"Happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know," Donald Trump Jr. said on Twitter. | AP Photo Congressional Russia investigators demand interviews with Trump Jr.

Key lawmakers are calling for President Donald Trump’s eldest son to submit to interviews with congressional investigators following the revelation that he met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the revelation “the first time that the public has seen clear evidence of senior-level members of the Trump campaign meeting with Russians to try to obtain information that might hurt the campaign of Hillary Clinton."


Warner, whose panel is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, including possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, said Donald Trump Jr. “absolutely” needs to appear before the committee.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican on the intelligence committee, said she wants Trump Jr. to submit to an interview, along with others who participated in the gathering with the Russian lawyer at Trump Tower.

“Our intelligence committee needs to interview him and others who attended the meeting," Collins said.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that his panel would also “want to question everyone that was at that meeting about what was discussed.”

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In a statement on Twitter, Trump Jr. indicated he would cooperate with the congressional panels.

"Happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know," he wrote.

Trump Jr. has also hired New York criminal defense attorney Alan Futerfas as his personal attorney for Russia-related matters, Futerfas told POLITICO.

The meeting between Trump Jr. and a Kremlin-connected lawyer was first reported by The New York Times. The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had promised to provide damaging information on Clinton, the Times reported.

Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, also attended the meeting.

The calls from lawmakers for Trump Jr. to appear before the House and Senate intelligence committees come as both panels are ramping up their investigations.

The Senate panel this week is beginning to conduct private interviews with members of the Trump campaign. The House panel has also been scheduling interviews with Trump campaign officials, and last month held a private session with former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Warner on Monday told reporters his committee continues to "add additional individuals that now need to be interviewed.”

He called the revelation about Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian lawyer part of a “continuing pattern we've seen since the election of Trump campaign and Trump administration officials who have conveniently forgotten meetings with Russians.”

“If I was a campaign manager and had been contacted by what may be an agent of a foreign power and was told that that agent might have damaging information about a potential candidate, I think I might remember that meeting,” Warner added. “I think it's also a little strange as a candidate, if my son or son-in-law met with an agent of a foreign power, I think I'd probably want to hear about that information.”

Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Congress needed to “find out a lot more about” the meeting with the Russian lawyer.

Asked if the meeting constituted collusion, McCain responded: “I don’t know because I don’t know enough about it, but it’s certainly not desirable.”