Congressional investigators probe Moscow meeting between men who went to Trump Tower

Congressional investigators are reportedly looking into a June 2017 meeting in Moscow between a Russian-American lobbyist and a businessman who were both present at a Trump Tower meeting last year attended by President Trump’s eldest son, son-in-law and then-campaign chairman.

Investigators would like to know why Rinat Akhmetshin and Ike Kaveladze met in Moscow this year, and whether they had planned to match their stories about their role in the June 2016 meeting before news of it broke the following month, The Associated Press reports.

Congressional investigators were able to obtain copies of the text message correspondence between the two men, and both of them have been questioned, according to the AP.

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Akhmetshin reportedly said he had asked for the meeting with Kaveladze to say that they should go public with the story before it was broken by the news media. He also disclosed that Kaveladze had said that people close to the president had been inquiring about Akhmetshin’s background. 

Kaveladze’s lawyer Scott Balber confirmed to the AP that the meeting had taken place and that the Trump Tower meeting was “obviously discussed.”

The meeting’s timing has raised questions. 

Trump fired FBI Director James Comey a month earlier, and special counsel Robert Mueller had been appointed to probe alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia’s election meddling.

Mueller, as well as congressional investigators, have probed the Trump Tower meeting, which was attended by Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Trump Jr. had originally agreed to meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in exchange for damaging information on then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. 

The president’s eldest son later said the meeting did not prove fruitful to the campaign and dubbed it a “waste of time.”