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Donald Trump Jr. said Wednesday that he had “nothing to correct” in his testimony as he arrived for a return interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The President’s eldest son is appearing for a second time behind closed doors before the panel, which issued a subpoena for Trump Jr.’s testimony after he resisted coming voluntarily.
The subpoena to Trump Jr. — the first issued to a member of the President’s family — prompted a sharp backlash from GOP allies of Trump Jr. against Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, including from President Donald Trump.
Burr has declined to comment on his decision to subpoena Trump Jr. since it was revealed last month, but the committee did not back down in response to the criticism that his committee needed to speak to Trump Jr. again. Ultimately, the panel struck a deal with Trump Jr. for him to testify for two-to-four hours on roughly a half-dozen topics.
The committee is likely to ask him additional questions about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting and the Trump Organization’s Trump Tower Moscow project.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is still finishing its two-year investigation into Russia’s 2016 election meddling. Burr said the panel has just a handful of witnesses left before wrapping up the probe.
Trump Jr. testified before the Senate Intelligence, House Intelligence and Senate Judiciary Committees in 2017, and the Senate Judiciary panel released a transcript of its interview. Since the release of the Mueller report, questions have arisen about discrepancies between Trump Jr.’s testimony and what other witnesses told both Congress and the special counsel’s team.
While Trump Jr. said he only told former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner about the Trump Tower meeting where a Russian lawyer was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton, former Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates told Mueller Trump Jr. spoke about possible negative information on the Clinton Foundation at a campaign meeting.
And Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was only “peripherally aware” of the Trump Tower Moscow project, but former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen told the special counsel he discussed the project on multiple occasions with the President’s eldest son.
The first time Trump Jr. testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was questioned by committee staff with no senators present, which was the committee’s protocol for its first round of Russia investigation interviews. For the second round of committee interviews, senators can attend the interview but are not asking questions directly, according to Senate aides.
