Elena Its quite a long piece that repeats Kusher's statement which I have omitted from this. Basically, he's not denying the Trump Jnr meeting but detaching himself from any knowing involvement.
THE MORNING PLUM:*
Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner is set to testifyy before the Senate Intelligence Committee this morning, and what is striking about his extensive opening statementt* is the degree to which it seeks to insulate Kushner himself from any culpability or responsibility for the problematic known* facts about the Russia affair — particularly the known facts that concern Donald Trump Jr.
Kushner’s statement takes exceptional care to separate him, with scalpel-like precision, from the now-notorious meeting that Trump Jr. arranged with a Russian lawyer — a meeting that Trump Jr. had been informed would furnish the Trump campaign with information about Hillary Clinton supplied by the Russian government.
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It’s not entirely clear that the “long back and forth” that Kushner claims he “did not read at the time” is the email chainn** that Trump Jr. released, under duress, which demonstrated that the meeting was taken with the express purpose of getting information advertised as coming from the Russian government. But it seems clear that this is what he is referring to. Note that Kushner does not say one way or the other whether he had been sent this email chain before. What we do know, however, is that Kushner says he never read it. And if Kushner is to be believed, he agreed to, and showed up at, this meeting without having any idea why it was being held.
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This, even though Trump Jr. was quite excited about what this meeting might yield (“I love it,” Trump Jr. exulted in the email chainn**), and even though Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort was also present. This was a meeting attended by Trump’s top brain trust, on the expectation that it would yield greatly damaging information about Trump’s opponent, just as the campaign was shifting into general election mode — but Kushner was unaware of its purpose.
Also note the exceptional care that went into Kushner’s characterization of the meeting. He claims he arrived just late enough to miss the incriminating part of the meeting. Trump Jr. admitted in his second statementt that the Russian lawyer brought up the campaign (after an initial statementt* claiming the meeting was just about Russian adoptions):
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Kushner’s statement does not deny outrighteither that the meeting did address the campaign or that any documents had been offered to the Trump camp, which the email chainn appears to confirm. All it does is insulate Kushner from those facts.
It is certainly possible that Kushner’s account is accurate. But these things are now investigable: Efforts can be made to determine whether Kushner had been told of, or discussed, the purpose of the meeting beforehand, and to determine whether he arrived just late enough to miss the part of the meeting that concerned the campaign.
But whatever the truth turns out to be on those fronts, what Kushner’s statement does not do is contest any of the known facts about that meeting — known facts that are deeply problematic for Trump Jr. and even for Trump himself. The meeting, at a minimum, shows that Trump Jr. was eager to collude with the Russian government, which, he had been told, was trying to get his father elected president. Kushner’s statement denies any collusion on his own part, and claims no awareness* of any other collusion:
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Of course, what Trump Jr.’s email chainn showed is that the campaign jumped at the chance to collude, even if it ended up not happening at that meeting. Recall that Trump Jr.’s original statementt* covered up the real reason for the meeting, and that President Trump himself reportedly signed off on that initial false statementt*, which means the president actively participated in an effort to mislead the country about his own campaign’s eagerness to collude with Russia to help him win. Kushner’s statement offers nothing to challenge these underlying facts. It just separates him from them.