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The Flynn and Kushner Interviews with SSCI

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Richard Burr and Mark Warner had a press conference today to — basically — reassure people that at least one intelligence committee is made up of grown-ups who will be able to conduct an investigation of Russia’s attempts to interfere with the election. Among other things, Burr said the committee has a list of about 20 people with whom they’re in the process of setting up interviews, about five of which have been scheduled, to start Monday.

Amid repeated discussions about leaks, Burr confirmed — as the NYT already has — that the Committee wants to meet with Jared Kushner. The NYT story about Kushner was clearly first informed by Senate Intelligence Committee personnel that SSCI wanted to talk to him, and then got Hope Hicks to confirm it publicly. Of particularly interest (because Burr is very strict that committee business remain secret), the NYT SSCI source asked for anonymity to remain candid about Kushner, not because he or she was not permitted to talk with the press.

The Senate panel’s decision to question Mr. Kushner would make him the closest person to the president to be called upon in any of the investigations, and the only one currently serving in the White House. The officials who initially described that Senate inquiry to The New York Times did so on the condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly about Mr. Trump’s son-in-law.

Later the NYT story cotes a statement from Burr and Mark Warner, confirming (as Burr did in the hearing) that they will speak with Kushner.

In today’s hearing, having confirmed again the detail about Kushner, however, Burr took a different approach in response to a question about Mike Flynn.

Q: Have you guys been in contact with Michael Flynn or representatives of Michael Flynn? Also, can you go into a little bit of the thought process between why you would have an interview behind closed doors or do it publicly, like why you would talk to Jared Kushner behind closed doors, why you would do it publicly?

Burr: Well, I think it’s safe to say that we have had conversations with a lot of people. And you would think less of us if General Flynn wasn’t in that list. From a standpoint of the interview process if you feel like you’re being cheated, because they’re not in public, if there’s relevance to em they’ll eventually be part of a public hearing.

[Burr goes on to discuss the committee doing private interviews first.]

Q: Have you already spoken with Flynn? Have you already spoken with Flynn?

Burr: I’m not gonna tell you one way or another.

Effectively, he confirms that Flynn will be asked to talk to the committee. But when asked (I think my transcription of this is correct but welcome corrections on this point) if he — or the committee — had already spoken with Flynn, he refused to provide the same kind of confirmation he did with Kushner, and particularly to say whether he or the committee had already spoken with him.

I raise this for several reasons. Obviously, the double standard — and Burr’s willingness to deviate from his strict committee business secrecy pledge with regards to Kushner — is notable. The possibility that he or the committee may have already spoken with Flynn is particularly interesting.

In my post on the Kushner story, I noted that the Kushner story for the first time got into the quid pro quo the Russians were really interested in — not a change in policy towards Ukraine, but rather, an end to the sanctions targeting Russia for its annexation of Ukraine. I actually missed one of the most important parts of that story, however. On December 29, the FSB-trained head of a sanctioned who met with Kushner at the request of Sergey Kislyak, Sergey Gorkov, stated that he thought Ukrainian-related sanctions might “change for the better.”

And in an interview on the state-owned Rossiya 24 TV channel on Dec. 29, the same month that he met with Mr. Kushner, Mr. Gorkov said he hoped that the situation caused by Ukraine sanctions imposed by the Americans against Russian banks like his “would change for the better.”

As I noted in my post, the possibility that Gorkov had discussed Ukraine sanctions directly with Kushner would change the connotation of the discussions between Flynn and Kislyak.

And those conversations were on December 29.

In other words, on the very same day that Kislyak and Flynn were having multiple phone calls — and discussed sanctions in vague terms — Gorkov was publicly discussing the Ukraine, not the hacking related, sanctions.

Again, Burr is happy to confirm the committee will call Kushner. He’s not going to say whether the committee has already spoken with Flynn, who would know better about the connotation of sanctions as discussed on December 29.

And SSCI likely has already read the conversations between Kislyak and Gorkov surrounding his meetings with the President’s son-in-law.

The Jared Kushner Meeting Gets Closer to Quid Pro Quo

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Last week, several members of Congress anonymously told the press they had, for the first time, seen evidence that might support charges of collusion between Trump’s associates and the Russians. The frenzied speculation mostly focused on the usual suspects: Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, or Carter Page (somehow, the frenzied speculation often forgets Trump lawyer Michael Cohen).

Today, the NYT has a story reporting that the Senate Intelligence Committee wants to talk to Jared Kushner about a previously undisclosed meeting arranged by Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.

