The following article by Philip RUcker and Karoun Demirjian was posted on the Washington Post website July 24, 2017:
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, walked into Senate offices Monday morning to begin answering questions behind closed doors about his contacts with Russian officials.
In written remarks made public prior to his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kushner denies any improper contacts or collusion. The 11-page statement by Kushner details four meetings he had with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign and transition period — including one set up by Donald Trump Jr. with a Russian lawyer.
Kushner defends his interactions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and other Russian officials as typical contacts in his role as the Trump campaign’s liaison to foreign governments, according to the prepared statement he plans to submit for the record.
Kushner is answering questions behind closed doors, first to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday and then again on Tuesday to the House Intelligence Committee. Both panels are probing Russian interference in the 2016 election and contacts between Russia and Trump campaign officials and associates.
[Read Kushner’s prepared statement]
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russian government orchestrated a far-reaching campaign to meddle with last year’s presidential campaign and influence the outcome in Trump’s favor.
Kushner’s appearances before congressional committees mark a new phase in the investigations of Russian meddling, as he is the first of the president’s closest advisers to appear before them.
In his testimony, which will be submitted to the congressional committees before he answers questions from lawmakers, Kushner says he has had only “limited contacts” with Russian representatives and denies any wrongdoing.
“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 portrays himself as a goal-oriented task master new to presidential politics who assumed increasingly important responsibilities on a fast-paced campaign in which decisions were made “on the fly,” including serving as the main point of contact for foreign government officials.
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, the execution of which Kushner says he oversaw. Kushner writes that he attended a reception to thank the event’s host, Dimitri Simes, publisher of the National Interest, a foreign policy magazine. Simes introduced Kushner to four ambassadors at the reception, including Kislyak, Kushner says.
“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,” Kushner writes. “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 does not name the other three ambassadors he met at the reception.
Kushner denies having had any other contact with Kislyak during the campaign, disputing a report by Reuters that he had two phone calls with the ambassador.
“While I participated in thousands of calls during this period, I do not recall any such calls with the Russian Ambassador,” Kushner writes. “We have reviewed the phone records available to us and have not been able to identify any calls to any number we know to be associated with Ambassador Kislyak and I am highly skeptical these calls took place.”
In fact, Kushner goes on to note that on Nov. 9, the day after the election, when the campaign received a congratulatory note from Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kushner tried to verify it was real and could not remember Kislyak’s name. “So I sent an email asking Mr. Simes, ‘What is the name of the Russian ambassador?’ ” Kushner writes.
Kushner also describes attending a June 2016 meeting organized by his brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr., with a Russian attorney. He says it was listed on his calendar as “Meeting: Don Jr. | Jared Kushner.” He writes that he arrived at the meeting late, and when he got there the Russian lawyer was talking about a ban on U.S. 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,” Kushner writes. “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 writes that he received a “random email” on Oct. 30, 2016, from a screen name “Guccifer400,” which he interpreted as “a hoax” that was “an extortion attempt and threatened to reveal candidate Trump’s tax returns and demanded that we send him 52 bitcoins in exchange for not publishing that information.”
Kushner says he brought the email to the attention of a Secret Service agent he was traveling with, who advised him “to ignore it and not to reply — which is what I did.”
Kushner also details two interactions with Russian officials during the transition period, before Trump was sworn in as president on Jan. 20. The first, on Dec. 1, was a meeting with Kislyak at Trump Tower in New York, which retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who would become the president’s national security adviser, also attended.
“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 writes that Kislyak addressed U.S. policy in Syria and wanted to “convey information from what he called his ‘generals’ ” but that they could not come to the United States and “he asked if there was a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation.”
Kushner continues that he or Flynn explained there were no such lines, and that Kushner asked Kislyak if the Russians had “an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn.” He writes that Kislyak said “that would not be possible” and they agreed to wait until after the inauguration to receive the information.
The Washington Post first reported in May on Kushner and Kislyak’s discussions about establishing a secret communications channel, though Kushner suggests in his testimony that the channel would have been for the purpose of this one meeting as opposed to establishing a “secret back channel.”
“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 Dec. 13, when Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, a banker with “a direct line to the Russian President,” at the urging of Kislyak. On Dec. 6, the Russian Embassy asked Kushner to meet with Kislyak on Dec. 7, and Kushner declined, he writes. They asked if he could meet on Dec. 6 and Kushner declined again, he writes. Kislyak then requested a meeting with Kushner’s assistant — “and, to avoid offending the Ambassador, I agreed,” Kushner writes.
Kislyak and Kushner’s assistant, whom Kushner does not name in his testimony, met on Dec. 12, where Kislyak requested that Kushner meet with Gorkov, “who could give insight into how Putin was viewing the new administration and best ways to work together.”
Kushner agreed to meet Gorkov, making room in his schedule for him the next day. Their meeting lasted 20 to 25 minutes, Kushner writes, and Gorkov presented two gifts — a piece of art from Nvgorod, the village where Kushner’s grandparents were from in Belarus, and a bag of dirt from there. Kushner then gave the gifts to his assistant and asked him to formally register them with the transition office.
During the meeting, Kushner writes, Gorkov told him about his bank and discussed the Russian economy, expressing “disappointment with U.S.-Russia relations under President Obama and hopes for a better relationship in the future.” Kushner writes that “no specific policies were discussed,” including sanctions imposed by the Obama administration.
At the end of his testimony, Kushner offers an explanation for failing to disclose all of his foreign government contacts on his SF-86 application for security clearance. He writes that his form was “prematurely submitted due to a miscommunication and initially did not list any contacts (not just with Russians) with foreign government officials.”
Kushner describes a frenzied period disentangling from his real estate business and moving his family to Washington during which a “rough draft” of his form was submitted by his assistant because of a “miscommunication.” Kushner writes that the initial submission omitted “all foreign contacts” and that a supplemental submission disclosed more than 100 contacts from more than 20 countries.
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