Donald Trump Jr. has agreed to speak with members of the House Intelligence Committee next week as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, CNN reported Wednesday.
Trump Jr.’s testimony is scheduled for Dec. 6, and is expected to focus on his contacts with Russian officials last year. The testimony will likely take place behind closed doors and comes months after Trump Jr., who was at the center of an infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, spoke with Senate investigators on the same topic.
His attorney declined to confirm or deny the appearance to CNN.
Trump Jr. confirmed earlier this month that he received numerous direct messages on Twitter from WikiLeaks leading up to the 2016 election, including requests for contact with his father. The correspondence was largely one-sided, with Trump Jr. only responding to a few messages.
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The U.S. intelligence community believes that Moscow was behind WikiLeaks’s release of emails hacked from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.
President Trump’s eldest son has called the 2016 Trump Tower meeting a “waste of time,” and others have said the Russian attorney was more interested in lobbying to lift the anti-Russia Magnitsky Law.
Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who is leading the House Intelligence Committee’s probe into Russia’s election meddling, said Tuesday that it is unlikely that the panel will conclude its investigation by the end of the year.
The House Intelligence Committee is one of three congressional panels looking into Russian efforts to disrupt and influence the 2016 presidential race.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is conducting a criminal investigation into the matter. Late last month, Mueller announced the first charges in the probe, as well as a guilty plea from a former Trump campaign aide who lied to FBI agents about his contact with Russians.
In the past week, reports have emerged that former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who lasted only 24 days in the Trump White House, may be cooperating with federal investigators.