‘Spooked’ Kushner rejects Senate interview about Russian ties

Trump’s son-in-law asks committee about process of releasing transcripts

A “spooked” Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, won’t agree to a staff interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee, chair Chuck Grassley said.

The Iowa Republican said at a committee hearing Thursday that he now plans to release transcripts of the panel’s interviews with other participants in a 2016 meeting between Russians and top Trump campaign officials. That means the public could have its first glimpse of Donald Trump Jr.’s account of the event soon.

The meeting at Trump Tower in New York during the presidential campaign is one of the clearest known contacts between those close to Trump and Russians, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees investigate whether anyone around the president colluded in Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election.

Trump Jr. has said he took the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya because he was promised damaging information about Democrat Hillary Clinton, but nothing came of it.

Others attending included Kushner, Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and lobbyist and former Soviet counter-intelligence officer Rinat Akhmetshin.

“I had hoped to speak with all the witnesses surrounding the Trump Tower meeting before releasing any interview transcripts, but with the unilateral release of the transcript for Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, it seems to have spooked other potential witnesses,” Grassley said Thursday. “As a result, it looks like our chances of getting a voluntary interview with Mr. Kushner has been shot.”

Kushner’s legal team didn’t formally decline an appearance with the Senate Judiciary Committee, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News. But they asked for guidance on when lawmakers are allowed to disclose information and whether the committee had received the transcript of Kushner’s interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, created a stir by releasing the transcript of the interview with Simpson, whose firm commissioned a dossier of unverified allegations concerning Trump and Russia. Republicans say the dossier, largely paid for by Democrats and Clinton’s campaign, was misused to open the continuing investigations into Trump.

Grassley noted that Feinstein already has access to the transcript of Kushner’s interview with the Intelligence Committee, where the California lawmaker is a senior member, and said he hopes to see it as well.

Grassley said he would discuss how to release the transcripts with Feinstein, and he told reporters he didn’t know how soon the Trump Tower material will be made public.

“That section of our investigation is done,” Grassley of Iowa said.

But Feinstein said Thursday that the committee should still hold public hearings with Kushner and Trump Jr. “which we agreed to pursue last year.”

She also said the transcripts should first be handed over to Mueller.

“I agree the transcripts should be released to Mueller, and to the public when it won’t interfere with the investigation,” Feinstein said in an emailed statement.

In addition to the interview with Trump Jr., Grassley intends to release transcripts of interviews with other figures involved with the Trump Tower meeting, including Akhmetshin and Rob Goldstone, a British publicist who helped set up the event, as well as Veselnitskaya’s written answers to questions, according to a Judiciary Committee aide who asked not to be identified discussing the plans.

The announcement by Grassley came a day after two other Judiciary Committee Democrats, Richard Blumenthal and Sheldon Whitehouse, called on Grassley to share the transcripts with Mueller, particularly the Trump Jr. interview.

Grassley expressed an openness to sharing the transcripts with Mueller in comments to reporters Wednesday, but he said Mueller hadn’t asked for them.