Robert Mueller moves in on Jared Kushner
Yesterday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller scored his biggest victory to date in his investigation of Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, when he got Michael Flynn to agree to a plea deal. According to multiple major media reports, Flynn is testifying that Donald Trump and Jared Kushner told him to act as a point of contact with the Russian government during the campaign and transition period. Now it’s being revealed that Mueller is moving in hard and fast on Kushner.
Jared Kushner’s name appears a startling thirteen times in a new Washington Post expose into how Robert Mueller’s investigative team is operating (link). In the profile, insider after insider confirms the same thing: Mueller has been targeting Kushner all along. There’s this: “Investigators were particularly interested in how certain foreign officials got on Kushner’s calendar and the discussions that Flynn and Kushner had about those encounters.” Then there’s this: “The volume of questions about Kushner in their interviews surprised some witnesses.” And then there’s this: “I remember specifically being asked about Jared a number of times.”
You get the idea. Although the big story for the moment is that Mueller managed to get Flynn to cut a deal, it’s clear that Mueller has been targeting Kushner as a bigger fish all along. Mueller was willing to give Flynn a deal which just might keep him out of prison altogether, because he knows Flynn can nail Kushner, and he really wants Kushner.
The WaPo article doesn’t state why, but it’s fairly clear: Jared Kushner is so close to his father-in-law Donald Trump, in a familial and financial sense, he’s in position to provide the kind of incriminating evidence against Trump that few others can. Robert Mueller may never be able to get Ivanka Trump or Donald Trump Jr to flip on their father. But if Kushner flips, it may be just as effective at taking Donald Trump down.
