Kushner, Manafort face congressional investigators
WASHINGTON — Two key members of President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign met Tuesday with congressional investigators probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion with Trump associates.
Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner returned to Capitol Hill for a second day of private meetings, this time for a closed-door conversation with lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee.
Separately, Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman, met with bipartisan staff of the Senate intelligence committee and “answered their questions fully,” his spokesman, Jason Maloni, said.
Manafort’s discussion with the committee staff was confined to his recollection of a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower, according to two people familiar with the interview. Manafort also turned over his contemporaneous notes documenting the meeting, one said. The other person said Manafort has agreed to additional interviews with the Senate intelligence committee staff on other topics. Those meetings haven’t yet been scheduled.
Both Manafort and Kushner have faced scrutiny about attending the Trump Tower meeting because it was described in emails to Donald Trump Jr. as part of a Russian government effort to aid Trump’s presidential campaign.
Kushner spent about three hours Tuesday behind closed doors with the House committee.
“I found him to be straightforward, forthcoming, wanted to answer every question we had,” said Republican Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, who is leading the panel’s Russia probe.
The committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said the questions touched on “a range of issues the committee had been concerned about.”
In an 11-page statement, he acknowledged his Russian contacts during the campaign and immediately after the election, in which he served as a liaison between the transition and foreign governments. He described each contact as either insignificant or routine and he said the meetings, along with several others, were omitted from his security clearance form because of an aide’s error. Kushner cast himself as a political novice learning in real time to juggle “thousands of meetings and interactions” in a fast-paced campaign.
Kushner’s statement was the first detailed defense from a campaign insider responding to the controversy that has all but consumed the first six months of Trump’s presidency. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia sought to tip the 2016 campaign in Trump’s favor. Congressional committees, as well as a Justice Department special counsel, are investigating whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia and whether the president has sought to hamper the investigations.