US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan is urging President Donald Trump's eldest son to testify to a congressional committee about alleged links between Trump's team and Russia in the 2016 presidential election campaign.
If he testified, Donald Trump Jr would be the first member of the Republican president's inner circle to give testimony to congressional investigations into the Russia allegations.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, a Republican, planned to send a letter on Thursday to the younger Trump to ask him to appear, CNN reported.
Ryan, the top-ranking Republican in Congress, told a news conference he supported that.
Accusations Moscow interfered in the election and colluded with the Trump campaign have dominated Trump's first months in office. Russia denies meddling in the campaign, and Trump says there was no collusion.
Trump Jr disclosed this week he had met with a Russian lawyer last year who was said to be offering damaging information on Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr eagerly agreed to meet the lawyer, who he was told by an intermediary was part of Moscow's official support for his father's campaign, according to emails he released this week.
Trump said in Paris on Thursday that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was a private attorney and not a Russian government lawyer, and that nothing of substance came of the meeting.
"My son is a wonderful young man. He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer, not a government lawyer but a Russian lawyer. It was a short meeting. It was a meeting that went very, very quickly, very fast," he said at a joint news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.
"I've only been in politics for two years, but I've had many people call up, 'Oh gee, we have information on this factor or this person or frankly Hillary,' - that's very standard in politics. Politics is not the nicest business in the world, but it's very standard," he said.
Watchdog groups filed a complaint against Donald Trump Jr, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and former campaign chief Paul Manafort on Thursday with the federal agency that oversees elections, arguing the three violated the law by meeting with the Russian.
