WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner will meet behind closed doors this week with both the House and Senate intelligence committees investigating possible collusion between the president’s campaign and Russia.
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka, will testify before the Senate intelligence committee on Monday, according to his lawyer, and the House panel on Tuesday.
The 36-year-old White House aide will be asked about his meetings with Russia’s ambassador to Washington, the head of a major Russian bank and a Russian lawyer — the latter along with Trump’s son Donald Jr.
“There’s a lot we want to know,” Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the House committee, said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” programme.
“We certainly want to know about several of the meetings that have been alleged to have taken place,” he added.
“His counsel has said they’ll only make him available for two hours. So we expect this is just going to be the first interview.”
White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said he hoped the appearances would be “the last time that he has to talk about Russia.”
Special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller is leading an investigation into possible collusion, but the House and Senate have organised separate probes.
Donald Jr and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are currently negotiating with the Senate Judiciary Committee about how and when they might testify about their Russia links.
The pair are working with the panel to provide documents and conduct pre-interviews behind closed doors, ahead of any public hearing, the committee chair Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein have announced.
The judiciary committee has set a hearing for Wednesday. Both Donald Jr and Manafort were invited to testify, but their participation was still unclear.
Grassley and Feinstein said late on Friday: “We will not issue subpoenas for them tonight requiring their presence at Wednesday’s hearing but reserve the right to do so in the future.”
Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2017