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Special Counsel Mueller Issued Subpoena for Russia-Related Documents From Trump Campaign Officials

Senate committee also pressures Kushner lawyer to turn over more documents

By Rebecca Ballhaus and Peter Nicholas Updated Nov. 16, 2017 7:51 p.m. ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/special-counsel-mueller-issued-subpoena-for-russia-related-documents-from-trump-campaign-officials-1510875492

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in mid-October issued a subpoena to President Donald Trump’s campaign requesting Russia-related documents from more than a dozen top officials, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The subpoena, which requested documents and emails from the listed campaign officials that reference a set of Russia-related keywords, marked Mr. Mueller’s first official order for information from the campaign, according to the person. The subpoena didn’t compel any officials to testify before Mr. Mueller’s grand jury, the person said.

The subpoena caught the campaign by surprise, the person said. The campaign had previously been voluntarily complying with the special counsel’s requests for information, and had been sharing with Mr. Mueller’s team the documents it provided to congressional committees as part of their probes of Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election.

The Trump campaign is providing documents in response to the subpoena on an “ongoing” basis, the person said.

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.

Mr. Mueller and congressional committees are investigating whether Trump associates colluded with Russian efforts to interfere in the election. Mr. Trump has denied collusion by him or his campaign, and Moscow has denied meddling in the election.

Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday said senior White House official Jared Kushner hadn’t turned over all the documents it has requested and asked his lawyer to be more forthcoming.

Congressional committees earlier this year asked the campaign to turn over Russia-related documents, emails and phone records dating back to June 2015, when Mr. Trump launched his campaign.

Sending a subpoena to an entity that says it has been cooperating with document requests isn’t unusual in cases in which prosecutors have some concern that their demands aren’t being met promptly or aren’t being entirely fulfilled, former prosecutors said. A subpoena can serve as a backup, to make sure the recipient is complying as promised, and as a reminder that failure to provide documents as demanded would count as obstructing a grand-jury investigation.

Mr. Mueller’s team had previously issued subpoenas individually to several top campaign officials, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Mike Flynn. Mr. Manafort currently faces charges including money laundering and tax evasion. He has pleaded not guilty and his attorney has called the charges “ridiculous.”

The campaign has retained Jones Day—a law firm it paid nearly $3 million during the 2016 campaign for routine legal services—to represent it in the Russia probe and help with document production, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Mr. Mueller’s team is expected to interview current and former White House officials, including communications director Hope Hicks, in the coming weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter. The team has interviewed several officials who worked with the campaign, including Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer, who went on to serve as White House chief of staff and press secretary, respectively. They have since left the administration.

Congressional investigators, meanwhile, have expressed dissatisfaction with the document productions from top Trump officials, including Mr. Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and former campaign aide who now serves as a senior White House adviser.

On Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee, said in a letter to Mr. Kushner’s attorney that the response they received to an earlier request was “incomplete.”

In their letter, the senators said others had given them a document involving “a Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite” that Mr. Kushner forwarded, but the Kushner team didn’t turn over that document to the committee.

The letter doesn’t give other details about the material. A Judiciary Committee spokesman didn’t immediately respond to questions about the document.

The senators addressed the three-page letter to Mr. Kushner’s attorney, Abbe Lowell. In a statement after the letter was made public, Mr. Lowell said Mr. Kushner had been “responsive to all requests” and had provided documents related to “Mr. Kushner’s calls, contacts or meetings with Russians during the campaign and transition, which was the request.”

During a two-day period in July, Mr. Kushner met with staff members on the Senate intelligence committee and spoke to lawmakers on the House panel.

In the letter, the senators said that Mr. Lowell hadn’t turned over documents relating to a government form Mr. Kushner filed in applying for a security clearance, which initially omitted what he said were more than 100 contacts he had with more than 20 countries.

The two senators said Mr. Lowell had declined to produce records involving the form, known as an SF-86, “on the basis that the documents are confidential and have been submitted to the FBI for its review.”

They asked Mr. Lowell to turn over the material nonetheless, saying there are no restrictions on Mr. Kushner providing it to the committee.

The senators also said Mr. Kushner failed to provide email communications about WikiLeaks, the online operation that last year published a trove of damaging Democratic emails that the U.S. intelligence community concluded were stolen by Russian hackers.

Donald Trump Jr., who earlier this week disclosed a set of private exchanges during the campaign between him and WikiLeaks, forwarded Mr. Kushner and other top campaign aides one of his communications with WikiLeaks in September 2016. Mr. Kushner subsequently forwarded that exchange to another campaign official, the committee said.

—Erica Orden contributed to this article.

Write to Rebecca Ballhaus at [e-mail] and Peter Nicholas at [e-mail]

Appeared in the November 17, 2017, print edition as 'Trump Campaign Documents Sought.'

https://www.wsj.com/articles/special-counsel-mueller-issued-subpoena-for-russia-related-documents-from-trump-campaign-officials-1510875492