An attorney for President Trump’s eldest son Don Jr. appeared to suggest Monday that his client is uninterested in reappearing before congressional investigators to discuss a Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 that has been linked to the special counsel probe into Russian election meddling.
The meeting between the younger Trump, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya has come under renewed scrutiny last week after the president’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen contradicted previous claims that the president was unaware of the get-together until after it occurred.
“If recent reports are true that President Trump knew in advance about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, it would suggest that Donald Trump Jr. may have misled Judiciary Committee staff about the meeting when he was interviewed last fall,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the panel’s ranking Democrat, said in a statement following Cohen’s claim.
[More: Rudy Giuliani denies second Trump camp meeting with Russians happened]
Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee last May that he did not inform his father about the meeting with Veselnitskaya beforehand, nor did he explain to him that she had offered dirt on then-Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.
His attorney Alan Futerfas told CNN on Monday that Trump Jr. remains “in command of the facts” after reviewing the matter “for over a year.”
“We are fully confident of the accuracy and reliability of the information that has been provided by Donald Trump Jr. in the various investigations,” Futerfas said.
Senate Republicans, including Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, have rejected calls for Trump Jr. to return to Capitol Hill for additional testimony. Grassley, R-Iowa, said Monday it’s “up to the prosecutors” to determine if the president’s son persecuted himself.
“I think if he didn’t tell us the truth, that that’s an issue for the Justice Department, not us,” Grassley said. “And I’m not suggesting anything, I’m just saying there wouldn’t be much more for us to hear from him.”
