Jared Kushner tried to create evidence trail of deniability while he was still in meeting with Russian government lawyer
Jared Kushner testified privately before the Senate today, but he simultaneously posted a lengthy public written statement summarizing his planned testimony. Most of it consists of him trying to make excuses for why his Russia contacts and meetings didn’t constitute collusion. But in one particular instance he appears to have protested too much, revealing that he had begun trying to document deniability while he was still sitting in the meeting.
Here’s what Kushner said in his statement: “The meeting was a waste of our time and that, in looking for a polite way to leave and get back to my work, I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for ten or so minutes and wrote ‘Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting.'” (link). Now let’s think this through.
Depending on whether or not he read the full email chain that Donald Trump Jr. had sent to him (he claims he didn’t), Kushner may or may not have known that this meeting was with a Russian government attorney who was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. But once he got into the meeting and saw just how blatant it was, with a Russian spy on the room and a folder of documents being tossed around, he apparently realized that they were all going to end up in trouble for it. But instead of just making up an excuse for leaving, or pressing a button on his phone so it would make a noise, he bent over backward to make sure he documented that he wanted out of the meeting.
Kushner is now pointing to his email to his assistant as supposed proof that he wanted no part of what was going on in the meeting. But Kushner, a businessman, surely knows how to politely get out of a meeting in simpler fashion than emailing his assistant and waiting for the phone to ring. Instead he began trying to create an evidence of deniability trail right then and there, while he was still in the meeting, that he could point back to later. That tells you just how blatantly collusive and criminal that meeting was, as Kushner began working on his eventual legal defense while he was still sitting there.
