Tag: Donald Trump Jr.

Trump admitted to advance knowledge of infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting

During his Wednesday, May 22 press conference in the White House rose garden, President Donald Trump spent a lot of time attacking Democrats for their response to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation — stressing that he refuses to work with Democrats on infrastructure bills as long as multiple investigations of him continue in Congress. But one part of the press conference that hasn’t receive as much attention is Trump’s reference to the controversial June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting discussed his Mueller’s report.

Alex Thomas, in an article for the IJR Blue website, notes that during the press conference, Trump “suggested that an opposition research firm was behind the Trump Tower meeting.” And the president, Thomas points out, told reporters that his son Donald Trump, Jr. “called me, and he had the meeting after.”

Thomas goes on to describe the president’s statement as “just another revelation in the long string of disclosures about that meeting,” recalling that “at first, President Trump told Reuters that he didn’t know about the meeting until the New York Times broke a story on it.” Thomas reports in his article that the press conference marked “the first time that the president said that he talked to Donald Trump, Jr. before he went into” the June 9, 2016 meeting.

View the complete May 23 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Trump Jr. reaches deal to testify with Senate Intelligence

Donald Trump Jr. has agreed to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee for a second round of questions, complying with a subpoena from Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who came under fire from fellow Republicans for demanding the testimony.

Trump Jr. struck the deal Tuesday to interview with the panel next month for between two and four hours. The committee had originally a set a 5 p.m. deadline on Monday for him to respond.

Questions about the Trump Tower project in Moscow and the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya are fair game, according to a source who was briefed on the deal.

View the complete May 14 article by Jonathan Easley and Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Donald Trump Jr.’s No-Shows Led to Subpoena, Republican Senator Says

WASHINGTON — Allies of Donald Trump Jr. may have stirred up a firestorm among Republicans over a subpoena to recall the president’s eldest son to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but the panel’s Republican chairman has suggested to colleagues that the standoff is of the younger Mr. Trump’s making.

Twice in recent months Donald Trump Jr. agreed to sit for voluntary interviews with the Intelligence Committee, only to later back out, Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the panel’s chairman, told colleagues privately last week, according to two people familiar with his remarks. The chairman said at a senators-only luncheon last Thursday that the evasions had left the committee no choice but to issue a subpoena on April 8 to give senators a chance to directly question the younger Mr. Trump as they seek to tie up loose ends on their investigation of Russian election interference.

Nodding to the media maelstrom that news of the subpoena set off, Mr. Burr told colleagues that he was not happy about the confrontation, but he suggested that the younger Mr. Trump had been given ample opportunity to cooperate quietly and voluntarily, according to the people, who were not authorized to discuss the private lunch. The committee’s investigation is the last bipartisan inquiry into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election and the Kremlin’s ties to the Trump campaign.

View the complete May 13 article by Nicholas Fandos and Maggie Haberman on The New York Times website here.

Scoop: Senate Intel subpoenas Trump Jr. over Russia matters

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to answer questions about his previous testimony before Senate investigators in relation to the Russia investigation, sources with direct knowledge told Axios.

Why it matters: It’s the first congressional subpoena — that we know about — of one of President Trump’s children. The subpoena sets up a fight that’s unprecedented in the Trump era: A Republican committee chair pit against the Republican president’s eldest son.

  • It’s also a sign that the Russia investigations in Congress aren’t over despite the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying it’s time to move on from the Russia probe.
  • A Senate Intelligence Committee spokesperson told Axios: “We do not discuss the details of witness engagements with the Committee. 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.”
  • “Don and Senate Intel agreed from the very beginning that he would appear once to testify before the committee and would remain for as long as it took to answer all of their questions. He did that. We’re not sure why we’re fighting with Republicans,” a source close to Trump Jr. told Axios.

View the complete May 8 article by Jonathan Swan, Alayna Treene and David Nather on the Axios website here.

3 things to watch: Trump kids, associates eye pleading the Fifth as Dems bore in

Credit: Mary Altaffa, APr

WH counsel’s letter to Rep. Cummings reveals legal strategy to fight probes

ANALYSIS — It was a remarkable 24-hour reversal, with President Donald Trump first saying Monday he cooperates with “everybody” before turning to an unlikely source for a precedent to reject House Democrats’ demands for reams of documents: Barack Obama.

House Democratic chairmen of committees in the embryonic stages of investigations into all things Trump have requested documents from and interviews with a long list of individuals and entities related to the president’s time in office, 2016 campaign and business dealings. Trump seemed willing to, at least in some form, comply with some of those requests when he said this on Monday: “I cooperate all the time, with everybody.”

But by the next afternoon, it appeared the president had been trying to buy time for his aides to determine the extent to which they believe the law will require White House compliance. As he often does — even as White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told House Oversight and Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings that “we are prepared to continue negotiations in good faith” — the president went to the most extreme option, appearing to reverse himself.

