Jared Kushner met with the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday behind closed doors, Time reports. He was called to testify about his connections to Russia. However, it was not a public hearing, as was previously announced, and he was not under oath.
The abrupt door-slam caused a major backlash from some members of the senate, like Ron Wyden, who said Kushner ought to testify under oath in an open session of the committee, Huffington Post reports.
On Tuesday, Kushner will meet with the House Intelligence Committee. Both panels are investigating Russian connections to Trump's campaign, according to News-Sentinel.
Senator Joe Manchin said Monday during an interview on MSNBC that he thinks “the public has a right to know the facts” and that, “we should have it as transparent as possible.”
At the press conference following Monday’s meeting, Kushner said, “Let me be very clear, I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so.” Video footage on CNN shows him saying, “I had no improper contacts.”
He went on to say, “I have not relied on Russia funds for my businesses. And I have been fully transparent in providing all the requested information.”
However, despite his transparency claim, Kushner refused to take questions from the press.
Russian ties
Kushner has admittedly met with Russian officials and nationals, four different times during and after the presidential campaign, which he disclosed in an 11-page statement, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The meetings were held on April 26, 2016, with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, June 9, 2016, with Russian Lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, December 1, 2016, again with Kislyak, and on December 13, 2016, with Russian banker Sergey Gorkov. All of the meetings were conducted on U.S. soil. Kushner did not disclose these meetings until they were discovered and subsequently reported.
Kushner said that he had no prior knowledge of the June 2016 session. He claimed that he did not read Trump Jr.'s full email asking him to join the meeting, News-Sentinel reports.
"That email was on top of a long back and forth that I did not read at the time," Kushner said in the statement.
The email from Trump Jr. suggests that during last June’s meeting, the Russian government would provide damning information about Hillary Clinton.
Conversely, participants said they instead focused on Russian adoptions.
Despite Kushner’s claims that he did not read the series of emails, he was present at the rescheduled meeting.
One NYT reader responds to Jared Kushner’s remarks https://t.co/alDFkmSzxp pic.twitter.com/oGfoLH3m5W
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 24, 2017
Family ties
Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is not only a top advisor to his administration, but he is taxed with an enormous amount of responsibility. His salary is paid for by U.S. citizens. His resume includes no government or foreign policy experience. The concept is flirting with nepotism, the likes of which we have not seen since Ulysses S. Grant, who appointed dozens of his family members to different positions on Capitol Hill during his presidency.
The reason nepotism is avoided so intensely is because it permits favoritism to kin who may not necessarily be qualified. We’ve seen examples of this in the British monarchy, the system our founding fathers abandoned. Instead, we adopted a vote by and for the people, with the promise of a renewal vote every four years to avoid a situation like the royal family.
Kushner has obtained the security clearance to receive military briefings, though he never served in the military. He has been involved in every issue in the Trump administration including assignments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and China. Former press secretary Sean Spicer has said that Kushner was working jointly with the State Department to manage the administration's foreign affairs, according to CNN.
In the most recent news, Kushner has been tasked with revamping the government, according to U.S. News, as well as solving the opioid epidemic.
