripherally aware” of the ultimately scrapped plans to construct the building in Russia. In February, however, President Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen testified to a House committee that he had briefed Trump Jr. about the project about ten times.
The Republican-led intelligence committee seeks Trump Jr.’s testimony, the first known subpoena of one of the president’s children, as part of its two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The president said last month that his administration will be “fighting all the subpoenas” from Congress after special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report was released.
Trump Jr.’s meeting in June, 2016 at New York’s Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton became a focal point in the Russia investigation. His brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort were in the meeting as well
The president’s son claimed to Congress that he did not tell his father about the meeting. Cohen contradicted him on that point as well, saying he recalled being present when Trump Jr. informed the elder Trump that they were planning a meeting to collect damaging information on his opponent.
House Democrats, meanwhile, have issued dozens of requests for documents and testimony from Trump associates since the release of the Mueller report last month. The White House on Tuesday directed former White House counsel Don McGahn to ignore a House Judiciary Committee subpoena for more information relating to McGahn’s statements to Mueller that Trump directed him to have the special counsel fired.