Until now, the White House had acknowledged only an early December meeting between Mr. Kislyak and Mr. Kushner, which occurred at Trump Tower and was also attended by Michael T. Flynn, who would briefly serve as the national security adviser.

Later that month, though, Mr. Kislyak requested a second meeting, which Mr. Kushner asked a deputy to attend in his stead, officials said. At Mr. Kislyak’s request, Mr. Kushner later met with Sergey N. Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, which drew sanctions from the Obama administration after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia annexed Crimea and began meddling in Ukraine.

The NYT only notes this obliquely by stating the committee has access to routine intercepts involving the Ambassador, but remember that FBI went through Kislyak’s intercepted communications in hopes of explaining why Vladimir Putin didn’t respond more aggressively to sanctions Obama imposed in December. So SSCI likely discovered this undisclosed meeting that way.

Which is interesting, because Kushner did not reveal it to some senior Trump officials (likely including White House Counsel Don McGahn).

The extent of Mr. Kushner’s interactions with Mr. Kislyak caught some senior members of Mr. Trump’s White House team off guard, in part because he did not mention them last month during a debate then consuming the White House: how to handle the disclosures about Mr. Flynn’s interactions with the Russian ambassador.

Ms. Hicks said that Mr. Trump had authorized Mr. Kushner to have meetings with foreign officials that he felt made sense, and to report back to him if those meetings produced anything of note. She said that because in Mr. Kushner’s view the meetings were inconsequential, it did not occur to him to mention them to senior staff members earlier.

NYT raises the possibility that Kushner discussed his efforts to fund one of his family’s business in NYC, though Hope Hicks claimed it — and the sanctions — did not come up.

But consider how this meeting might interact with another known Kislyak conversation, the multiple calls with Flynn on December 29 after Obama imposed hacking related sanctions. In context, that conversation was about the hacking sanctions, not the more onerous Ukraine ones. But if Kushner had just met with a sanctioned bank and discussed those sanctions, that could change Kislyak’s understanding of what Flynn was saying.

One mistake of a lot of the frenzied speculation is a focus on changing US policy towards Ukraine, a focus not borne out by the public evidence. The result of that focus is to ignore what the Christopher Steele dossier makes clear was the real Russian goal, unsurprisingly: the lifting of the Ukraine-related sanctions.

There still is no evidence that’s what happened at this meeting that Kushner succeeded in hiding from people within the White House. But if it did, then it might amount to far more than all the smoke swirling around Manafort, Page, and Stone.

Count Them: Thirty. Five. Days.

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I’m not going to elaborate on MSNBC’s Maddow program last night, featuring David Cay Johnston to whom Donald Trump’s 2005 tax filing had been “leaked.”

It was two pages, revealing little more than adjusted income, income tax assessed, and the lack of any charitable contribution deduction.

One of the two pages was also marked CLIENT COPY.

Not going to get into the rambling statement issued by the White House before the show either, unusual from this administration only for its lack of spelling errors.

But I’m going to point to the calendar.

Today is March 15. It’s a little over a month to Tax Day when filings for 2016 income are due.

35 days until the deadline at the end of the night on April 18.

35 days until Donald Trump has yet another tax filing for which he has no excuse to share with voters and their representatives in Congress.

Non-Tax Filing Stuff:

Kushner family may get $400M from Chinese Anbang Insurance Group — This reeks, absolutely stinks. Anbang is linked to top officials in China’s government; it’s negotiating a stake in a Manhattan property owned by Kushner (read: Trump’s in-laws). There’s no end to the corruption with this administration.

Volkswagen toying with a Fiat Chrysler merger — This smells of desperation to me. Can’t imagine the largest shareholders of VW willingly giving up any control in spite of the financial damage from the company’s emissions fraud. Not to mention the whole Too-Big-Too-Fail size of this potential merger when Volkswagen Group is responsible for nearly 10% of all Germany’s jobs.

Trump may undo years of clean air by screwing with emissions standards — Speaking of emissions and fraud, Trump will be speaking in Detroit today where he is expected to propose undoing mileage standards and emissions regulations. Not only is the automotive industry finally headed in the right direction toward alternative energy after nearly two decades of R&D and implementation, but apparently the public needs to be sicker ahead of the loss of health care insurance.

Robot killed worker, spouse files suit — Horrible and sad; incident happened in 2015. Husband filed suit last week against five robotics companies he claims are responsible for the robot’s failure.

Energy Transfer Partners wants tribal plea rejected — Oil could start flowing through DAPL within the week if U.S. District Judge James Boasberg rejects Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes’ appeal based on religious grounds.

There. That should keep you busy for a while. Treat this like an open thread.