The Senate Judiciary Committee has released the transcripts from a slate of interviews with participants of the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016.
The transcripts released Wednesday morning include the panel’s interview of President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who accepted the meeting with a woman described as a Russian government lawyer offering political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
The White House and Trump Jr. have defended the June 2016 meeting as appropriate but caught in numerous lies as they offered evolving explanations of its purpose. Trump Jr. claimed the meeting revolved around a lobbying push by the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, to urge the repeal of a U.S. sanctions law that had led Russia to ban Americans from adopting from the country.
The Senate panel also interviewed Rob Goldstone, a music producer who set up the meeting. Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet military counterintelligence officer who was lobbying on behalf of Veselnitskaya’s organization to overturn the Magnitsky sanctions was also interviewed.
Participants have said the meeting quickly turned into Veselnitskaya lobbying for the repeal of a U.S. sanctions law called the Magnitsky Act.
Other participants who were interviewed include Anatoli Samochornov, former State employee who acted as translator for Veselnitskaya, and Ike Kaveladze, a Russian employee of Aras and Emin Agalarov.
Known to be present but not interviewed by the committee: White House senior advisor Jared Kusher and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort. Veselnitskaya provided written answers to committee Qs. Manafort provided his notes from the June meeting. Kushner gave a prepared statement.
You can read the transcripts here.
