28th March, 2017
The White House said President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee under Sen. Richard Burr, on his contacts with a Russian bank.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Monday that Kushner was Trump Campaign’s foreign contact during the 2016 election campaign.
A Russian bank under U.S. economic sanctions over Russia’s incursion into Ukraine disclosed on Monday that its executives had met Kushner during the campaign.
Kushner, 36, married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, will testify to the Senate committee investigating whether Russia tried to interfere in the Nov. 8 election.
Spicer said: “Throughout the campaign and the transition, Jared served as the official primary point of contact with foreign governments and officials until we had State Department officials up.
“I think based on the questions that surround this, he volunteered to go in and sit down with them and say, ‘hey, I’m glad to talk about the role that I played and the individuals I met with’.
“But again, remember, given the role that he played both during the campaign and during the transition, he met with countless individuals.
“That was part of his job. That was part of his role. And he executed it completely as he was supposed to,” Spicer said.
Executives of Russian state development bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) had talks with Kushner during a bank roadshow in 2016 when it was preparing a new strategy, the bank said.
“As part of the preparation of the new strategy, executives of Vnesheconombank met with representatives of leading financial institutes in Europe, Asia and America multiple times during 2016,” VEB said in a statement.
It said roadshow meetings took place “with a number of representatives of the largest banks and business establishments of the United States, including Jared Kushner, the head of Kushner Companies”.
Allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russian actors were behind the hacking of senior Democratic National Congress operatives and spreading disinformation has lingered over Trump’s presidency.
Democrats alleged that Russian wanted to tilt the election toward the Republican, a claim dismissed by Trump, while Russia also denied the allegations.
Trump’s first National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign on Feb. 13 after revelations that he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with Amb. Sergey Kislyak and misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.
U.S. officials said that after meeting with Kislyak at Trump Tower last December, a meeting also attended by Flynn, Kushner met later in December with Sergei Gorkov, the CEO of Vnesheconombank.