In response to Senator Chris Coons' (D-DE) request for Donald Trump Jr. to return before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain the discrepancy between his September 2017 testimony and press reports he met with foreign nationals offering to help his father's campaign, Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) says he does not support an open hearing.
“I would suggest Mr. Trump Jr.’s attorneys be asked about these press accounts,” Grassley said Tuesday in a letter to Senator Chris Coons. The Democrat who serves on the committee had urged Grassley to investigate whether the president’s son had lied to the panel -- a crime -- when he denied knowledge of any offers of help to his father’s 2016 campaign from foreign governments or foreign nationals other than Russia.
Coons cited a May 19 story in the New York Times saying that Trump Jr. met with emissaries who told him that princes who led Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates were eager to help the campaign.
“It is not clear that anything in that article contradicts Mr. Trump, Jr.’s testimony, let alone materially so,” Grassley said. “While it is possible there could be contradictions, there are potentially innocuous explanations.”
The Judiciary chairman has been under pressure from Democrats to hold a public hearing with Trump Jr. for the better part of a year but has resisted doing so.
Grassley, instead, wants to pursue investigating the investigators who have uncovered potentially incriminating evidence against the president and his associates.
Grassley has posed questions about Glenn Simpson, who headed the political intelligence firm Fusion GPS, and Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who wrote a disputed dossier on Trump that was ordered up by Simpson’s company and underwritten by Trump rival Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
In the letter, Grassley cited what he said were discrepancies between Simpson’s testimony to the committee and another person’s reported testimony to the FBI.
“Despite the fact Mr. Simpson said he had no client after the election, he in fact did, and that client revealed himself to the FBI,” Grassley said.
Grassley Letter to Coons (pdf)
Fight Over Trump Jr.’s Testimony Simmers in the Senate (Bloomberg Politics)