DEMS JUST ‘CRYING WOLF’ WITH CLAIMS OF COLLUSION
Jared on Russia meeting: I didn’t have ‘time to read every’ email
WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner denied Russian collusion yesterday in a closeddoor session with congressional investigators, the first of a series of high-stakes interviews targeting President Trump’s White House and campaign inner circles — including Donald Trump Jr.
“Let me be very clear: I did not collude with Russia nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so,” Kushner said in brief remarks at the White House after being questioned on Capitol Hill for nearly three hours by the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser is set to answer more questions today in a second closed session before the House Intelligence Committee.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president “was very proud of Jared” and reiterated his belief that the probe is “a witch hunt and hoax.”
Trump Jr. and a former Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, are also due to appear privately before congressional investigators in an agreement worked out to avoid testifying publicly. Lying to the congressional investigators carries a penalty of up to 5 years in prison.
“This is kind of morphing into a combination of Iran Contra and Watergate,” said Patrick G. Eddington, a Cato Institute policy analyst and former CIA officer, citing the breadth of the probe and its proximity to the president.
A key topic of the interviews will be a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower Kushner, Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. attended with Russians offering damaging information about thenDemocratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
In an 11-page opening statement to investigators, which Kushner released yesterday, he denied prior knowledge of the purpose of that meeting or its attendees, despite being forwarded an email from Donald Trump Jr. with the subject line “Russia — Clinton — private and confidential” and requesting that Kushner attend.
“I did not have the time to read every (email), especially long emails from unknown senders or email chains to which I was added at some later point in the exchange,” Kushner said.
But Kushner did detail four interactions with Russians during the campaign and transition, including what he called a brief meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at an April 2016 campaign foreign policy event at the Mayflower Hotel that Kushner organized.
But, Kushner maintained, “I had no ongoing relationship with the ambassador before the election, and had limited knowledge about him then.”
Kushner also denied seeking a “secret back channel” between Washington and Moscow before the inauguration, saying he only asked Kislyak about an “existing communications channel at his embassy” that could be used to discuss Syrian policy.
Those statements will now be weighed against not only the testimony of other witnesses questioned by Congress and special counsel Robert Mueller, but also against a broad body of intelligence information, including intercepts and documents, that has yet to be disclosed publicly. Inconsistencies with that evidence could prove legally and politically perilous.
“It’s what you don’t know at the end of the day that can really come back to hurt you,” Eddington said.
Jared Kushner claims he never colluded with Russia. So what if he did? There is a long history of incoming administrations colluding with allies and adversaries. Well-known Democrat and legal scholar Alan Dershowitz begs his party to stop crying wolf.
Kushner is guilty of marrying Donald Trump’s daughter and helping him win the White House. That’s the real crime Democratic politicians are trying to nail him for.
Dershowitz, a former Harvard Law professor, joined Boston Herald Radio while Kushner was being grilled by lawmakers behind closed doors yesterday.
“Collusion is not a crime. There is no such crime as collusion,” Dershowitz told us on our “Morning Meeting” show.
“Ronald Reagan colluded with the Iranians prior to becoming president to postpone the release of the hostages so he would get credit for it,” he said. “Virtually every incoming administration colludes with some ally and, sometimes, some adversary.”
Kushner was before Senate Intelligence Committee investigators to answer questions about a meeting he, Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had last summer with a Russian lawyer and others.
Reading from prepared remarks outside the White House without taking questions from reporters, Kushner said, “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government.”
The meeting reportedly was aimed at getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. Opposition research is as common in campaigns as kissing babies. Everyone does it.
Dershowitz is spot on when he argues that this is not a legal issue but a political one.
“The Democrats are crying wolf. ... They are yelling, ‘crime, crime, criminal offense and treason.’ ... Somehow if there were a crime committed, even though I am not predicting that, they would have no credibility because they keep yelling wolf.”
For the last six months, Dershowitz has been trying to draw the sharp distinction between “what is a crime and what is a political sin.”
He said the media are fueling the misconception. He claims the New York Times, which once welcomed his Op-Eds, is no longer interested in his views.
“The New York Times will have five Op-Eds on alleged crimes committed by the Trump administration. When I ask to write one Op-Ed showing maybe the leaders should understand there are no crimes committed, they would not even respond. They don’t want their readers to hear the other side of the issue,” Dershowitz said.
Stay tuned for Dershowitz’s new book, “Trumped up! How Criminalizing Politics Is Dangerous to Democracy,” due out next month. We can only hope that by then politicians in both parties will have recognized the difference between crime and politics, and will get back to work on issues that actually matter.