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Jared Kushner's statement on Russia: full text - CNNPolitics.com
www.cnn.com/2017/07/24/politics/jared-kushner-statement-russia-2016.../index.html
3 hours ago - Read Jared Kushner's statement to congressional committees about Russia and his involvement in the 2016 election and transition period.
READ: Jared Kushner releases statement to congressional ... - Fox 59
fox59.com/.../read-jared-kushner-releases-statement-to-congressional-committees-den...
READ: Jared Kushner releases statement to congressional committees, denies collusion with Russia. Posted 7:31 AM, July 24, 2017, by Associated Press.
Read: Jared Kushner's prepared remarks for the congressional Russia ...
https://www.vox.com/.../read-jared-kushner-prepared-remarks-senate-intelligence-co...
4 hours ago - Read: Jared Kushner's prepared remarks for the congressional Russia investigation ... with the Senate Intelligence Committee early Monday morning. In the statement, Kushner outlined his meetings with Russians and other ...
'I Did Not Collude,' Kushner Says in Prepared Remarks to Senators ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/us/politics/jared-kushner-russia-senate.html
2 hours ago - Mr. Kushner, who is to give his statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee ... Jared Kushner Is New Focus of Russia Inquiry MAY 30, 2017 ... Document: Read Jared Kushner's Prepared Remarks. Mr. Kushner's closed-door appearance before Senate Intelligence Committee investigators on Monday is ...READ: Jared Kushner's statement on Russia to congressional committees
Kushner: No other meetings with Russians 01:50
Bolding below included as submitted in statement
STATEMENT OF JARED C. KUSHNER TO CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES
July 24, 2017
July 24, 2017
I
am voluntarily providing this statement, submitting documents, and
sitting for interviews in order to shed light on issues that have been
raised about my role in the Trump for President Campaign and during the
transition period.
I am not a
person who has sought the spotlight. First in my business and now in
public service, I have worked on achieving goals, and have left it to
others to work on media and public perception. Because there has been a
great deal of conjecture, speculation, and inaccurate information about
me, I am grateful for the opportunity to set the record straight.
My Role in the Trump for President Campaign
Before
joining the administration, I worked in the private sector, building
and managing companies. My experience was in business, not politics, and
it was not my initial intent to play a large role in my father-in-law's
campaign when he decided to run for President. However, as the campaign
progressed, I was called on to assist with various tasks and aspects of
the campaign, and took on more and more responsibility.
Over
the course of the primaries and general election campaign, my role
continued to evolve. I ultimately worked with the finance, scheduling,
communications, speechwriting, polling, data and digital teams, as well
as becoming a point of contact for foreign government officials.
All
of these were tasks that I had never performed on a campaign
previously. When I was faced with a new challenge, I would reach out to
contacts, ask advice, find the right person to manage the specific
challenge, and work with that person to develop and execute a plan of
action. I was lucky to work with some incredibly talented people along
the way, all of whom made significant contributions toward the
campaign's ultimate success. Our nimble culture allowed us to adjust to
the ever-changing circumstances and make changes on the fly as the
situation warranted. I share this information because these actions
should be viewed through the lens of a fast-paced campaign with
thousands of meetings and interactions, some of which were impactful and
memorable and many of which were not.
It
is also important to note that a campaign's success starts with its
message and its messenger. Donald Trump had the right vision for America
and delivered his message perfectly. The results speak for themselves.
Not only did President Trump defeat sixteen skilled and experienced
primary opponents and win the presidency; he did so spending a fraction
of what his opponent spent in the general election. He outworked his
opponent and ran one of the best campaigns in history using both modern
technology and traditional methods to bring his message to the American
people.
Campaign Contacts with Foreign Persons
When
it became apparent that my father-in-law was going to be the Republican
nominee for President, as normally happens, a number of officials from
foreign countries attempted to reach out to the campaign. My
father-in-law asked me to be a point of contact with these foreign
countries. These were not contacts that I initiated, but, over the
course of the campaign, I had incoming contacts with people from
approximately 15 countries. To put these requests in context, I must
have received thousands of calls, letters and emails from people looking
to talk or meet on a variety of issues and topics, including hundreds
from outside the United States. While I could not be responsive to
everyone, I tried to be respectful of any foreign government contacts
with whom it would be important to maintain an ongoing, productive
working relationship were the candidate to prevail. To that end, I
called on a variety of people with deep experience, such as Dr. Henry
Kissinger, for advice on policy for the candidate, which
countries/representatives with which the campaign should engage, and
what messaging would resonate. In addition, it was typical for me to
receive 200 or more emails a day during the campaign. I did not have the
time to read every one, especially long emails from unknown senders or
email chains to which I was added at some later point in the exchange.
