Robert Mueller expertly used Michael Flynn to lay a no-win trap for Jared Kushner
Two days ago we learned that Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently met with Jared Kushner to discuss Michael Flynn’s role in the Trump-Russia scandal. It stood out as bizarre, considering that we had already learned Mueller was in the process of cutting a deal with Flynn, meaning that Mueller wouldn’t need any more testimony against Flynn. This morning Flynn did indeed cut that deal. Now that the details are leaking out, it’s become clear why Mueller went back and met with Kushner: it was a trap.
Flynn has testified that while he was illegally communicating with the Russian Ambassador about sanctions on December 29th, he was relaying those conversations in real time to Jared Kushner (link). In other words, Flynn just sent Kushner up the river by pegging him as the ringleader of the Trump-Russia conspiracy. Of course Flynn will have to provide evidence of this beyond merely his own word, but Mueller has given him a sweetheart deal, suggesting that Flynn does indeed have overwhelming evidence. The key here, however, is Mueller’s last minute meeting with Kushner.
Based on the timeline as we now know it, Mueller went back and met with Kushner after Flynn had begun negotiating a deal, but before word of that deal became public. In other words, Kushner didn’t know at the time that Flynn had already ratted him out. Mueller met with Kushner in order to lay a perjury trap by asking him about the events that Flynn had already spelled out.
We don’t yet know whether Jared Kushner fell into that perjury trap, or if he told Robert Mueller the truth. But either way he’s facing trouble. If he admitted to being Flynn’s point man for the Russian sanctions conspiracy, then he just confessed to a serious crime. And if he lied about it, then Mueller has him nailed for lying to a federal investigator, which is an imprisonable felony. If Flynn’s evidence against Kushner is as good as Mueller seems to think it is, then Kushner is screwed one way or the other.
