Kushner Got Emails About WikiLeaks And Russia — But Failed To Tell Congress

Jared Kushner Image by Getty Images

By Aiden Pink November 16, 2017

Presidential adviser/son-in-law Jared Kushner received and forwarded emails in September 2016 about WikiLeaks and a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite,” but has not shared them with the Senate Judiciary Committee despite promising to cooperate with congressional investigations, two senators claimed.

The committee’s leaders, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley and California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, wrote Thursday to Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, to say that Kushner’s voluntary disclosure of emails in response to their previous request “appears to have been incomplete.”

In a section of their letter titled “Missing Documents,” Grassley and Feinstein wrote that Kushner had provided emails that were sent to and from specific individuals, but not emails about those individuals.

“If, as you suggest, Mr. Kushner was unaware of, for example, any attempts at Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, then presumably there would bе few communications concerning many of the persons identified in our second request, and the corresponding burden of searching would bе small,” they wrote.

The letter also complained that other parties had given them emails on which Kushner was included, but Kushner himself had not provided them. Such messages included a “September 2016 email communications to Mr. Kushner concerning WikiLeaks” and “documents concerning а ‘Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite.’” They also complained that they had not received relevant phone records.

Grassley and Feinstein also wanted a new batch of documents about Kushner’s dealings with former the national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Kushner has already turned over documents to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He met with Russian officials during the campaign and the presidential transition, but did not originally include those meetings on his security clearance forms.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

Aiden Pink is the Deputy News Editor for the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

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