Jared Kushner admits someone claiming to be a Russian hacker tried to blackmail Donald Trump just days before the election
Jared Kushner testified before the Senate in private today, while also submitting a written summation of his testimony for public consumption. The document was lengthy and mostly consisted of excuses for why his ongoing meetings with the Russian government weren’t really collusion. But he did admit to one crucial detail involving someone trying to blackmail Donald Trump just a few days before the election.
Here’s what Kushner had to say about the incident in his submitted testimony statement: “There was one more possible contact that I will note. On October 30, 2016, I received a random email from the screenname “Guccifer400.” This email, which I interpreted as a hoax, was an extortion attempt and threatened to reveal candidate Trump’s tax returns and demanded that we send him 52 bitcoins in exchange for not publishing that information. I brought the email to the attention of a U.S. Secret Service agent on the plane we were all travelling on and asked what he thought. He advised me to ignore it and not to reply — which is what I did. The sender never contacted me again.”
For reference, 52 bitcoins has a current theoretical value of around $144,000 – so this not an insubstantial extortion request. It’s not clear if the Secret Service passed along the threat to the FBI for a proper criminal investigation. But based on Kushner’s statement, it’s clear he didn’t report the matter to the FBI. This kind of blackmail attempt, even if it was a hoax, was a serious crime – particularly when attempted against a nominee for president.
Moreover, “Guccifer” is in reference to the Russian government hacker who at that point had already stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and leaked them through WikiLeaks to try to impact the outcome of the election. So the individual attempting the blackmail was either a Russian government hacker or impersonating one. So now it’s crucial for the media to dig deeper into this email exchange, and to determine why the Trump campaign didn’t want to report it to the FBI.
