Manafort, Trump Jr., Kushner to Appear Before Senate Committees Next Week

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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Richard Drew, Evan Vucci/AP Photo

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. will appear before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing next week, the committee announced Wednesday — while Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will reportedly appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed hearing.

Manafort and Trump Jr. will appear at a committee hearing: “Oversight of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and Attempts to Influence U.S. Elections: Lessons Learned from Current and Prior Administrations: on Wednesday, July 26 at 10 a.m.

The appearance will give both men an opportunity to tackle head-on a number of claims made about their alleged connections to Russia. Manafort resigned from the campaign in August after a damaging article in the New York Times that reported on ledgers showing millions of dollars in payments for Manafort from a Ukrainian pro-Russian party.

Trump Jr. has been under fire in recent weeks over a meeting he took with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and a Russian-American lobbyist in June, a meeting that was presented to him as one that would contain damaging information on Hillary Clinton’s Russian dealings.

While the meeting apparently contained no such information, Trump opponents have seized on the revelations, particularly an email that says the information was to be passed on as part of Russian efforts to help then-candidate Trump, as evidence of attempted collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Kushner, meanwhile, will appear at a closed-door Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Monday, July 24, Kushner’s lawyer confirmed to ABC News.

Kushner is also likely to be asked about his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign, particularly as he also sat in on the meeting with Veselnitskaya. Manafort was also present at the June meeting.

Committees in both the House and the Senate, as well as the Justice Department, are investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — as well as allegations that members of the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to help tip the election.

Democrats have been pushing a Russian conspiracy narrative since within days of Clinton’s election defeat, and Clinton herself has put Russia on the top of her list of people and groups for her election defeat.

Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter:  @AdamShawNY

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