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| Donald Trump Jr. in January at Trump Tower in New York. John Moore/Getty Images |
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump Jr. refused on Wednesday to provide a congressional committee details of a July telephone conversation
with his father about a meeting last year at which Trump campaign officials had expected to receive damaging information from the Russian government about Hillary Clinton.
Testifying in a closed session before the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump claimed that his conversation over the summer with his father, two days after The New York Times disclosed the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan, was protected under attorney-client privilege because lawyers for both men were on the call.
What, if anything, Donald J. Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting as a presidential candidate — and his role in drafting a misleading statement about it once he was president and it became public — are key questions for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russian interference in the election.
Donald Trump Jr. had agreed to the meeting after receiving an email stating that a Russian government lawyer would provide incriminating facts about Mrs. Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” He has said that no damaging information was delivered.
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said after Wednesday’s session that Donald Trump Jr. acknowledged that he had discussed the Trump Tower meeting by telephone with his father on July 10. The congressman said that Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alan S. Futerfas, asked the committee for more time to answer questions about that conversation because both he and a lawyer for the president were privy to it.
Mr. Schiff said that he believed the contents of the phone call should not be kept secret simply because lawyers participated in it. “The presence of counsel does not make communications between father and son a privilege,” he said. He added that he would follow up with Mr. Futerfas about the legal basis for refusing to disclose what was discussed.
Republicans on the committee who attended the session, which lasted roughly eight hours, said that they felt that Donald Trump Jr. had been forthcoming.
While he refused to recount his conversation with his father, the younger Mr. Trump told the committee about his earlier discussions with the White House adviser Hope Hicks about how to respond to the coming Times article, first published on July 8. His statement said the Trump Tower meeting was primarily about the ability of Americans to adopt Russian children. It made no mention of any promise of incriminating information from the Russian government against Mrs. Clinton.
Committee members also questioned the younger Mr. Trump at length about a series of phone calls and email exchanges that occurred several days before the Trump Tower meeting. He said that he was unable to remember a phone call that took place as he was discussing the need for the meeting with a Russian intermediary, according to three people familiar with his testimony, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe closed proceedings.
In an email to the younger Mr. Trump, a publicist linked to Aras Agalarov — a Russian real estate magnate who has been honored by the Kremlin — promised damaging information about Mrs. Clinton. Donald Trump Jr. had two phone calls with Mr. Agalarov’s son Emin, each lasting just a few minutes, before the meeting. Between those calls, his phone records show, he either received or placed a third call with an unidentified person whose telephone number was blocked. Mr. Trump testified that he could not remember what the call was about or whom it was with.
Mr. Trump was also asked about his private Twitter communications last fall with WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy group whose release of a trove of hacked emails rocked Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Trump told the committee that he considered WikiLeaks to be an independent news organization much like CNN or NBC — not an organization that disseminated material provided by the Russian government, as American intelligence agencies later concluded.
SOURCE: nytimes
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