Monday 24 July 2017

Jared Kushner, the cool customer

So Jared Kushner is innocent ok?! He's also a pretty cool customer. His 11-page explanation of everything he did and said involving Russians during the election campaign and also during the transition period looks transparent and honest. There's no obvious attempt to omit or deceive. There's no hint of anger, although there must have been times when he felt extremely angry at the way his character was being besmirched in some of the Washington newspapers. Many of the stories about him were full of innuendo, and in one case, a Reuters report claiming that he had made two phone calls to the Russian ambassador to Washington, our old friend Sergey Kislyak, may just be untrue. Kushner said he could find no evidence that he had made such calls. He said he checked all his phone records. So perhaps that report was a little bit of black propaganda which Reuters fell for. I have read and reread those 11 pages and they seem genuine to me. It will be difficult I think for even the most hardened anti-Trump newspapers and broadcasters to claim that Kushner's statement is full of lies and omissions. Unlike his father-in-law, Kushner does not seek the limelight, and his statement reads like a man who feels he has been wronged and wants to put the record straight. Perhaps others in the Trump inner circle should follow his example and speak plainly and simply without all the bombast. But his claim of total innocence doesn't mean the Russians were not involved in meddling in the election and peddling mischief. I believe they were doing both, meddling and peddling, and Jared Kushner was caught up on the fringes of the Russian game but without any malice, let alone criminality. Jared Kushner is a cool customer but not a devious plotter, colluding with Moscow. From my reading of the 11-page statement, the FBI can cross him off from their list of "persons of interest".

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