US Senators Want To Question Moscow-based Former Trump Associate - Reports

US Senate investigators have plans to question Moscow-based American businessman David Geovanis due to his long-standing ties to President Donald Trump in the ongoing probe into alleged Russian meddling during the 2016 US presidential election, media reported on Thursday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st February, 2019) US Senate investigators have plans to question Moscow-based American businessman David Geovanis due to his long-standing ties to President Donald Trump in the ongoing probe into alleged Russian meddling during the 2016 US presidential election, media reported on Thursday.

Two witnesses who have given evidence to the Senate Intelligence Committee told CNN that they were asked about Geovanis' past relationship with Trump during interviews last year.

According to report, this is the first time that Geovanis' name has been revealed in connection with various ongoing probes into Russian influence and collusion.

Geovanis helped organize a 1996 trip to Moscow by Trump, who was planning to build a Trump Tower in the Russian capital, CNN reported, citing multiple media reports at the time.

Years later, Geovanis, who was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, worked for Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska, whose ties to Trump's 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort have also been of interest to investigators, the report said.

Geovanis declined to comment on his past relationship with the president when reached over the phone. He also did not disclose whether he had been approached by the Senate committee, the report added.

Speculations about Trump's plans to construct a building in Moscow flared up in November after the president's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to a congressional committee investigating allegations of Trump-Moscow collusion and Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.

Cohen claimed that he had discussed the project with Trump three times during the election campaign, thereby backtracking on his 2017 testimony to Congress that all the talks on the issue had been completed in January 2016.

The Cohen case is part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into purported Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, something that Moscow has repeatedly and categorically denied.

Russia has said the allegations of election interference were made up to excuse the defeat of Trump's campaign opponent as well as deflect public attention from actual instances of electoral fraud and corruption. The claims of collusion have also been repeatedly dismissed by both Moscow and Trump, who has called Mueller's probe a "witch hunt."