The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WHAT KUSHNER SAID ABOUT RUSSIA PROBE
Senior adviser to Trump met with investigators.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, emerged Monday from a private, two-hourlong meeting with congressional investigators and said his meetings last year with Russians were not part of Moscow’s campaign to disrupt the presidential election.
“All of my actions were proper and occurred in the normal course of events of a very unique campaign,” Kushner said on the White House grounds.
“I did not collude with Russians, nor do I know of anyone in the campaign who did.”
He said Trump won the election because he had a better message and ran a smarter campaign than Hillary Clinton, not because he had help from Russia.
“Suggesting otherwise ridicules those who voted for him,” Kushner said in brief remarks. He took no questions from reporters.
In his prepared remarks to investigators, Kushner said he had been unaware that a June 2016 meeting he attended at Trump Tower was set up in the hope that a Russian lawyer would provide the Trump campaign with damaging information about Clinton.
He said he arrived at the meeting late and had been so uninterested in the discussion that he emailed his assistant to ask for her help in escaping.
Kushner, who gave his statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday, said he went to the meeting at the request of the president’s eldest son, Don- ald Trump Jr. Kushner said he did not read an email forwarded by the younger Trump saying that the Russian government was providing dirt about Clinton as part of its effort to help the Trump campaign.
In his prepared remarks, Kushner gave his first public explanation of his contacts with Russian government officials and other Kremlin-connected people over the past year.
He acknowledged that after the November election, he sought a direct line of communication to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. He characterized that action as a routine part of his job in establishing foreign contacts for Trump’s transition team.
In the remarks, Kushner flatly denied any collusion: “I had no improper contacts. I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government.”
The contacts with Russians by Kushner and by other senior members of the Trump campaign have taken on special significance. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Putin authorized a campaign of hacking and propaganda to try to tip the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor. The Justice Department and Congress are investigating whether anyone around Trump helped that effort, and whether the president has tried to impede the investigation.
Kushner’s closed-door appearance before Senate Intelligence Committee investigators Monday is the start of an important period in the inquiry, one that will keep the focus on Russia despite Trump’s repeated efforts to move past the controversy. Kushner is scheduled to speak to the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.
Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman, are negotiating with congressional investigators about when they will appear on Capitol Hill.
In his prepared remarks, Kushner said that his efforts during the transition to establish communications with Putin were proof that there were no communications with senior Kremlin officials during the campaign.
“The fact that I was asking about ways to start a dialogue after Election Day should of course be viewed as strong evidence that I was not aware of one that existed before Election Day,” Kushner said.
Kushner’s meetings during the transition with Russia’s ambassador to the United States and with a Russian banker have put him at the center of the controversy.
Kushner said he met the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, in November, along with Michael Flynn, a retired general who would become Trump’s national security adviser. Kushner said that he expressed hope during the meeting that the new administration would have an improved relationship with Moscow, and that he had asked Kislyak whom he should talk to who was in direct contact with Putin.
Kislyak said “generals” in Russia had important information to share about Syria, Kushner recalled. The United States and Russia are the dominant proxy powers in Syria’s civil war.
“He asked if there was a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation,” Kushner said. “General Flynn or I explained that there were no such lines. I believed developing a thoughtful approach on Syria was a very high priority given the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use.”
That request, first reported by The Washington Post and since confirmed by former senior U.S. officials, generated suspicion that Kushner was trying to avoid U.S. surveillance. Kushner denied that: “I did not suggest a secret back channel.”