Congress demands answers from Trump Jr., Mueller

As congressional Democrats continue their quest to find evidence against the president in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday to get some answers of its own. The committee is in the process of wrapping up a separate investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In September 2017, Trump Jr. testified before the committee that he was not involved with a project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. He also claimed he never told his father, President Donald Trump, about a June 2016 meeting with Russians and senior Trump campaign officials in New York. Former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in February that he briefed Trump Jr. and his sister Ivanka Trump about the project 10 times. The Mueller report also notes Cohen testified he had once overheard Trump Jr. tell his father about a meeting “to obtain adverse information about Clinton.”

The House Judiciary Committee is still pushing for Attorney General William Barr to hand over an unredacted version of Mueller’s report, but President Trump claimed executive privilege over the report on Wednesday. The committee voted along party lines Wednesday afternoon to hold Barr in contempt of Congress. The full House must vote on the resolution, and the ultimate decision about whether to prosecute Barr will rest with the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a Trump nominee. Democrats are also expected to continue pushing to hear testimony from Mueller himself. They have asked him to appear before the committee on May 15. On Sunday, the president tweeted that Mueller should not testify. The special counsel could claim that the executive privilege over the report protects him from being forced to appear.