Jared Kushner’s Russia ‘Back Channel’ Spurs Questions From Mueller
Special prosecutor Robert Mueller wants to ask President Trump about Jared Kushner’s efforts to open a secret backchannel to the Russians during the presidential transition, the New York Times reported yesterday.
Mueller’s list, leaked to the Times, includes dozens of questions for the president. Only one of the questions mentions Kushner by name. But it indicates pervading interest by Mueller in Kushner’s efforts to serve as a quiet link between the Russian governmentand the campaign.
Kushner has admitted to pursuing a backchannel with Russian ambassador. He told Congress that he had suggested using “an existing communications channel at the Russian embassy.”
According to the list obtained by the Times, Mueller plans to ask what the president knew during the presidential transition the efforts at opening the back-channel. It’s one of a number of back channels that Mueller has questions about, including one involving Erik Prince, the mercenary and brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and others about Roger Stone and Wikileaks, and Paul Manafort and Russia.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO