Donald Trump Jr scheduled for Capitol Hill interview Wednesday

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Jonathan Turley: Trump Jr.-Russia meeting not a crime

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Donald Trump Jr. is scheduled to appear before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday as it continues its probe into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential election.

The president’s eldest son previously answered questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee behind closed doors in September regarding a June 2016 meeting he took with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York City.

For his second appearance on Capitol Hill, Trump Jr. will face similar questions surrounding the family’s financial dealings with Russia and once again, the 2016 meeting he had with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who promised information on then-candidate Donald Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, the Hill reported.

Wednesday's voluntary meeting also will take place behind closed doors, the paper reported.

Trump Jr. is also in the crosshairs of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who is pressuring the judiciary panel's chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to subpoena Trump Jr. to testify publicly.

Public testimony is necessary “to compel him to fully account for his actions in front of the American people,” Blumenthal said, according to the Hill.

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Blumenthal cited Trump Jr.’s Twitter communications with WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign as one of a “number of cascading disclosures that suggest collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials,” the paper reported.

Russian hackers reportedly accessed Democratic National Committee emails that were later distributed via WikiLeaks, according to U.S. intelligence officials. However, the organization’s founder, Julian Assange, disputes the claim, telling Fox News earlier this year that the “source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.”

“Mr. Trump, Jr.’s refusal to testify before the Committee means that key questions have been left unanswered,” Blumenthal added.

Trump Jr. was subpoenaed earlier this year by the committee, but it was later dismissed after he agreed to cooperate.

Rob Goldstone, the British publicist who reportedly arranged the infamous meeting between Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer, will also go before the House and Senate Intelligence committees possibly sometime next week, CNN reported.

The publicist hinted last month in an interview with the Sunday Times that he was ready to talk with Special Counsel Robert Mueller and put his “recollection of events in the public record."

"After the story initially broke, it seemed to quiet down for a while. But now it's back in the news with such force, I feel it's time for me to explain what happened," he told the paper.

Last week, former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI in Mueller’s ongoing investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump administration.