Six takeaways from Kushner's statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee
In the statement released in advance of the closed committee hearing, President Trumps son-in-law says he had minimal contact with Russian government officials during the campaign and transition
Jared Kushner, senior White House adviser and son-in-law to President Trump, released a statement in advance of his closed-door testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee today. Here are six takeaways:
• Kushner said that he never set out to have a pivotal role in Trump's presidential campaign, but that his responsibilities grew exponentially as the race wore on.
• Kushner said he had only minimal contact with the Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, and couldn't even remember his name the day after the election, when the campaign was searching for someone in the Russian government to verify that Trump had received a note of congratulations from Vladimir Putin.
• Kushner's one and only meeting during the campaign with Kisylak occurred in April 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where Trump gave a foreign policy address. Kushner said he was introduced to Kislyak with several other foreign diplomats, but he only exchanged pleasantries with Kislyak and the others.
• Kushner said he exited early from the June 9, 2016, meeting involving the president's son, Donald Trump Jr. and a Kremlin connected lawyer that has generated a firestorm of controversy, and renewed allegations of collusion between the campaign and the Russian government. The portion of the meeting he attended focused entirely on Russian government restrictions on adoptions of Russian children by U.S. citizens and there was no discussion of the campaign, Kushner says.
• Kushner knocked down reports that he and other members of the incoming Trump administration sought to set up a back channel line of communication to the Russians before the inauguration, designed to bypass official U.S. communications links. "I did not suggest any ongoing secret form of communication," Kushner says in the statement.
• Kushner said he had a total of four contacts with figures linked to the Russian government during the campaign and the transition. These contacts were inadvertently left off of his official disclosure form amid the swirl of activity during the transition and the rush to meet the filing deadline.
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