President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner failed to disclose at least three additional contacts he had with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Reuters reported Friday.
Seven current and former U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters said these conversations between Kushner and Sergei Kislyak included two phone calls between April and November 2016.
This news came hours after a Friday night bombshell in the Washington Post reporting that the pair discussed setting up a secret communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin. In Russian communications intercepted by the U.S., Kislyak said Kushner proposed establishing this workaround and using equipment available in stateside Russian diplomatic facilities.
Kushner became a “focus” of a federal probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives working to swing the 2016 election “by early this year,” according to Reuters.
The Post and NBC reported earlier this week that Kushner’s communications with Kislyak and meetings with the head of a Russian bank under sanction by the U.S. had drawn attention from the FBI, making him the first current White House employee known to be under federal scrutiny.
The FBI declined Reuters’ request for comment, while the White House did not respond to the publication’s request for comment.
As Reuters reported:
FBI investigators are examining whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump, said the current U.S. law enforcement official.
Kushner failed to note two meetings with Kisylak and another with the head of the Russian bank, Vnesheconombank, as well as other conversations with foreign officials, on his application for a security clearance. His lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, told the New York Times that the omissions were an error and that he provided additional information to the FBI the day after submitting his application.
It’s always important to remember that Vnesheconombank has deep ties to Rosneft which has deep ties to Rex Tillerson who has known ties to Vladimir Putin …
Always follow the money.
Seems like just yesterday the Trump campaign was denying any contacts or connections with Russia. How quaint.
Trump told reporters, “I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.” Jan 16, 2017
I hear Guantanamo Bay is lovely this time of year.
So now we have contacts going as far back as April, and continuing through out the campaign.
The April date in particular is going to be troublesome, because now we are months before the June time frame when things started heating up everywhere else…and we are also before Trump won the nomination.
Which of course raises the question…Was Russia putting their fingers on the scale for Trump against other republicans? I wonder how THAT is going to play…
I’m not sure where I read this, but one hypothesis is that all these leaks are designed to inoculate Trump against blackmail----if there are no secrets, there is no blackmail. All these leaks may hurt a criminal case, potentially, so finding another reason makes sense.