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| Manafort Talks With Senate Investigators About Meeting With Russians | |
| (about 5 hours later) | |
| WASHINGTON — President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, met with Senate Intelligence Committee investigators on Tuesday to discuss the June 2016 meeting between a Russian lawyer and Mr. Trump’s inner circle that was set up for the campaign to receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton, according to a spokesman for Mr. Manafort. | |
| “Paul Manafort met this morning, by previous agreement, with the bipartisan staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee and answered their questions fully,” said the spokesman, Jason Maloni. | |
| Mr. Manafort gave the investigators notes he had taken in the meeting, according to one person familiar with Tuesday’s discussion with congressional investigators at a Washington law firm. | |
| The meeting came as another panel, the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that it issued a subpoena for Mr. Manafort to appear at a hearing on Wednesday. The panel is conducting its own investigation into possible ties between President Trump’s campaign and the Russian government. It is not clear if Mr. Manafort is to testify before the committee, or invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. It is also possible that Mr. Manafort’s lawyers will strike a deal with the committee in which he provides information in a non-public setting or answers limited questions. | |
| Mr. Manafort has been at the center of inquiries into whether Mr. Trump’s senior advisers coordinated with the Kremlin’s efforts to disrupt last year’s election. | Mr. Manafort has been at the center of inquiries into whether Mr. Trump’s senior advisers coordinated with the Kremlin’s efforts to disrupt last year’s election. |
| Mr. Manafort met with investigators a day after the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, provided his own account of the June 2016 meeting to them. The meeting at Trump Tower was set up by Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, who had been told by an intermediary that the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had damaging information about Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Kushner met with the House Intelligence Committee, which is also conducting an investigation, on Tuesday. | |
| The subpoena announcement was a sign of a brewing turf battle between congressional committees conducting their own investigations into last year’s election. The Senate Intelligence Committee, which began investigating the issue at the beginning of the year, had offered to provide a transcript of Mr. Manafort’s Tuesday interview to the Judiciary Committee. | The subpoena announcement was a sign of a brewing turf battle between congressional committees conducting their own investigations into last year’s election. The Senate Intelligence Committee, which began investigating the issue at the beginning of the year, had offered to provide a transcript of Mr. Manafort’s Tuesday interview to the Judiciary Committee. |
| The top two senators on the Judiciary Committee rejected the offer. | The top two senators on the Judiciary Committee rejected the offer. |
| “Mr. Manafort, through his attorney, said that he would be willing to provide only a single transcribed interview to Congress, which would not be available to the Judiciary Committee members or staff,” a committee news release said on Tuesday. “While the Judiciary Committee was willing to cooperate on equal terms with any other committee to accommodate Mr. Manafort’s request, ultimately that was not possible.” | “Mr. Manafort, through his attorney, said that he would be willing to provide only a single transcribed interview to Congress, which would not be available to the Judiciary Committee members or staff,” a committee news release said on Tuesday. “While the Judiciary Committee was willing to cooperate on equal terms with any other committee to accommodate Mr. Manafort’s request, ultimately that was not possible.” |
| The panel’s hearing on Wednesday is about the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires anyone who lobbies in the United States on behalf of foreign interests to disclose their work to the Justice Department. Mr. Manafort has disclosed that his consulting firm was paid more than $17 million over two years from a Ukrainian political party with links to the Kremlin. | The panel’s hearing on Wednesday is about the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires anyone who lobbies in the United States on behalf of foreign interests to disclose their work to the Justice Department. Mr. Manafort has disclosed that his consulting firm was paid more than $17 million over two years from a Ukrainian political party with links to the Kremlin. |
| Lawyers for Mr. Manafort, who is under federal investigation, are wary of letting him appear publicly before the Judiciary Committee to answer a broad range of questions at this point in the inquiry. |