The president’s eldest son meets with the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Donald Trump’s eldest son met with the US Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday as part of the panel’s investigation into Russia, the 2016 US election and whether his father’s election campaign colluded with Moscow.

CNN forced to climb down over Trump-WikiLeaks email report Read more

Donald Trump Jr arrived at a Senate office building shortly after 10am ET . Capitol police officers tried to keep journalists from witnessing his arrival, but he was spotted by reporters as he rushed to a room the committee uses for classified briefings.

US intelligence agencies said in the wake of Trump’s victory in the November 2016 US presidential election that they had concluded Russia sought to influence the campaign to boost Trump’s chances of defeating former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, his Democratic challenger.

Timeline The key events in the Trump-Russia investigation Show Hide

GCHQ warns US intelligence Britain’s spy agency GCHQ becomes aware of suspicious “interactions” between people with Trump ties and Russian intelligence operatives. In late 2015, GCHQ warns US intelligence. Hacking and 'influence campaign' The first phishing emails begin to hit Democratic individuals (the Democratic National Committee having been hacked months earlier). Hundreds or thousands of impostor accounts appear on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

Trump foreign policy meeting Trump is told about the Russian contacts of at least one aide, and Jeff Sessions shoots down a possible Trump-Putin meeting, according to multiple people present. Later Trump and Sessions repeatedly deny there had ever been such contacts by anyone in the campaign with Russian operatives.

Trump tower meeting Top Trump campaign advisers including Donald Trump Jr meet at Trump Tower with Russian operatives, having been promised "official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary." A Russian present says sanctions were discussed. Republican national convention The convention convenes in Cleveland, Ohio. Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak attends. Top Trump campaign aides vociferously deny contacts with Russian operatives. WikiLeaks releases 44,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee.

Publication of emails Across the Fall, outlets including WikiLeaks, Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks publish tens of thousands of emails stolen from Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The Facebook campaign As Russian impostor accounts spread divisive propaganda throughout social media over the Fall, the Trump campaign experiments aggressively with micro-targeting on Facebook, making on an "average day" 50,000-60,000 ads, according to former digital director Brad Parscale

Contacts and denials Top Trump campaign aides Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner and others have dozens of contacts with Russian operatives that are repeatedly denied in public across the Fall. "It never happened," a campaign spokeswoman said two days after the election. “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign."

Trump elected Donald Trump is elected president of the United States.

Presidential transition Trump aides keep up contacts with Russian operatives on matters of policy and appear to hide those conversations from the US government and public. Michael Flynn lied to the FBI about the conversations, then later admitted that Jared Kushner had directed him to seek certain policy commitments from the Russian ambassador.

James Comey fired Trump fires the FBI director. “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said 'you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story'," Trump tells an interviewer two days later.

Moscow has denied any such activity, and Trump has dismissed talk of possible collusion as a “witch hunt” led by Democrats disappointed about his victory.

The Senate committee is conducting one of the main congressional investigations. Richard Burr, the panel’s chairman, told reporters on Tuesday he expected its probe to last into 2018, but likely not for many months into the new year.

Department of Justice special counsel Robert Mueller is also investigating the matter.

Trump Jr testified to the House Intelligence Committee last week.

Lawmakers are interested in talking to him about a meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York City at which he said he hoped to get information about the “fitness, character and qualifications” of Clinton.