Monday night, when Donald Trump finished presidenting for the day and tiptoed up the stairs (because stairs is hard) to the White House residence, he took off his big boy clothes and put on his robe, and immediately bounded onto his bed so he could tweet at the rubes who follow him on the internet about how the House Intelligence Committee REALLY should be investigating Hillary Clinton. He was having a bad night, because he is frightened:
But here’s the devastating news about Jared, from the failing New York Times:
The White House Counsel’s Office was informed this month that the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, wanted to question Mr. Kushner about meetings he arranged with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, according to the government officials. The meetings, which took place during the transition, included a previously unreported sit-down with the head of Russia’s state-owned development bank.
Wait, “state-owned development bank”? Would this be the same state-owned bank that has bizarre communications with the Trump Organization, that the FBI is still investigating? NO, that is Alfa Bank, which is not what we are talking about right now, but better luck playing Trump Russia Scandal Trivia next time! This is a different bank, called Vnesheconombank (VEB), and it is run by a dude-bro called Sergey Gorkov, who, as Rachel Maddow reported Monday night, actually went to the college where Russian spies go, to learn how to do Russian spying. In fact, here, have a Rachel Maddow professor lecture, about who Sergey Gorkov is, and why his meetings with He Went To Jared might be significant:
Whatever they talked about, we are guessing this is some of the FISA surveillance of foreign Russians that has innocently and coincidentally picked up conversations involving Russians in Putin’s inner circle talking to every person Donald Trump has ever met, living or dead, including members of his family, #AwHowSweet! And the Senate Intelligence Committee wants to talk to Jared about it. Huh!
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Anyway, all of this is probably nothing. Trump spokes-liar Hope Hicks said they didn’t talk about lifting Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia, and they didn’t talk about business (Kushner was still the head of Kushner Companies, his family’s real estate biz, at the time), so we guess it really was just about ab workouts. And why wouldn’t Gorkov want to talk to Jared about that? You see that belly up there? DAMN.
Unless!
Well, for one thing, as Marcy Wheeler notes, these Jared meetings were happening along a pretty similar timeline as Michael Flynn’s December contacts with the Russian ambassador, where they yip-yapped about how Putin should chill out about all the sanctions President Obama put on Russia in retaliation for hacking the 2016 American election. So, uh, that’s weird, especially since one of the Kushner meetings with Kislyak was, again, also attended by Flynn. (Wheeler reminds us to distinguish between the hacking sanctions and the Ukraine sanctions that are on all the banks Sergey Gorkov has been involved in. DULY NOTED!)Also too, remember that British lady journalist Louise Mensch, who sometimes seems to be a little bit conspiracy theory bat-crazy, but who’s also reported some stuff that turned out to be true, like the FISA warrant monitoring communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank? She has a piece today with a whole theory of how Jared Kushner got caught on tape talking to Russian spies and Donald Trump did too, and we don’t know if she’s right or not, so fuck it, but you can read it if you want. It is very fun!
So we just don’t know what to make out of all this! Is Jared Kushner guilty like his dad Charles Kushner, who went to jail for witness tampering (GROSS witness tampering) and a bunch of other stuff? Let’s just go with “probably,” since that’s been a safe assumption about every member of the Trump regime so far.
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