The House Intelligence Committee wants to hear from \u00ab\u00a0everyone connected\u00a0\u00bb to the June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer that Donald Tru…<\/b>
\nHere’s our look at the Trump administration and the rest of Washington:
The House Intelligence Committee wants to hear from \u00ab\u00a0everyone connected\u00a0\u00bb to the June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer that Donald Trump Jr. helped arrange, the panel’s top Democrat said Tuesday.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) said investigators can no longer trust President Trump ‘s family to provide truthful information after his son’s shifting accounts of the meeting last summer, which was initiated by an acquaintance who promised damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton that was part of a broader Russian government effort to hurt her candidacy.
\u00ab\u00a0What I think is notable here is the pattern, \u00a0\u00bb Schiff said, referring to other Trump associates who over past months have had to acknowledge contacts with Russians that they previously denied or failed to disclose.
\u00ab\u00a0They all come back to Russia, \u00a0\u00bb Schiff said to reporters at the Capitol. \u00ab\u00a0Of course, the profound question is why? And that is a question we need to answer.\u00a0\u00bb
Schiff said the committee wants those connected with the meeting \u2014 even President Trump’s personal secretary, who is named in emails about the encounter that Donald Jr. released Tuesday \u2014 to provide information to the panel. The younger Trump was accompanied to the meeting in Trump Tower by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and confidant, and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort.
\u00ab\u00a0We cannot rely on any public representations that are made by the family about their contacts with the Russians, \u00a0\u00bb Schiff said. \u00ab\u00a0We have now seen a very demonstrable pattern of obfuscation and dissembling about these meetings.\u00a0\u00bb
Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, stopped short of saying criminal laws were violated, but called the meeting \u00ab\u00a0absolutely not only a breach of norms, but a breach of civic responsibility to the country.\u00a0\u00bb
\u00ab\u00a0If you get approached by a foreign government offering to interfere in a presidential election, you go to the FBI, \u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0You report it. That\u2019s what a decent citizen would do.\u00a0\u00bb
At a minimum, Trump Jr.’s handling of the meeting overture, with its apparent links to the Kremlin, was \u00ab\u00a0unethical, \u00a0\u00bb Schiff said. \u00ab\u00a0This is a very serious business, whether criminal laws were violated or not.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

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