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Jared Kushner: 'I did not collude with Russia' Jared Kushner: 'I did not collude with Russia'
(about 1 hour later)
Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner said in a statement to congressional committees that he “did not collude” with Russia or seek back-channels with Moscow during the US election campaign last year. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has insisted he “did not collude” with Russia during the presidential election, and dismissed the significance of a meeting with Donald Trump Jr and a Russian lawyer.
“I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government,” Kushner said in a written statement released on Monday before his appearance in closed-door meetings with members of the US Congress. In an 11-page statement released early on Monday in the run-up to his appearance before the Senate intelligence committee, Kushner claims he had four contacts with Russian officials during the presidential election and transition, but says they were part of his role as a Trump campaign point man for foreign governments.
“I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector,” he said. “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government,” Kushner writes. “I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.”
Kushner said he had “perhaps four contacts with Russian representatives” during the 2016 campaign and presidential transition period after Trump’s victory. Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka and is a hugely influential presence in the White House, is under scrutiny as part of two congressional investigations into Russia’s interference in last year’s presidential election, including the question of whether Trump associates colluded with Moscow. Special counsel Robert Mueller is carrying out a separate investigation. Trump has repeatedly dismissed the efforts as a “witch-hunt”.
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, says none of the contacts was improper. He also denies that Russians finance any of his business in the private sector. Kushner’s testimony will be submitted for the record before he answers questions from the Senate intelligence committee on Monday and House intelligence committee on Tuesday, both behind closed doors.
The statement also details a June 2016 meeting with a Russian-American lawyer and says it was such a “waste of time” that he asked his assistant to call him out of the gathering. The 36-year-old Kushner, a property millionaire, portrays himself as “not a person who has sought the spotlight” but found his responsibilities growing in a campaign that had “a nimble culture” and was able to “make changes on the fly”.
Emails released this month show that the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, accepted the meeting at Trump Tower with the idea that he would receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton. But Kushner says he hadn’t seen those emails until recently shown them by his lawyers. He acknowledged two contacts with Russian officials during the campaign but maintains he has “nothing to hide”. Emails released earlier this month show that the president’s son, Trump Jr, accepted a meeting Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in June 2016 expecting to receive “incriminating” information about Hillary Clinton via the Russian government. The email chain had the subject heading “Russian – Clinton – private and confidential.”
Kushner said in his statement that Trump Jr invited him to the meeting. He says he arrived late and when he heard the lawyer discussing the issue of adoptions, he texted his assistant to call him out. Kushner says in his statement that Trump Jr invited him to the meeting and reminded him of the time change to 4pm.
“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 (or their names), and I have no knowledge of any documents being offered or accepted,” Kushner’s statement says. “That email was on top of a long back and forth that I did not read at the time,” he writes. “Documents confirm my memory that this was calendared as ‘Meeting: Don Jr | Jared Kushner.’ No one else was mentioned.”
Kushner also denies reports he discussed setting up a secret back-channel with the Russian ambassador to the US. He arrived late, he continues, and Veselnitskaya was talking about a ban on American families adopting Russian children.
He said he did speak with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in December at Trump Tower. But he says that conversation was about policy in Syria. “I had no idea why that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not well spent at this meeting,” he writes.
Kushner says that when Kislyak asked if there was a secure line for him to provide information on Syria from what Kislyak called his “generals,” Kushner asked if there was an existing communications channel at the embassy that could be used. “Reviewing emails recently confirmed my memory that the meeting was a waste of our time and that, in looking for a polite way to leave and get back to my work, I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for 10 or so minutes and wrote: ‘Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting.’”
Kushner says he never proposed an ongoing secret form of communication. His statement adds: “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 (or their names), and I have no knowledge of any documents being offered or accepted.”
Kushner writes that his first meeting with a Russian official was in April 2016 at the Mayflower hotel in Washington, where Trump delivered a major foreign policy speech. He was introduced to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak at a reception but their interaction was brief, he claims.
“With all the ambassadors, including Mr Kislyak, we shook hands, exchanged brief pleasantries and I thanked them for attending the event and said I hoped they would like candidate Trump’s speech and his ideas for a fresh approach to America’s foreign policy. The ambassadors also expressed interest in creating a positive relationship should we win the election.
“Each exchange lasted less than a minute; some gave me their business cards and invited me to lunch at their embassies. I never took them up on any of these invitations and that was the extent of the interactions.”
Kushner denies any other contact with Kislyak during the campaign, contradicting media reports that he had had two phone calls with the ambassador.
He does acknowledge meeting Kislyak at Trump Tower in December, during the transition, but claims the conversation was about policy in Syria and denies reports that he discussed setting up a secret back channel. The meeting was also attended by retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn, who would become the president’s national security adviser before being forced to resign.
“I stated our desire for a fresh start in relations,” Kushner writes. “Also, as I had done in other meetings with foreign officials, I asked Ambassador Kislyak if he would identify the best person (whether the ambassador or someone else) with whom to have direct discussions and who had contact with his president.
“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 says that when Kislyak asked if there was a secure line for him to provide information on Syria from his “generals”, Kushner asked if there was an existing communications channel at the embassy that could be used. He writes that Kislyak said “that would not be possible” and they agreed to wait until after the inauguration to receive the information.
“I did not suggest a ‘secret back-channel’,” Kushner writes. “I did not suggest an on-going secret form of communication for then or for when the administration took office. I did not raise the possibility of using the embassy or any other Russian facility for any purpose other than this one possible conversation in the transition period.”
The second transition-period meeting Kushner says he had with Russians was on 13 December, when he sat down with Sergey Gorkov, a banker with “a direct line to the Russian president”, as a courtesy to Kislyak. Their meeting lasted 20 to 25 minutes, Kushner writes, and Gorkov presented two gifts – a work of art and a bag of dirt from Nvgorod, his family’s ancestral village in Belarus. But Kushner writes that “no specific policies were discussed”.
Kushner’s financial disclosure forms did not originally include the meetings with Russian officials. He blames this on an honest mistake made by his assistant at the time.
At one point in the statement, Kushner fringes writes that on 30 October 2016 he received an email from “Guccifer400”, who “threatened to reveal candidate Trump’s tax returns and demanded that we send him 52 bitcoins in exchange for not publishing that information.
“I brought the email to the attention of a US secret service agent on the plane we were all travelling on and asked what he thought. He advised me to ignore it and not to reply – which is what I did. The sender never contacted me again.”
The Senate judiciary committee had planned to interview Trump Jr and former campaign manager Paul Manafort on Wednesday, but this has been postponed indefinitely while negotiations with their lawyers continue.
The Russia investigations have cast a shadow over the White House and consumed Trump’s attention. In a tweet on Monday, he did not mention Kushner directly but once again tried to deflect scrutiny on to election rival Hillary Clinton: “So why aren’t the committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered AG, looking into crooked Hillary’s crimes and Russia relations?”
The reference to “beleaguered AG” concerned Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, whom Trump criticised last week for recusing himself from the Russia investigation.
Earlier on Monday the president also tweeted: “After one year of investigation with zero evidence being found, Chuck Schumer just stated that “Democrats should blame ourselves, not Russia.””