Washington: Top Republicans may end up shielding the president’s son and son-in-law from facing tough questions on-camera from Democrats eager to press them over their contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign.
Democrats on two Senate panels are demanding to hold public hearings with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner in a fight that could determine whether any of the congressional Russia probes come to a bipartisan outcome.
Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr and Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley have resisted the Democrats’ calls for months, saying that the younger Trump and Kushner already answered questions during closed-door interviews last year.
Democrats say the pair should be questioned in public because of their key roles in the campaign, with a particular focus on the controversial meeting they attended in Trump Tower in 2016 with several Russians after being told they had dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton. But Republicans have sought to avoid a “show trial” with the president’s son and son-in-law being sworn in for public testimony.
Mueller’s probe
Special Counsel Robert Mueller — who’s running a separate investigation into Russia’s meddling in the campaign and whether anyone close to Trump colluded in it — is also looking into the Trump Tower meeting. Mueller’s team met with Kushner last year to discuss a limited set of questions, but they haven’t interviewed Trump Jr.
Burr, who has led the most bipartisan of the three major congressional probes into Russian campaign interference, said in several interviews in recent weeks that he doesn’t see any reason for public hearings with Kushner and Trump Jr. because they’ve already answered extensive questions from staff behind closed doors.
“The threshold is there has to be value for the American people to hear a public hearing, and I have yet to identify anything that I need to know that they haven’t answered,” Burr said.
He hasn’t ruled one out, however. “I’ll wait and see if somebody presents me a plausible reason to have one,” he said.
Testimony transcripts
Kushner and Trump Jr. testified separately last year behind closed doors before both the House and Senate Intelligence committees, and Trump Jr. also testified to the Senate Judiciary staff, though all of the transcripts of those sessions remain closely held so far. Grassley, the Judiciary chairman, has said that he intends to make his committee’s transcripts public soon.
Grassley said recently that his committee’s investigation into the Trump Tower meeting was over because Kushner was “spooked” out of providing a voluntary closed-door interview with the panel’s staff. The chairman blamed ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein’s unilateral release of the transcript from an interview with another key witness — Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who commissioned an unverified dossier on Trump from former British spy Christopher Steele.
Feinstein, in turn, said the transcripts of the committee’s interviews should be provided to Mueller and reiterated her calls for a public hearing.
“Transparency in congressional investigations is important. I hope this means Chairman Grassley will move forward with public hearings for Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, which we agreed to pursue last year,” she said in a statement.
Grassley had threatened to subpoena Trump Jr., among others, to testify, before announcing an agreement in July of last year for a staff interview “before a public hearing.”
The Iowa Republican hasn’t yet ruled out compelling Kushner or Trump Jr. to appear in public through a subpoena, something Feinstein and other Democrats have been prepared to do for months. But he said he wants “to know what we would accomplish” by doing so. Instead, he said he hopes to get access to Kushner’s staff interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee, though Burr has said he would share transcripts only with Mueller.
‘Keep working’
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, who with Burr has strived to keep a bipartisan approach to the panel’s probe, also continues to push for public hearings where lawmakers can question major figures, including Trump Jr. and Kushner.
“We’ll keep working through this,” Warner said. “The public has a lot of questions and equally important, a lot of senators need to talk to a lot of these principals.”
Senate Intelligence committee staffers have interviewed well over 100 people in that panel’s yearlong probe so far. It’s likely to take more months to conclude, with Burr and Warner planning to release an interim joint report in coming weeks on election security while there’s still time to plan for November’s midterm elections.
Grassley has told the Judiciary panel that the transcripts he plans to release include interviews with those who attended the Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. That will include the transcript of Trump Jr.’s interview, several other attendees, and a written response from Veselnitskaya.
Several Democrats, however, say there’s no substitute for the key eyewitnesses appearing in public.
“For me, I’m going to push back with everything I have, if somebody tries to say this is over without Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. coming to the committee to answer questions,” said Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, an Intelligence Committee member.
—Bloomberg
