May 21, 2017

ON TRUMP, KUSHNER, THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION AND THE SPECIAL COUNSEL.


It’s becoming increasingly clear that Jared Kushner is part of Trump’s Russia problem.

Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

VOX
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As the Trump administration’s been sent into a death spiral over the firing of FBI Director James Comey last week — a failed move to curtail the Justice Department investigation into contact between his campaign and the Russian government — Kushner hasn’t been the “adult in the room” urging caution and scrupulousness. To the contrary, he’s been urging aggression and retaliation.
And the White House’s reaction to the appointment of Robert Mueller as a special counsel in the Russia inquiry, including a possible attempt to use ethics rules to limit the scope of his investigation, shows that somebody in the White House is deeply worried about what might happen if Kushner were included in the probe.
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By now, though, it’s clear that Kushner (at least sometimes) is the person who wants to lash out at the investigators. Here’s what happened (according to reports from the New York Times) when the Trump administration found out that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed Mueller as a special counsel to lead the Trump/Russia probe:
Most of those gathered recommended that the president adopt a conciliatory stance and release a statement accepting Mr. Rosenstein’s decision and embracing a swift investigation that would clear the cloud of suspicion hovering over the West Wing.
Mr. Kushner — who had urged Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Comey — was one of the few dissenting voices, urging the president to counterattack, according to two senior administration officials. After a brief discussion, however, calmer heads prevailed, and Mr. Trump’s staff huddled over a computer just outside the Oval Office to draft the statement that was ultimately released, asserting the president’s innocence and determination to move on.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

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 It’s also interesting that, according to Reuters’ Julia Edwards Ainsley, the White House is considering trying to hobble Mueller — using a regulation barring Mueller from investigating anyone his former law firm had represented. In practice, that would be Kushner and former campaign head Paul Manafort.
Legal experts said the ethics rule can be waived by the Justice Department, which appointed Mueller. He did not represent Kushner or Manafort directly at his former law firm.
If the department did not grant a waiver, Mueller would be barred from investigating Kushner or Manafort, and this could greatly diminish the scope of the probe, experts said.
For all the reporting that President Trump is still deeply committed to Mike Flynn, this proposed “solution” to the Mueller investigation wouldn’t protect Flynn. It would protect Manafort, who has been out of the Trump family’s orbit for quite some time. And it would protect Kushner.
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What could Kushner be so worried about?
He does appear to have been relatively close to the disgraced Flynn. According to at least one report (from NBC News’ Peter Alexander), he and Ivanka Trump were the ones who assured Flynn he could get the job of National Security Advisor — at a meeting at Trump Tower after the election, Alexander said, Ivanka Trump and Kushner told Flynn that his “loyalty” to the family would be rewarded.
Kushner also accompanied Flynn to his meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period — part of the pattern of contacts between Flynn and Kislyak that Flynn subsequently lost his job for lying about. Kushner, however, also arranged subsequent meetings with Kislyak and other Russian officials — and the White House didn’t disclose those at the time, either.
The Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, met with Jared Kushner in December. Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Kushner’s meetings with Russian officials were enough to bring him onto the radar of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Trump/Russia probe, which is questioning all Trumpworld figures who had contacts with Russia. And his failure to disclose all of those meetings — even when applying for a security clearance — has raised some eyebrows (Democratic Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) has called for Kushner’s clearance to be stripped.)
At least one figure within the Trump White House saw Kushner’s contacts with Russia as a disaster waiting to happen for the administration: Steve Bannon. During a power struggle between Kushner and Bannon in early April, the Times reported that “Mr. Bannon has told confidants that he believes Mr. Kushner’s contact with Russians, and his expected testimony before Congress on the subject, will become a major distraction for the White House.”....
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This Special Counsel Won’t Stop Trump.

The order creating the special prosecutor lets him probe only into Russia. 

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY LYNE LUCIEN/THE DAILY BEAST


DAILY BEAST, DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

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The order creating the new special counsel’s office run by Robert Mueller, a serious and determined former FBI director, is much too narrow. It authorizes Mueller only to pursue “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
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A much broader investigation is required, one that reaches to all his business activities involving foreign money, especially his involvement with Russians and Russian dirty money back to 1990.
Jim Henry, the investigative economist who has exposed money laundering for four decades and now writes about Trump’s Russian money connections for my nonprofit DCReport news service, thinks the order is so narrow it may be intended to sink the inquiry.
“Of all the smoke pouring out of Trump’s basement, the dirtiest, darkest smoke comes from his involvement in money laundering and financial fraud, including keeping from his investors when he knew about the organized crime involvements of his close associates,” Henry says.
Henry points to financial deals from Panama to Manhattan to Iceland to Toronto and beyond that all involve criminals and in some cases come perilously close to Vladimir Putin, the kleptocrat in Moscow whom Trump frequently praises as a great leader.
Henry notes that from a Wall Street Journal report, “we learned just this week that Trump’s leading partner in the bankrupt Trump Tower in Toronto was able to channel at least $15 million to Trump from a loan that came from a Russian bank whose executive chairman is Vladimir Putin.”