Everyone involved in the Trump campaign, from Michael Flynn, to Jefferson Sessions, to Paul Manafort, seems to have a bad case of selective memory. When the Senate Judiciary Committee notified amnesiac Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner that they wanted both his testimony and his documentation, it seems he forgot all about several emails that the committee was expecting based on information they’d already seen from other witnesses.
And in the letter that went back to Kushner’s attorney, there’s a glimpse of both documents and incidents that are new to the public. That includes the increasingly obvious coordination between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks.
"For example, other parties have produced September 2016 email communications to Mr. Kushner concerning WikiLeaks, which Mr. Kushner then forwarded to another campaign official. Such documents should have been produced in response to the third request but were not.
We’ve seen Donald Trump Jr.’s hey-I-only-collaborated-three-times exchange of Twitter direct messages with WikiLeaks. What was in the email that fluttered around the Trump campaign in between the Trump Tower meeting and Donald Trump’s declaration of “I love WikiLeaks!” … we don’t know. But it was sent to Kushner, Kushner forwarded it to others on the campaign, but he failed to produce it for the committee.
"Likewise, other parties have produced documents concerning a 'Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite' which Mr. Kushner also forwarded. And still others have produced communications with Sergei Millian, copied to Mr. Kushner.
Was this “backdoor overture” around the time that Kushner was trying to set up a “back channel” for secret communication between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin—an effort that included Kushner offering to hold these talks inside the Russian embassy? Was it Kushner’s meeting with the Russian ambassador shortly after the election? Or was it … something else?
Even if the references were to those incidents that have already been made public, the documents that are subject-dropped in this email aren’t familiar. Was Kushner the direct recipient of these emails from Russian sources? That would be interesting. Were they forwarded to him by other members of the campaign? Also interesting. And when he sent them along, did he do so with comments added?
If the “backdoor overture” references an existing event … then what’s the “dinner invite?” That hasn’t been part of previous discussion on anything known to the public.
The references in the letter are enough to make Kushner’s lawyer aware that the committee knows they were shortchanged, and that Kushner is obviously holding back on some documents they know he has. It’s likely that the letter doesn’t contain all the things the committee knows are missing, because they wouldn’t want to send Kushner a message that could be seen as “we know about A, and B, and C ...” and the rest of it we don’t know.
They want to keep him guessing about which documents they’ve already seen from other sources, while being very clear that they know he’s not being forthright.
One other thing gets a heavy emphasis in the letter.
They also request that Lowell look for communications with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, including any correspondence “to, from, or copied to Lt. General Flynn” that include specific terms like Clinton, Guccifer, Wikileaks, Turkey, Ukraine and Gazprom.
It’s clear that case around Flynn—both his connections to Russia, and his planned kidnapping for Turkey—is heating up. Multiple sources have indicated that special counsel Robert Mueller has all he needs to bring changes against Flynn, but it appears Mueller is doing what he did with Manafort: Getting all the paperwork organized, and tracking down all the ramifications, before he pushes the button.