Last week, allegations emerged that Donald Trump Jr. communicated with WikiLeaks. Today, another member of the president's inner circle was found to have ties to the group.
Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, failed to provide September 2016 emails about WikiLeaks to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Politico reports.
Although it's unclear who sent the emails to Kushner, ABC News reports that, in addition to WikiLeaks, the emails in question also referred to a "Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite."
According to Politico, Kushner forwarded these emails to a campaign official.
The bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election says Kushner's attorney Abbe Lowell failed to turn over the emails and other documents pertaining to their probe, Reuters reports. Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein, the Republican and Democrat senators who are leading the committee's investigation, sent a letter to Lowell demanding that Kushner turn over the emails about WikiLeaks by November 27, according to PBS.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
PBS also reports that Grassley and Feinstein requested a "correspondence" between Kushner and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, is currently a key focus of Robert Mueller's investigation and Mueller reportedly has enough evidence to indict Flynn on charges pertaining to his ties to Russia.
The full content of Kushner's emails, along with the campaign official who received forwarded copies, remains unclear. But the fact that he has any ties at all to WikiLeaks should cause major concern to the Trump administration as Mueller continues his investigation. The whistleblower organization has been named by U.S. intelligence officials as assisting Russian efforts to to meddle in the 2016 election by releasing emails that damaged the reputation of Hillary Clinton and her campaign.
According to Reuters, Kushner is "one person of interest" for both Mueller and the Senate Judiciary Committee. If it's determined that he aided in Russian interference, this will be the biggest bombshell yet in the Russia probe. Although Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was indicted on felony charges last month, no one who worked in the White House at any time has been arrested yet. That could change if and when Mike Flynn is indicted, but the fact that Kushner is a member of Trump's family would turn this into a scandal of epic proportions.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT