Among the people close to President Donald Trump, the heat over the meeting at Trump Tower on June 9 has been mainly on son Donald Jr. and son-in-law jared kushner. It has now extended to the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump.
A group of more than 20 legislators, led by Democratic Virginia Rep. Don Beyer, wrote to acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe to review the Security Clearance process of Ivanka. They want to know if the president’s daughter – who created controversy at the G20 Summit when she temporarily sat on her father’s vacant chair beside other national leaders – disclosed her foreign contacts, The New York Daily News reported.
Meeting with Veselnitskaya
The representatives want to know if Ivanka disclosed the June 9 meeting of brother Donald Jr. and husband Jared with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. They raised these questions after The New York Times reported last week that Kushner added over 100 names to his contact list, including the Russian lawyer who offered damaging information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to the Trump campaign. If Ivanka withheld the information, she could be charged with a felony, although violators are rarely prosecuted.
Kushner, in the update of his contact list, included meeting Sergei Gorkov, the owner of a Russian bank that suffered from economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., and Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington, in December 2016.
Kislyak also met with Michael Flynn, the National Security Adviser. Their meeting was investigated by then-NBI Director James Comey who was later fired by the president when he refused to stop the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Kushner’s clearance also under scrutiny
Even before members of Congress sought a review of Ivanka’s clearance, her husband’s clearance was already questioned by the Democrats after he admitted meeting Kislyak and proposing a back channel between Russia and the U.S.
The proposed back communications channel would have used facilities of the Russian embassy in Washington.
The Veselnitskaya meeting, which included a discussion on Russia providing the Trump campaign with a dossier on Clinton to help Trump win the 2016 election, led two senators to seek a review of Kushner’s security clearance.
Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins cited the lack of transparency of Kushner of his previous contacts with Russians in seeking the review of his clearance, USA Today reported.
Warner told the host of CNN’s “State of the Union” show on Sunday morning that the White House senior adviser to the president forgot to disclose meetings with Russians three times that he needed to amend his disclosure forms several times. “I think if I had a meeting that involved Russian government efforts to try to help candidate Trump and hurt [Hillary] Clinton, that I would remember that,” Warner said.