View the complete March 6 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Cohen implicates Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, in mistress hush money scheme

Michael Cohen, former attorney for President Donald Trump, testifies to the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Wednesday. Credit: Bill Clark, CQ Roll Call

Trump’s former lawyer and fixer was asked if he is aware of any other illegal acts that haven’t come to light

This is a developing story. Follow this page for updates on the latest from the Cohen hearing.

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, said Wednesday that Trump’s business operation is being investigated for illegal acts that haven’t yet been publicly disclosed.

Asked by Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of  Illinois if he was aware of any other wrongdoing or illegal acts that hadn’t yet been discussed in his testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Cohen replied, “Yes … those are part of the investigation that’s currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York,” referring to the Manhattan-based U.S. attorney’s that would have jurisdiction over Trump’s business empire’s headquarters.

Cohen is providing unprecedented insight to the Oversight Committee into how Trump ran his business empire for more than a decade.

View the complete February 27 article by Griffin Connolly on The Roll Call website here.

Why Donald Trump Jr.’s ‘loser teachers’ comment was ‘a chilling moment’ for educators around the world

Donald Trump Jr. told young conservatives they did not “have to be indoctrinated by loser teachers trying to sell them socialism” during a rally in El Paso. (The Washington Post)

You may recall that President Trump held a border wall rally in El Paso on Monday and that his eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., made a speech that roused the crowd.

The president’s son drew cheers when he urged young conservatives to “bring it to your schools” (though he didn’t say exactly what “it” was) because “you don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth.”

The comment drew response on social media from teachers and others who don’t see educators in the same way as he does, with the hashtag #loserteachers. For example:

View the complete February 16 article by Valerie Strauss on The Washington Post website here.

‘We have the umbilical cord’: Harvard Law professor explains Don Jr. and Jared Kushner are caught on collusion

President Donald Trump’s eldest child and namesake son, Donald Trump Jr., senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort. Composite image

Constitutional expert Laurence Tribe — who has taught at Harvard Law for half a century — explained how Donald Trump Jr. allegedly violated federal law during the 2016 presidential campaign.

On MSNBC’s “The Beat” with Ari Melber, Tribe explained the significance to Tuesday’s bombshell reports that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was charged with obstruction of justiceand Paul Manafort’s attorneys inadvertently revealing how he mislead special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators.

Tribe has argued before the Supreme Court three dozen times and is the co-author of the 2018 book To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.

View the complete January 8 article by Bob Brigham on the Raw Story website here.

Mueller eyes Ivanka and Don Jr.’s work on Trump Tower Moscow

Credit: Yahoo News; photos; AP (3), Getty Images

WASHINGTON – Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Trump’s efforts to build a skyscraper in Moscow has led him to ask questions about the role two of the president’s children played in attempting to secure a Russian real estate deal, sources tell Yahoo News.

Mueller’s interest in the Trump family real estate company’s plans for a skyscraper in Russia was confirmed on Thursday when Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney and fixer, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the proposed deal. In charging documents, Mueller said Cohen falsely claimed that the effort to build a Trump Tower Moscow “ended in January 2016” in an attempt to “minimize” links between Trump and the project and to “give the false impression” the effort ended before the Republican primaries in 2016. Yahoo News first reported in May that congressional investigators had obtained text messages and emails showing Cohen’s work on Trump Tower Moscow continued for longer than he admitted under oath.

But Cohen wasn’t the only person at the Trump Organization who was pursuing deals to build a skyscraper in the Russian capital. Multiple sources have confirmed to Yahoo News that the president’s elder daughter, Ivanka, who is now a top White House adviser, and his eldest son, Don Jr., were also working to make Trump Tower Moscow a reality. The sources said those efforts were independent of Cohen’s work on the project. One of the sources said Ivanka was also involved in Cohen’s efforts. And a separate source familiar with the investigation told Yahoo News that Mueller has asked questions about Ivanka and Don Jr.’s work on Trump Tower Moscow.

View the complete November 29 article by Hunter Walker on the Yahoo News website here.

There’s a big tell in Trump’s latest defense of Donald Jr.

The following commentary by Greg Sargent was posted on the Washington Post website August 13, 2018:

Despite President Trump’s tweets, meeting with a foreign power to get ‘dirt’ is not opposition research, argues deputy editorial page editor Ruth Marcus. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

President Trump has spent the past year and a half emphatically declaring that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia, adamantly and angrily insisting that any suggestion to the contrary is nothing but a “hoax.”

Trump is now trying out a new line, which looks a little something like this: There was “no collusion” … “to the best of my knowledge.”

The Post has a remarkable piece reporting that Donald Trump Jr.’s presence on the campaign trail is in major demand among GOP candidates. Trump Jr. energizes the Trump base, in spite of the fact — or rather because of the fact — that he may be in legal jeopardy, as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III scrutinizes Trump Jr.’s role in the Trump Tower meeting and its aftermath. For many Trump voters who have been relentlessly told that Mueller is leading a “deep-state coup” against the president, Trump Jr. represents a galvanizing, heroic figure who is both resisting and getting unfairly persecuted by that coup.

View the complete article here.