On Monday, July 24, the son-in-law and adviser of Donald Trump, Jared Kouchner, will address private hearings in Congress. Earlier, as part of the investigation into the links between Donald Trump's entourage and Russia, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee had already heard the former head of the FBI James Komi and other high-ranking officials. Now it's turn to Kouchner.
During the election campaign, Donald Trump appointed his son-in-law "responsible for relations with foreigners". According to Jared Kushner himself, initially he was not going to actively participate in the activities of the campaign headquarters of Donald Trump. However, during the campaign, the role of the presidential son-in-law changed a lot, since the presidential candidate often consulted him on a wide range of issues.
However, the reason for the call in Congress was not so much Kushner's talents that emerged during the presidential race, but many references to the "undesirable" contacts of the owner of the White House with representatives of Russian state and commercial structures. On the eve of the hearing, Jared Kouchner issued a written statement detailing all cases of communication with Russians, the text was published by CNN.
According to Counselor Trump, foreign officials were looking for meetings with him long before the elections - with such proposals, representatives of at least 15 countries addressed him. Directly from Jared Kushner such initiatives to foreign representatives did not proceed, he noted..
The statement also describes all his meetings with the Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak. They met at a party organized by The National Interest in April 2016, and it was a duty exchange of courtesies. Since the evening was devoted to the foreign policy of the future President Trump, he was attended by several ambassadors. According to Kouchner, after the event, he could not even remember the name of the Russian ambassador. Moreover, Kouchner said that he had never had telephone conversations with a Russian diplomat. Previously, the press reported on two such conversations. We studied the records of all telephone conversations for that period, and they did not confirm the fact of Kislyak's calls, Kouchner said in his statement.
One more time Kouchner saw Kislyak after the presidential elections. Then the Russian ambassador was twice denied a meeting.
As for the presence of Jared Kushner at the meeting of Donald Trump's son with the "lawyer from Russia" Veselnitskaya, Trump's adviser found the presence at this meeting a waste of time and asked his assistant "to call his mobile so he could leave". To recall this episode, Kuschner had to raise official correspondence. The meeting was held on June 9, 2016, it talked about the problem of adoption of Russian children by US citizens.
Among other Russians who met with his son Donald Trump, also called the representative of Vnesheconombank Sergei Gorkov, who had a 25-minute audience with Kouchner, during which Gorkov told little about Vnesheconombank and presented his counterpart two memorable gift - box and earth bag Belarusian village where Former ancestors of Kouchner.
According to Kouchner, also a Russian could be the author of a suspicious e-mail sent on October 30, 2016 by a user under the name Guccifer400. The author of the message, threatened to publish Donald Trump's tax returns, demanding transfer to his account of 52 bitcoins. Representatives of the Secret Service were informed about this letter, said Jared Kouchner.