In yet another incident in the ongoing Russia investigation, a member of the Trump campaign team has been caught doing something suspicious that was not originally told to investigators. While White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner has turned over unknown documents to the Justice Department, he apparently forwarded “a Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite” to other members of the Trump campaign but did not turn those emails over to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The letter, written by the ranking Republican and Democrat on the committee, Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein, also says that Kushner didn’t produce emails he was CC’d on concerning communications with Wikileaks and Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman. The two Senators discovered the discrepancy through documents submitted to the committee by others.
“If, as you suggest, Mr. Kushner was unaware of, for example, any attempts at Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, then presumably there would be few communications concerning many of the persons identified,” the Senators wrote. “Other parties have produced September 2016 email communications to Mr. Kushner concerning WikiLeaks, which Mr. Kushner then forwarded to another campaign official. Such documents should have been produced… but were not.”
According to Business Insider, the “Russian backdoor overture” may well be a reference to Kushner’s meeting with then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, which was also attended by Michael Flynn, last November.
Millian, who is a U.S. citizen, is the head of an organization called the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, and “he has described himself as an exclusive broker for the Trump Organization with respect to real-estate dealings in Russia.” Multiple outlets have reported that Millian is one of the sources in the Steele Dossier that alleges ties between President Trump and Russia. He has also worked for Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian cultural exchange program that the FBI has previously investigated as a front to turn “young, up-and-coming Americans as Russian intelligence assets”
(Via Business Insider)