Jared Kushner had recent business connection to Russian attorney he just testified he didn’t recognize
Jared Kushner may have just been caught in a massive lie during his Senate testimony in his role in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. Kushner claimed to have had no idea who the Russian attorney was in his Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr and others. But based on a new report, Kushner had a recent business connection to the attorney in question, making it extraordinarily difficult for him to sell the idea that he didn’t recognize her or know whom she worked for.
Kushner’s spoken testimony today was behind closed doors. But he also submitted a written statement which has been released publicly. In it he refers to Natalia Veselnitskaya as a “person who has since been identified as a Russian attorney.” (link). In so doing, Kushner was trying to sell the notion that he didn’t know who Veselnitskaya was when he walked into the meeting with her.
But the Guardian published a new article today which reveals that Jared Kushner had a series of major real estate deals, as recently as 2015, with a financial backer who was represented by Natalia Veselnitskaya (link). This doesn’t prove that Kushner met Veselnitskaya during the deals. But at the least he would have known who she was, and recognized her when he walked into the Trump Tower meeting and saw her sitting there.
Yet Jared Kushner is trying to sell the idea that he didn’t know who Veselnitskaya was. All he would have had to do was to say that he recognized her from previous dealings but that he didn’t know she would be at the meeting. Instead, by trying way too hard with his defense, Kushner has made a claim that is unlikely at best, and may end up being disprovable. If it can be proven that Kushner knew who Veselnitskaya was from his previous business transaction, it’ll prove he lied to the Senate today – which is a crime whether he was under oath or not.
