Worth remembering Kushner, ..Worth remembering Kushner,

[riversedge]

Lawrence O'Donnell Retweeted
Ryan Lizza?Verified account @RyanLizza May 26

Worth remembering Kushner, according to NYT, pressed Trump to fire Comey and launch "counterattack" against Mueller

Link to tweet

News Desk
How Worried Should Jared Kushner Be?
By Ryan Lizza May 26, 2017



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The F.B.I.’s interest in Kushner appears to be related to the two known meetings that he had with Russian officials.



...............Kushner’s lawyer, Gorelick, is a well-known Democrat, and was Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration. She is no stranger to the ways that the F.B.I. operates. She also knows Congress and how to navigate the committees that want Kushner to testify. Certainly, she is likely to have good relationships with Hill Democrats, who are far more aggressive with respect to the Russia investigation and have already targeted Kushner specifically.

When Kushner hired Gorelick, he perhaps thought that her Democratic pedigree was an asset. But it’s also worth noting that, last year, Gorelick served as perhaps one of the harshest critics of Comey’s handling of the Clinton e-mail case. Comey’s willingness to make aspects of the case public was a violation of Justice Department guidelines and “antithetical to the interests of justice, putting a thumb on the scale of this election and damaging our democracy,” she wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post co-written with Larry Thompson, a Deputy Attorney General under George W. Bush. People close to Comey are protective of him and his reputation and bristle at the mention of Gorelick’s name. Comey, of course, is gone, but his senior leadership at the F.B.I. remains in place—and one of his closest professional colleagues, Robert Mueller, his predecessor as F.B.I. director, is the special counsel in charge of the Russia case.

The main takeaway from the Kushner news is similar to the takeaway from Trump and Flynn’s handling of the Russia probes. In each case, we have a series of actions by people who seem to be concealing specific contacts with Russians connected to the Kremlin’s intelligence services and then acting to thwart an investigation. Flynn lied about his contacts with Kislyak. Trump tried to kill the F.B.I. investigation of Flynn and eventually fired his F.B.I. director. Kushner hid his contacts with Russian officials and then pressed his father-in-law to sack Comey, who was looking into the matter. “Anytime someone on the Trump campaign conceals or misleads about a contact they had with Russia at the time of Russia’s interference campaign, that’s a big red flag,” Eric Swalwell, the Democratic congressman, who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said.

We still don’t have a crime in this case, but there is an awful lot of coverup.