With
respect to my contacts with Russia or Russian representatives during
the campaign, there were hardly any. The first that I can recall was at
the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. in April 2016. This was when
then candidate Trump was delivering a major foreign policy speech. Doing
the event and speech had been my idea, and I oversaw its execution. I
arrived at the hotel early to make sure all logistics were in order.
After that, I stopped into the reception to thank the host of the event,
Dimitri Simes, the publisher of the bi-monthly foreign policy magazine,
The National Interest, who had done a great job putting everything
together. Mr. Simes and his group had created the guest list and
extended the invitations for the event. He introduced me to several
guests, among them four ambassadors, including Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak. With all the ambassadors, including Mr. Kislyak, we shook
hands, exchanged brief pleasantries and I thanked them for attending the
event and said I hoped they would like candidate Trump's speech and his
ideas for a fresh approach to America's foreign policy. The ambassadors
also expressed interest in creating a positive relationship should we
win the election. Each exchange lasted less than a minute; some gave me
their business cards and invited me to lunch at their embassies. I never
took them up on any of these invitations and that was the extent of the
interactions.
Reuters news service
has reported that I had two calls with Ambassador Kislyak at some time
between April and November of 2016. While I participated in thousands of
calls during this period, I do not recall any such calls with the
Russian Ambassador. We have reviewed the phone records available to us
and have not been able to identify any calls to any number we know to be
associated with Ambassador Kislyak and I am highly skeptical these
calls took place. A comprehensive review of my land line and cell phone
records from the time does not reveal those calls. I had no ongoing
relationship with the Ambassador before the election, and had limited
knowledge about him then. In fact, on November 9, the day after the
election, I could not even remember the name of the Russian Ambassador.
When the campaign received an email purporting to be an official note of
congratulations from President Putin, I was asked how we could verify
it was real. To do so I thought the best way would be to ask the only
contact I recalled meeting from the Russian government, which was the
Ambassador I had met months earlier, so I sent an email asking Mr.
Simes, "What is the name of the Russian ambassador?" Through my lawyer, I
have asked Reuters to provide the dates on which the calls supposedly
occurred or the phone number at which I supposedly reached, or was
reached by, Ambassador Kislyak. The journalist refused to provide any
corroborating evidence that they occurred.
The
only other Russian contact during the campaign is one I did not recall
at all until I was reviewing documents and emails in response to
congressional requests for information. In June 2016, my brother-in-law,
Donald Trump Jr. asked if I was free to stop by a meeting on June 9 at
3:00 p.m. The campaign was headquartered in the same building as his
office in Trump Tower, and it was common for each of us to swing by the
other's meetings when requested. He eventually sent me his own email
changing the time of the meeting to 4:00 p.m. That email was on top of a
long back and forth that I did not read at the time. As I did with most
emails when I was working remotely, I quickly reviewed on my iPhone the
relevant message that the meeting would occur at 4:00 PM at his office.
Documents confirm my memory that this was calendared as "Meeting: Don
Jr.| Jared Kushner." No one else was mentioned.
I
arrived at the meeting a little late. When I got there, the person who
has since been identified as a Russian attorney was talking about the
issue of a ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children. I had no idea why
that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not
well-spent at this meeting. Reviewing emails recently confirmed my
memory that the meeting was a waste of our time and that, in looking for
a polite way to leave and get back to my work, I actually emailed an
assistant from the meeting after I had been there for ten or so minutes
and wrote "Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of
meeting." I had not met the attorney before the meeting nor spoken with
her since. I thought nothing more of this short meeting until it came to
my attention recently. I did not read or recall this email exchange
before it was shown to me by my lawyers when reviewing documents for
submission to the committees. No part of the meeting I attended included
anything about the campaign, there was no follow up to the meeting that
I am aware of, I do not recall how many people were there (or their
names), and I have no knowledge of any documents being offered or
accepted. Finally, after seeing the email, I disclosed this meeting
prior to it being reported in the press on a supplement to my security
clearance form, even if that was not required as meeting the definitions
of the form.
