Records provided to the Senate Intelligence Commission show that calls have been made between Trump Jr. and two of his associates, the sources said, and appear to contradict long-held Democrats' suspicions that the number was blocked was that of the then candidate, Donald Trump. .
This information was recently revealed and could answer one of the key questions of the meeting. Trump's eldest son was set up to educate Russia about the Clinton campaign. Trump Jr.'s phone calls involving blocked numbers – meaning that numbers are private and not appearing in phone records – are a persistent problem as investigators investigated the meeting and asked if Trump himself knew in advance His son, son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and campaign president, Paul Manafort, met a Russian lawyer who had promised them to dirty Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr.'s phone records included calls with two numbers blocked on the same day he had exchanged calls. in the company of Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, son of a Russian oligarch who spearheaded the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The calls took place three days before the Trump Tower meeting, and another call with a private number took place several hours after the meeting.
CNN did not confirm the identity of the associates who spoke to Trump Jr. nor of what they had discussed the calls. The subject of calls and their relevance for the Trump Tower meeting and the investigation on Russia are still unclear. Trump Jr.'s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, declined to comment.
The two-year investigation of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russia's interference in the 2016 elections is still ongoing and it is unclear whether the committee is still investigating the situation. Trump Tower case. Senate intelligence chief Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, and Virginia Virginia Democrat Senator Mark Warner, the group's largest Democrat, both declined to comment.
It is not clear that the special advocate Robert Mueller also got the phone records revealing the identity of private numbers, but the Trump organization has provided Mueller and Congress with a series of documents related to Russia.
The documents showing that the calls had not been made with the candidate at the time, Trump, could solve a fundamental problem that Democrats in the House said they wanted to get to the bottom of things. year now that they are the majority and control the surveys.
The Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 was hatched when Agalarov asked British promoter Rob Goldstone to organize a meeting between Veselnitskaya and campaign officials. In an email to Trump Jr., Goldstone said that Veselnitskaya would provide "dirt" to Clinton at the meeting. "If that's what you say, I like it," replied Trump Jr., but at the meeting of June 9, 2016, Veselnitskaya focused his presentation on Russian sanctions and not on dirt of Clinton.
All participants in the meeting
The Speaker of the House Intelligence, Adam Schiff, is unobtrusive. Republican Homologues in the House for not getting a phone recording to determine who Trump Jr. had spoken to, writing last year that "the committee did not seek to determine who had called Trump Jr. at that time crucial from a blocked number ". He promised to make it one of his top priorities as president.
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In a 2018 memo describing the unexplored areas of the investigation of Russia, Schiff wrote that "(b), given the timing of these appeals, the The committee must determine if any of these appeals may be between Trump Jr. and Donald J. Trump, including appeals regarding the Trump Tower meeting. "
" We wanted to get phone records to determine if Donald Trump was talking to his son of this meeting "Schiff told CNN in November. "This is an obvious investigative step, but the Republicans did not want to take action because they feared that the evidence would lead to evidence."
Schiff declined to comment through the intermediary of a spokesman for this story. the highest democrat of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also pointed to the figures stuck in a Democratic report last year on the panel's investigation of the Trump Tower meeting. "We also do not know who they talked to about this meeting, including whether they have ever discussed it with Mr. Trump," Feinstein wrote.
In his report, Feinstein wrote that Trump Jr. had placed the three appeals on blocked numbers. But Schiff's report actually indicates that the first June 6 call had arrived at Trump Jr. A source familiar with the documents provided to Congress stated that they did not indicate whether the blocked calls were inbound or not. outgoing.
Democrats had reason to suspect The private number was Trump, while Trump's first campaign director, Corey Lewandowski, told the committee that "Trump's principal residence was blocked (by a phone line)" , according to a Democrats report from the House Intelligence panel.
In addition to phone calls, Schiff requested a subpoena to Trump Jr. to compel him to discuss conversations he had with his father in 2017 about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting. before Trump Jr. publishes a misleading public statement about the purpose of the meeting. Trump Jr. asserted that conversations with his father were protected by the solicitor-client privilege during his testimony in December 2017.
The President says in his written responses to Mueller's questions that he did not know about the meeting in advance.
In July, Agalarov told Vice News that he had remembered speaking to Donald Trump Jr.
"I said," Listen, there's has people who want to meet you. "They obviously want something that might help them solve problems that may or may not interest you, so if you could spend a few minutes, I'd be grateful, otherwise there's no problem." Clearly, Don Jr. is obviously Jr. said, "Of course. I will do it if you ask, "said Agalarov to Vice.
Scott Balber, the Agalarovs' lawyer, had previously told CNN that his clients had no reason to believe that the candidate of the Time, Trump, was aware of the meeting with the Russian attorney before the event.