US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner will return to Capitol Hill Tuesday for a second day of private meetings with congressional investigators, this time for a closed-door conversation with lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee.
Kushner on Monday answered questions from staff on the Senate's intelligence panel, acknowledging four meetings with Russians during and after Trump's victorious White House bid and insisting he had "nothing to hide." He emerged smiling to publicly declare, "All of my actions were proper."
Hours before the Senate meeting, Kushner released an 11-page statement that was billed as his remarks to both the Senate and House committees. Kushner's statement takes exceptional care to separate him from meeting that Trump Jr arranged with a Russian lawyer - a meeting that Trump Jr had been informed would furnish the Trump campaign with information about Hillary Clinton supplied by the Russian government.
Kushner's statement on Russia
''In June 2016, my brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr asked if I was free to stop by a meeting on 9 June. The campaign was headquartered in the same building as his office in Trump Tower, and it was common for each of us to swing by the other's meetings when requested. He eventually sent me his own email changing the time of the meeting.
“I arrived at the meeting a little late. When I got there, the person who has since been identified as a Russian attorney was talking about the issue of a ban on US adoptions of Russian children. I had no idea why that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not well-spent at this meeting. ''
“I had not met the attorney before the meeting nor spoken with her since. I thought nothing more of this short meeting until it came to my attention recently. I did not read or recall this email exchange before it was shown to me by my lawyers when reviewing documents for submission to the committees. No part of the meeting I attended included anything about the campaign, there was no follow up to the meeting that I am aware of, I do not recall how many people were there, and I have no knowledge of any documents being offered or accepted. Finally, after seeing the email, I disclosed this meeting prior to it being reported in the press on a supplement to my security clearance form, even if that was not required as meeting the definitions of the form.”
It's not entirely clear that the “long back and forth” that Kushner claims he “did not read at the time” is the email chain that Trump Jr released, under duress, which demonstrated that the meeting was taken with the express purpose of getting information advertised as coming from the Russian government. But it seems clear that this is what he is referring to.
Kushner's statement does not deny outright either that the meeting did address the campaign or that any documents had been offered to the Trump camp, which the email chain appears to confirm. All it does is insulate Kushner from those facts.
Whatever the truth turns out to be on those fronts, what Kushner's statement does not do is contest any of the known facts about that meeting - known facts that are deeply problematic for Trump Jr and even for Trump himself. The meeting, at a minimum, shows that Trump Jr was eager to collude with the Russian government, which, he had been told, was trying to get his father elected president. Kushner's statement denies any collusion on his own part, and claims no awareness of any other collusion:
“I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government.”
