WHITE HOUSE - Donald Trump Jr. was questioned Wednesday during a closed-door session of the House Intelligence Committee, one of the congressional panels investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
The president’s eldest son slipped into a back entrance of the Capitol building for the interview.
One item of interest for investigators was a meeting the younger Trump held more than a year ago in the midst of the campaign at Trump Tower in New York, the president's business and political campaign headquarters.
The younger Trump, his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort met with a woman described as a "Russian government attorney," Natalia Veselnitskaya, after an intermediary had told the younger Trump that she would hand them incriminating information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump" in the election.
Donald Trump Jr. and Kushner have said Veselnitskaya had no such damaging information.
The White House on Tuesday strongly denied that the special prosecutor looking into alleged Russian interference in last year’s election has asked a German bank for records relating to accounts held by President Trump and his family members.
"We’ve confirmed this with the bank and other sources" that it is not true, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters during the daily briefing. "I think this is another example of the media going too far, too fast and we don’t see it going in that direction."
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A member of the president’s legal team, Jay Sekulow, issued a statement that "no subpoena has been issued or received."
However, Deutsche Bank appears to be acknowledging there has been a related request, saying it "takes its legal obligations seriously and remains committed to cooperating with authorized investigations into this matter."
The bank received a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller several weeks ago to provide information on certain transactions and key documents have already been handed over, according to the German financial newspaper .
Similar details also were reported Tuesday by the Bloomberg and Reuters news agencies, as well as the.
According to the newspaper Deutsche Bank has begun sending information about its dealings with Trump to U.S investigators.
A person with direct knowledge of the German bank’s actions told the newspaper this began several weeks ago.
"Deutsche could not hand over client information without a subpoena," said a second person with direct knowledge of the subpoena, according to the newspaper. "It’s helpful to be ordered to do so."
The subpoenas concern "people or entities affiliated with President Donald Trump, according to a person briefed on the matter," thereported in an update to its story.
"I would think it’s something more than a fishing expedition," says Edwin Truman, a former U.S. Treasury Department assistant secretary for international affairs.
"At a minimum, they know there’s some fish in this pond and they want to know whether they’re nice fish or bad fish," Truman, a nonresident fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Affairs, told VOA.
If the reports are true, "this is a significant development in that it makes clear that Mueller is now investigating President Trump’s finances, something that the president has always said would be a red line for him," said William Pomeranz of the Wilson Center, who teaches Russian law at Georgetown University.
"The substance of any potential charges remains unclear, but Deutsche Bank already has paid significant penalties in a Russian money laundering case, and I am sure that it does not welcome further investigations into its Russia operations," said Pomeranz, who as a lawyer advised clients on investment in Russia and anti-money laundering requirements.
The bank has a longstanding relationship with the Trump family, previously loaning the Trump organization hundreds of millions of dollars for real estate ventures.
Trump had liabilities of at least $130 million to a unit of the German bank, according to a federal financial disclosure form released in June by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.