There was one more
possible contact that I will note. On October 30, 2016, I received a
random email from the screenname "Guccifer400." This email, which I
interpreted as a hoax, was an extortion attempt and threatened to reveal
candidate Trump's tax returns and demanded that we send him 52 bitcoins
in exchange for not publishing that information. I brought the email to
the attention of a U.S. Secret Service agent on the plane we were all
travelling on and asked what he thought. He advised me to ignore it and
not to reply -- which is what I did. The sender never contacted me
again.
To the best of my
recollection, these were the full extent of contacts I had during the
campaign with persons who were or appeared to potentially be
representatives of the Russian government.
Transition Contacts with Foreign Persons
The
transition period after the election was even more active than the
campaign. Starting on election night, we began to receive an incredible
volume of messages and invitations from well-wishers in the United
States and abroad. Dozens of messages came from foreign officials
seeking to set up foreign leader calls and create lines of communication
and relationships with what would be the new administration. During
this period, I recall having over fifty contacts with people from over
fifteen countries. Two of those meetings were with Russians, neither of
which I solicited.
On November 16,
2016, my assistant received a request for a meeting from the Russian
Ambassador. As I mentioned before, previous to receiving this request, I
could not even recall the Russian Ambassador's name, and had to ask for
the name of the individual I had seen at the Mayflower Hotel almost
seven months earlier. In addition, far from being urgent, that meeting
was not set up for two weeks -- on December 1. The meeting occurred in
Trump Tower, where we had our transition office, and lasted twenty-
thirty minutes. Lt. General Michael Flynn (Ret.), who became the
President's National Security Advisor, also attended. During the
meeting, after pleasantries were exchanged, as I had done in many of the
meetings I had and would have with foreign officials, I stated our
desire for a fresh start in relations. Also, as I had done in other
meetings with foreign officials, I asked Ambassador Kislyak if he would
identify the best person (whether the Ambassador or someone else) with
whom to have direct discussions and who had contact with his President. The
fact that I was asking about ways to start a dialogue after Election
Day should of course be viewed as strong evidence that I was not aware
of one that existed before Election Day.
The
Ambassador expressed similar sentiments about relations, and then said
he especially wanted to address U.S. policy in Syria, and that he wanted
to convey information from what he called his "generals." He said he
wanted to provide information that would help inform the new
administration. He said the generals could not easily come to the U.S.
to convey this information and he asked if there was a secure line in
the transition office to conduct a conversation. General Flynn or I
explained that there were no such lines. I believed developing a
thoughtful approach on Syria was a very high priority given the ongoing
humanitarian crisis, and I asked if they had an existing communications
channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable
transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn. The
Ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we
would receive this information after the Inauguration. Nothing else
occurred. I did not suggest a "secret back channel." I did not suggest
an on-going secret form of communication for then or for when the
administration took office. I did not raise the possibility of using the
embassy or any other Russian facility for any purpose other than this
one possible conversation in the transition period. We did not discuss
sanctions.
Approximately a week
later, on December 6, the Embassy asked if I could meet with the
Ambassador on December 7. I declined. They then asked if I could meet on
December 6; I declined again. They then asked when the earliest was
that I could meet. I declined these requests because I was working on
many other responsibilities for the transition. He asked if he could
meet my assistant instead and, to avoid offending the Ambassador, I
agreed. He did so on December 12. My assistant reported that the
Ambassador had requested that I meet with a person named Sergey Gorkov
who he said was a banker and someone with a direct line to the Russian
President who could give insight into how Putin was viewing the new
administration and best ways to work together. I agreed to meet Mr.
Gorkov because the Ambassador has been so insistent, said he had a
direct relationship with the President, and because Mr. Gorkov was only
in New York for a couple days. I made room on my schedule for the
meeting that occurred the next day, on December 13.
The
meeting with Mr. Gorkov lasted twenty to twenty-five minutes. He
introduced himself and gave me two gifts -- one was a piece of art from
Nvgorod, the village where my grandparents were from in Belarus, and the
other was a bag of dirt from that same village. (Any notion that I
tried to conceal this meeting or that I took it thinking it was in my
capacity as a businessman is false. In fact, I gave my assistant these
gifts to formally register them with the transition office). After that,
he told me a little about his bank and made some statements about the
Russian economy. He said that he was friendly with President Putin,
expressed disappointment with U.S.-Russia relations under President
Obama and hopes for a better relationship in the future. As I did at the
meeting with Ambassador Kislyak, I expressed the same sentiments I had
with other foreign officials I met. There were no specific policies
discussed. We had no discussion about the sanctions imposed by the Obama
Administration. At no time was there any discussion about my companies,
business transactions, real estate projects, loans, banking
arrangements or any private business of any kind. At the end of the
short meeting, we thanked each other and I went on to other meetings. I
did not know or have any contact with Mr. Gorkov before that meeting,
and I have had no reason to connect with him since.
