Russia probe looks at Kushner links to Putin ally
WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, was looking for a direct line to President Vladimir Putin of Russia — a search that in mid-December found him in a room with a Russian banker whose financial institution was deeply intertwined with Russian intelligence, and remains under sanction by the United States.
The meeting came as Trump was openly feuding with U.S. intelligence agencies and their conclusion that Russia had tried to disrupt the presidential election and turn it in his favor.
On Friday, citing U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports, the Washington Post reported that Kislyak told his superiors in Moscow that Kushner had proposed a secret channel and had suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.
Several people with knowledge of the meeting with Kislyak, and who defended it, have said it was primarily to discuss how the United States and Russia could cooperate to end the civil war in Syria and on other policy issues.
Yet one current and one former U.S. official with knowledge of the continuing congressional and FBI investigations said they were examining whether the channel was meant to remain open, and if there were other items on the meeting’s agenda, including lifting sanctions that the Obama administration had imposed on Russia in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its aggression in Ukraine.