The Kushner Statement The President’s son-in-law sets a disclosure example on Russia.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-kushner-statement-1500939259
Jared Kushner on Monday introduced a useful precedent for the Trump Presidency: comprehensive disclosure. In an 11-page statement released before meeting this week with the Senate and House intelligence committees, the President’s son-in-law and White House aide described his contacts with Russian figures during the campaign and after the election.
The statement to the committees ends with a definitive denial of collusion with the Russians: “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government.”
The Beltway media are past the point of no return on their collusion odyssey, so there is little chance that Mr. Kushner has put this issue behind him. But as we suggested in these columns last week (“The Trumps and the Truth”), the White House’s best defense against death by a thousand cuts of anonymous leaks is radical transparency on Russia. Mr. Kushner’s statement has provided a template.
There isn’t much in this statement about Russia beyond what we know, but Mr. Kushner expressly rebuts some of the more incendiary news reports of recent months.
The biggest was the recent disclosure of a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer, which was also attended by several functionaries serving as “translators.” About 10 minutes into the meeting, which he calls a waste of time, Mr. Kushner says he emailed his assistant: “Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting.” Aside from the amusement of this extraction effort, Mr. Kushner’s email to his assistant is surely available to investigators for confirmation.
Mr. Kushner also rebuts suggestions that he served as a back-channel conduit between the Russians and Trump Administration, and he denies ever discussing sanctions against Russia with its then ambassador to the U.S., Sergei Kislyak.
In Mr. Kushner’s accounting, the Russian ambassador comes off as a suspiciously eager pest, constantly seeking meetings with the President-elect’s son-in-law. Mr. Kushner says he finally agreed to a meeting that would have set off alarms of skepticism in a more politically experienced person. Mr. Kislyak puts him together with one Sergey Gorkov, “a banker and someone with a direct line to the Russian president.”
An important point is that with this and the other contacts described, Mr. Kushner offers details about what was, and what was not, discussed at these meetings. Up to now, Team Trump has taken the view that because every story is unfair or a witch hunt, they are under no obligation to provide their side of these allegations. Which has left the field open for months to media speculation.
Now we have the Kushner disclosure template. Lying to Congress is a crime, so this statement and its details involve some risk for Mr. Kushner if some other meetings or Russian connections turn up. But if this is all there is, the collusion narrative will have to find another protagonist. The President and other campaign officials could save themselves and the country much grief with similar disclosures.
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