Trump set to appear for questioning in E. Jean Carroll lawsuit, but is he under suspicion?
President Trump is set to appear before a U.S. Senate committee to testify about alleged campaign-finance violations in the 2020 race, a congressional hearing schedule obtained by the House Oversight and Reform Committee shows.
The hearing, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday in Washington, is the first public appearance for Trump in the ongoing investigation centering on the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate E. Jean Carroll.
It comes a day after a federal judge entered a lifetime gag order barring Trump from making any new public statements without first receiving permission from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, including testimony and responses during a deposition set for Monday.
Citing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, the House Oversight panel has been investigating whether Trump took unlawful actions to sway the outcome of the presidential election. It’s an effort to determine whether the president obstructed justice in his interactions with his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his former campaign adviser, Paul Manafort.
On Friday, the panel has scheduled for a second deposition with Cohen and Manafort, as well as Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for June 19.
A transcript of Trump’s testimony would be released publicly soon, but it would be several months before the committee would officially confirm the date and location of his testimony. It is unclear if he would give his testimony in a private setting, or if he would do so in a closed-door setting. The president has been advised not to testify publicly, according to people familiar with his plans.
On Friday, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the committee’s chairman, said: “I have long made clear that, in the presence of an American adversary, I am not a neutral arbiter and will give the president the benefit of the doubt no matter whether what he’s done to date is worthy of legal sanction.”
On Monday, a federal judge entered a lifetime gag order barring Trump from making new public statements without first receiving permission from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
On Friday,