Trump Right Hand Jared Kushner Asked Moscow For ‘Secret And Secure’ Communications Link (VIDEO)

Last Friday night, The Washington Post reported that one of Trump’s most senior advisers was now “a person of interest” in the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s effort to hack the election for Donald Trump. Reportedly, that adviser was someone with very close ties to the Donald. On Thursday, NBC News and The Post reported that person was Trump’s closest confidant and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. It’s a strong indication that the investigation has already ramped up to another level. After all, if the FBI is focusing on Kushner’s actions, it literally can’t get closer to Trump without looking into the president himself.


Almost a week after that bombshell blew, The Post detonated another one. It turns out that Kushner wanted to open a secret communications channel between the Trump transition team and Moscow.

According to intercepts of Russian communications, Kushner met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, at Trump Tower in early December. National Security Adviser-in-waiting Michael Flynn was also on hand. At that meeting, Kushner asked for a “secret and secure” channel for communications between the Trump transition and the Kremlin.

This request was rather unusual. While it is common for the State Department, National Security Council, and the intelligence community to set up such channels, it’s less common for a presidential transition team. However, Kushner maintained that this was the best way to maintain a line of communication between the transition team and Moscow. He believed that public meetings would be too politically risky, given the talk that Russia at the very least had a thumb on the scale in favor of Trump.

The real surprise? Kushner wanted the channel to run through Russian diplomatic facilities to “shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring” by American intelligence. When Kislyak gave a report about the meeting to his masters in Moscow, he was dumbfounded. After all, an American was asking for access to some of Russia’s most secure communications facilities.


The Post has actually been chasing this story down since mid-December, when it received an anonymous letter detailing the meeting. Earlier in the week, officials who have been briefed on intelligence intercepts confirmed that this letter dovetailed with their understanding of events.

According to one of those officials, Kushner was “extremely naive or absolutely crazy” if he thought this gambit would really shield any chatter between the Trump transition and the Kremlin from monitoring. The FBI closely monitors Russian embassies and consulates in the United States, as well as all communications between Russian officials traveling or working in this country, and the sight of a Trump transition official going into a Russian diplomatic facility would have set off alarm bells.

Kushner’s interactions with Russia had already raised eyebrows even before this development. He didn’t disclose the December meeting with Kislyak when he applied for the security clearance he needed to serve in the White House. On that same form, he didn’t disclose a meeting with Sergey Gorkov, the chairman of a state-owned Russian bank that has been under sanctions since 2014 for its role in the takeover of Crimea.

And now comes word that Kushner tried to open a secret channel with Moscow, and deliberately tried to avoid being monitored by American intelligence. If Kushner didn’t already have some explaining to do, he definitely does now.

The Democratic National Committee demanded that Kushner be fired immediately. DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson loudly wondered if Trump had authorized the request, since “no one stands between Trump and Kushner” on the White House org chart.

Terrorism analyst Malcolm Nance went even further. On Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” he said that if this is accurate, Kushner’s actions may amount to espionage. Watch here.

Nance said that under normal circumstances, this would be a firing offense at the very least. But Nance thinks it may be more than that.

“They are in a spy hunt over at the FBI, and now we have this story—should it prove true—of an American citizen who is the senior adviser to the president of the United States, attempting to establish what we call in the intelligence community ‘covert communications’ with a hostile nation’s potential intelligence agency or senior leadership. That brings you–that crosses the line to the Espionage Act of 1917. This cannot be explained.”

When Bob Dietz, a counterterrorism expert who worked at the CIA and NSA under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, saw this, he fired off an email to Business Insider’s Melissa Bertrand that began:

“GOOD GRIEF. This is serious.”

Dietz said that Kushner’s actions potentially violate the Logan Act, and could potentially “reinforce the notion” that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey to throw the Russia investigation sideways.

Former CIA counterterrorism expert Glenn Carle was even more blunt. To Carle’s mind, if a person holding “an office of public trust” circumvents normal channels to meet with or communicate with a foreign actor, “you are, in the eyes of the FBI and CIA, a traitor.”


At an absolute minimum, there is no defensible reason for Kushner to keep his job. The Democratic Coalition Against Trump is promoting the hashtag “#FireKushner”; if he’s still on the White House staff before the weekend’s out, Trump has some explaining to do.

But whether Kushner is still advising his father-in-law should be the least of his worries. If he did indeed try to set up a secret communications channel with Russia in order to keep from being monitored, he definitely needs a lawyer on speed dial.

(Image compilation by Liberal America. Sources: Gage Skidmore, Lori Berkowitz, and Antonio Rosset)

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.