Trump’s attacks could subvert Sessions
Attorney general weakened without president’s support
In five months as attorney general, Jeff Sessions has pursued the staunchly conservative agenda Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail.
He has refocused the nation’s attention on violent crime; ordered a sweeping review of police agreements that punished troubled agencies; threatened so-called sanctuary cities for harboring undocumented immigrants; and rolled back a series of Obama-era civil rights actions, including a Justice Department challenge to a controversial voter identification law in Texas.
Sessions has done virtually everything Trump wanted, except to protect the boss from an expanding investigation into Russia’s alleged interference in last year’s election.
Days after announcing that he would not have nominated Sessions to be the country’s chief law enforcement official had he known the attorney general would recuse himself from the Russia inquiry, Trump further isolated Sessions on Monday, describing him as “beleaguered” and questioning why he was not pursuing an investigation into former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The president’s public condemnations of the attorney general, analysts said, raise questions about whether Sessions will be able to serve. “He’s in no-man’s land right now,” said former Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller, who served in the Obama administration. “I don’t see how he can continue. He is certainly weakened, and it would be hard to work on policy matters with the White House if the president
He said he attended a meeting in June 2016 with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya arranged by Trump Jr., but he said he did not read emails that showed the president’s eldest son accepted the meeting with the idea that he would receive damaging information about Clinton from the Russian government.
Kushner denied that Russians financed some of his business interests in the private sector.
Some senators were not pleased with Kushner’s appearance before committee staff Monday and want him to come back for formal and public testimony before the full committee.
Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on Kushner to testify in public under oath and said his written statement raised more questions about his relationships with Russians.
The White House senior adviser “has repeatedly concealed information about his personal finances and meetings with foreign officials,” Wyden said. “There should be no presumption that he is telling the whole truth in this statement.”
At the very least, said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., the transcript from Kushner’s meeting with staff members should be made public. “Make everything as transparent as possible,” he said.
Shortly after Kushner left the hearing room, a protester tried to hand him a Russian flag and asked him to sign it. Kushner chuckled at the request.
Kushner, 36, is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka. During last year’s presidential campaign, he was in charge of Trump’s digital strategy, but he has evolved into one of the president’s closest senior aides, handling projects that range from Middle East peace talks to veteran affairs.
Kushner questioned the need for all the Russia investigations and echoed his father-in-law’s claim that Democrats hype the matter to explain away their loss of the presidential election.
“Donald Trump had a better message and ran a smarter campaign, and that is why he won,” Kushner said. “Suggesting otherwise ridicules those who voted for him.”
Kushner has distanced himself from emails Trump Jr. released this month. The emails from entertainment publicist Rob Goldstone promised Trump Jr. potentially incriminating information about the Clinton campaign from the Russian government — and Kushner said he didn’t read that part.
“That email was on top of a long back-and-forth that I did not read at the time,” Kushner said in the statement. “As I did with most emails when I was working remotely, I quickly reviewed on my iPhone the relevant message that the meeting would occur at 4:00 PM at his office.”
Jared Kushner “has repeatedly concealed information about his personal finances and meetings with foreign officials. There should be no presumption that he is telling the whole truth.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D - Ore.
Kushner said that during the meeting, he emailed his assistant to call him as an excuse to get out of the meeting because it was such a “waste of time.”
Kushner acknowledged that he met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak briefly at a reception in Washington in April 2016, then at Trump Tower in December.
Kislyak has been at the center of the controversy surrounding the Trump team and Russia. Conversations and meetings with him led to the resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn and the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions from the Russian investigation.
Kushner denied that his meeting in December was to set up a secret back channel between the White House and Moscow.