The coverup continues -- and it’s getting closer and closer to Trump himself.
"As the Trump administration’s been sent into a death spiral over the firing of FBI Director James Comey last week — a failed move to curtail the Justice Department investigation into contact between his campaign and the Russian government — Kushner hasn’t been the “adult in the room” urging caution and scrupulousness. To the contrary, he’s been urging aggression and retaliation.
"And the White House’s reaction to the appointment of Robert Mueller as a special counsel in the Russia inquiry, including a possible attempt to use ethics rules to limit the scope of his investigation, shows that somebody in the White House is deeply worried about what might happen if Kushner were included in the probe." -- Vox.com
Robert Reich reviews the latest revelations.
1. The FBI has been investigating Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
2. Kushner played an active role in the firing of James Comey, the former F.B.I. director. In fact, the New York Times has noted that Kushner specifically “had urged Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Comey.”
3. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that on December 1 or 2, Kushner and Russian Ambassador Kislyak “discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring.”
4. Later in December, Kushner met with Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank, a Russian bank that's the subject of U.S. sanctions placed on Russia in 2014 after its invasion of Ukraine. Gorkov is also a graduate of Russia’s Academy of the Federal Security Service, which trains the country’s spies.
5. Kushner failed to disclose either of these meetings on a standard security form, known as a SF-86, that all White House officials must fill out and sign in order to get security clearance.
6. Reuters reported yesterday evening that Kushner had two additional previously undisclosed phone calls with Kislyak during the presidential campaign.
7. CNN reported yesterday that FBI investigators are also interested in how Russia helped use computer bots to target and push negative information on Hillary Clinton (and positive information about Trump) on Facebook.
Trump campaign's data analytics operation was supervised by Kushner.
Trump has distanced himself from the others who are being investigated by the FBI -- Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, et al. But Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, has and continues to be one of Trump's closest confidantes -- the kind of person Trump entrusts to do the most delicate deals on his behalf. The question is, what if any deal did Kushner do with the Russians?
By Dara Lind
