Blocked phone calls from Donald Trump Jr.’s cell phone around the time of a Trump Tower meeting with Russians in June 2016 were not made to the President investigators have revealed.
ABC News reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee has discovered that the calls were made to longtime family friends.
The calls in question, made to blocked phone numbers, went out to Brian France, chief executive of Nascar, and investor Howard Lorber, according to three separate sources.
The revelation puts to rest a long-held Democrat conspiracy theory that Trump Jr. had phoned his father about the meeting seeking dirt from the Russians on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
Sources tell @ABC News the blocked calls that many Congressional investigators long believed were between Donald Trump Jr and his father were NOT – instead to longtime Trump family friends https://t.co/Vh0S9LKn7l
— John Santucci (@Santucci) January 31, 2019
Adam Schiff Hardest Hit
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has long floated the possibility that Trump Jr.’s phone calls to blocked numbers had to have been to President Trump.
“We wanted to get the phone records to determine, was Donald Trump talking to his son about this meeting,” Schiff told CNN during an interview in November.
“It’s an obvious investigative step, but one the Republicans were unwilling to take because they were afraid of where the evidence might lead.”
That evidence, he alleged, was that it would point to President Trump. Schiff even set forth to obtain the phone records and thus prove the President had lied to Special Counsel Robert Mueller about speaking with his son about the meeting.
A profile of Schiff in the New Yorker explained the Democrat’s intent once he took over the Senate Intelligence Committee:
According to telephone records available to the committee, three days before the meeting Trump, Jr., made a series of calls. In the interval between one call from Russia and another to Russia on that day, Trump, Jr., spoke for three or four minutes to someone whose phone number was blocked. This raised the question of whether Trump, Jr., had advised his father of the planned meeting—which both the President and his son have long denied. Under Nunes, the committee declined to issue a subpoena to the telephone company to determine whether Trump, Jr., had been talking with his father. Schiff told me that, when he takes over the committee, one of his first orders of business will be to issue such a subpoena.
The gambit backfired spectacularly with this new report indicating who was actually on the other end of the phone calls.
President and Trump Jr. Mock Schiff
The latest evidence gave the President and Donald Trump Jr. plenty of ammo to mock Congressman Schiff.
The younger Trump took to social media to ask if anyone had heard from Schiff since the devastating report about one of his more promising avenues of inquiry about ‘Russian collusion’ had fizzled out.
He also noted the Democrat’s propensity for leaking sensitive information as part of the Committee.
Has anyone heard from Adam Schiff?
I imagine he’s busy leaking other confidential info from the House Intelligence Committee to change the subject?!? #FullOfSchiff https://t.co/7CC6k0CjlJ
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 1, 2019
The President, not to be outdone, said the self-inflicted embarrassment on Schiff and the Democrats part was “really sad.”
Just out: The big deal, very mysterious Don jr telephone calls, after the innocent Trump Tower meeting, that the media & Dems said were made to his father (me), were just conclusively found NOT to be made to me. They were made to friends & business associates of Don. Really sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 1, 2019
He later wrote that “this witch hunt must end!”