To
the best of my recollection, these were the only two contacts I had
during the transition with persons who were or appeared to potentially
be representatives of the Russian government.
Disclosure of Contacts on My Security Clearance Form
There
has been a good deal of misinformation reported about my SF-86 form. As
my attorneys and I have previously explained, my SF-86 application was
prematurely submitted due to a miscommunication and initially did not
list any contacts (not just with Russians) with foreign government
officials. Here are some facts about that form and the efforts I have
made to supplement it.
In the week
before the Inauguration, amid the scramble of finalizing the unwinding
of my involvement from my company, moving my family to Washington,
completing the paper work to divest assets and resign from my outside
positions and complete my security and financial disclosure forms,
people at my New York office were helping me find the information,
organize it, review it and put it into the electronic form. They sent an
email to my assistant in Washington, communicating that the changes to
one particular section were complete; my assistant interpreted that
message as meaning that the entire form was completed. At that point,
the form was a rough draft and still had many omissions including not
listing any foreign government contacts and even omitted the address of
my father-in-law (which was obviously well known). Because of this
miscommunication, my assistant submitted the draft on January 18, 2017.
That
evening, when we realized the form had been submitted prematurely, we
informed the transition team that we needed to make changes and
additions to the form. The very next day, January 19, 2017, we submitted
supplemental information to the transition, which confirmed receipt and
said they would immediately transmit it to the FBI. The supplement
disclosed that I had "numerous contacts with foreign officials" and that
we were going through my records to provide an accurate and complete
list. I provided a list of those contacts in the normal course, before
my background investigation interview and prior to any inquiries or
media reports about my form.
It has
been reported that my submission omitted only contacts with Russians.
That is not the case. In the accidental early submission of the form,
all foreign contacts were omitted. The supplemental information later
disclosed over one hundred contacts from more than twenty countries that
might be responsive to the questions on the form. These included
meetings with individuals such as Jordan's King Abdullah II, Israel's
Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs,
Luis Videgaray Caso and many more. All of these had been left off
before.
Over the last six months, I
have made every effort to provide the FBI with whatever information is
needed to investigate my background. In addition, my attorneys have
explained that the security clearance process is one in which
supplements are expected and invited. The form itself instructs that,
during the interview, the information in the document can be "update[d],
clarif[ied], and explain[ed]" as part of the security clearance
process. A good example is the June 9 meeting. For reasons that should
be clear from the explanation of that meeting I have provided, I did not
remember the meeting and certainly did not remember it as one with
anyone who had to be included on an SF-86. When documents reviewed for
production in connection with committee requests reminded me that
meeting had occurred, and because of the language in the email chain
that I then read for the first time, I included that meeting on a
supplement. I did so even though my attorneys were unable to conclude
that the Russian lawyer was a representative of any foreign country and
thus fell outside the scope of the form. This supplemental information
was also provided voluntarily, well prior to any media inquiries,
reporting or request for this information, and it was done soon after I
was reminded of the meeting.
****
As I have said from the very first media inquiry, I am happy to share information with the
investigating
bodies. I have shown today that I am willing to do so and will continue
to cooperate as I have nothing to hide. As I indicated, I know there
has been a great deal of speculation and conjecture about my contacts
with any officials or people from Russia. I have disclosed these
contacts and described them as fully as I can recall. The record and
documents I am providing will show that I had perhaps four contacts with
Russian representatives out of thousands during the campaign and
transition, none of which were impactful in any way to the election or
particularly memorable. I am very grateful for the opportunity to set
the record straight. I also have tried to provide context for my role in
the campaign, and I am proud of the candidate that we supported, of the
campaign that we ran, and the victory that we achieved.
It
has been my practice not to appear in the media or leak information in
my own defense. I have tried to focus on the important work at hand and
serve this President and this country to the best of my abilities. I
hope that through my answers to questions, written statements and
documents I have now been able to demonstrate the entirety of my limited
contacts with Russian representatives during the campaign and
transition. I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the
campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper
contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business
activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent
with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is
required. Hopefully, this puts these matters to rest.
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