Just a note before we get started, producing investigations on a regular schedule is tricky,

which is one reason you haven't heard from us in a while.

This summer we're working on more stories and you will hear from us every now and then,

including an episode later this week following Robert Mueller's testimony.

If you want to know when new episodes come out, sign up for our newsletter.

And when we come back in September, we'll have new episodes on a regular Fortnitely

schedule that means a new Trump Inc. story every two weeks.

Hello and welcome to this Trump Inc. podcast extra. I'm Ilya Maritz.

Trump Inc. is an open investigation into the business of Trump from ProPublica and WNYC.

Here's a story about how someone with no particular technical background or subject matter

expertise managed to put himself in the middle of a vital national security issue.

And we don't know what impact he might have had. It's a window into the way power and

influence work in Trump's Washington. ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson found a good friend of Donald

Trump Jr. was able to meet with high-level government officials again and again on the future of

wireless broadband technology, also known as 5G. 5G and mobile broadband is a resource that is going

to touch and does touch everything we do, the future not just of communication but of war fighting.

It's driverless cars, it's machine learning, it's how devices talk to each other.

It's also a major national security concern. Another way to think about 5G is a rivalry between

the United States and China. The two biggest economies in the world are increasingly developing

and trying to promote their own sort of plans to implement the technology faster than the other.

And as this was happening, Don Jr.'s friend found his seat for himself at the policy makers table.

And then Jake learned he found another seat for a friend of his, a guy with financial incentives

...