‘I did not collude’ with foreign officials, Jared Kushner says in advance of testimony

Once he arrived at the meeting, he determined it was a “waste of our time” and sent a message to an assistant asking that someone call him on his cell phone to give him an excuse to leave.

He only became aware of the emails in recent weeks when his lawyers found them while going through his records, he said.

“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,” he wrote.

That meeting was one of four with Russians during the campaign and the presidential transition that Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, said he had. None of the contacts were improper, he said.

Kushner said he had two meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. One was a brief encounter at a reception in the spring of 2016. It was so unmemorable, he said, that after the election, when Trump received a congratulatory message from Russian president Vladimir Putin, and Kushner was asked to authenticate it, he had to ask someone to remind him of the ambassador’s name.

He disputed a report by the Reuters news agency that he had two telephone calls with Kislyak, saying he had no recollection of that, and his lawyers had found no record of such calls.

The second meeting with Kislyak took place after the election, he said. At that meeting, Kushner said in the statement, he did talk with Kislyak about setting up a secure communications channel using the Russian embassy, a move first reported by the Washington Post.

But Kushner denied that was an effort to create a wide-ranging secret back-channel between the Russians and the transition. Instead, he said, Kislyak had told him that Russian generals wanted to talk with transition officials about policy toward the war in Syria.

Kislyak asked if the transition had a secure line on which that subject could be discussed. Kushner said that either he or retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who also was present, said that the transition did not have secure lines available.

“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,” Kushner said.

Kushner did not say why he did not consider using U.S. government secure communications for such a discussion.

Kislyak said that using Russian equipment would not be possible, the statement said. They agreed to wait until after the inauguration to have the conversation.

The fourth meeting with a Russian, Kushner said, was a previously reported discussion with Sergey Gorkov, a banker with close ties to Putin whom he met at Kislyak’s request. “No specific policies were discussed,” in the meeting, which lasted 20-25 minutes, he said.

Gorkov heads Vnesheconombank, which is subject to U.S. sanctions.

“I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector,” Kushner noted.

Kushner also offered an explanation for having initially submitted a federal form for a security clearance that did not report his meetings with Russians or other foreigners, something the form specifically asks for.

He said his assistant had misunderstood a message from other staff members and had believed the form was complete when it was still just a draft. The assistant submitted the form, known as an SF-86, erroneously, he said, adding that his office had submitted updated information detailing his foreign contacts before that became the subject of news reports.

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