Kushner to Testify to Senate Intelligence Panel on Russia
President’s son-in-law will voluntarily apppear, aide says
(Bloomberg) -- Jared Kushner will face questioning by the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of its investigations into ties between the Russian government and President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, the panel said Monday.
The committee wants answers from Kushner on meetings he arranged with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., including one with Sergey Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, Russia’s state-owned development bank, two Senate aides said. That meeting, and Kushner’s intent to testify to the committee, was first reported by The New York Times on Monday. The Obama administration leveled sanctions on the bank after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military campaign in Ukraine in 2014.
No date has been set yet for Kushner’s testimony, said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s top-ranking Democrat.
“We expect him to be able to provide answers to key questions that have arisen in our inquiry,” Burr and Warner said in a joint statement. "The timing of Mr. Kushner’s testimony is still being determined, but will only come after the committee determines that it has received any documents or information necessary to ensure that the meeting is productive for all sides."
A White House official who insisted on anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive matter said Kushner volunteered to appear before the committee because of his role as the Trump campaign’s primary point of contact with foreign governments.
Gorkov said in a statement issued by Vnesheconombank that his meeting with Kushner was one of a series of meetings with foreign business leaders as part of a strategic review in 2016.
“They discussed existing practices of the development bank’s work, promising areas and industries," said the statement, which was written in Russian. "The meetings took place in the form of a roadshow on VEB’s strategy by 2021 with the representatives of the largest banks and business circles of the US, including head of Kushner Companies Jared Kushner."
Trump announced Monday that Kushner will lead a new White House initiative to apply ideas from the business world to overhaul the federal bureaucracy.
--With assistance from Anna Baraulina
To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Epstein in New York at jepstein32@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Mike Dorning