Investigators catch Jared Kushner trying to cover up secret Russian dinner invite
Even as Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues to quietly but aggressively plug away at the Trump-Russia scandal in the background, parallel investigations in the House and Senate have also been approaching the same scandal from various angles. Now we’re learning that investigators in the Senate have caught Jared Kushner trying to cover up some sort of secret Russian dinner invite, adding yet another new chapter to the already complex Trump-Russia scandal.
Buried in the final few paragraphs of a new Wall Street Journal article which largely focuses on other topics, there’s a remarkable revelation. The Senate Judiciary Committee has recently been engulfed in partisan infighting. However, it’s now going after Kushner in bipartisan fashion over his failure to turn over certain Trump-Russia documents. The WSJ (link) characterizes the documents as relating to “a Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite.”
It’s long been known that Kushner had a series of secret meetings with the Russians during the transition period, first with the Russian Ambassador, and then with the head of a Russian bank. Those meetings also involved Kushner floating the idea of setting up backchannel communications through the Russian embassy. It’s not clear if the WSJ’s “Russian backdoor overture” is in reference to that incident or another unknown incident. Either way, the Russian dinner invite is new territory.
What may be most notable is that Jared Kushner is refusing to turn over the documents relating to that dinner invite, which strongly suggests that he fears he’ll incriminate himself or one of his allies by turning over that evidence. This amounts to an attempted coverup on his part. The Senate Judiciary Committee can, and likely will, subpoena the documents in question if Kushner continues to refuse to turn them over. It’s also possible that the committee already has the documents from another source, and this is merely a document trap aimed at incriminating Kushner for destroying evidence or obstructing justice.
