US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top aide, Jared Kushner, is willing to cooperate with federal investigators looking into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, his attorney said.
The statement from attorney Jamie Gorelick was issued on Thursday amid reports that the FBI was investigating meetings Kushner had in December last year with Russian officials.
“Mr Kushner previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings. He will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry,” the statement said.
Photo: Reuters
Meanwhile, the chairman of the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee asked the FBI to turn over more documents about former FBI director James Comey’s interactions with the White House and the US Department of Justice, including materials dating back nearly four years to the administration of former US president Barack Obama.
The FBI and the oversight committee — as well as several other congressional panels — are looking into Russian meddling in last year’s US presidential election and possible connections between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Trump fired Comey on May 9 amid questions about the FBI’s investigation, which is now being overseen by special counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director.
NBC News and the Washington Post first reported that the FBI’s ongoing investigation includes a look at Kushner, which would place the probe inside the White House.
Kushner, a key White House adviser, had meetings late last year with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak and Russian banker Sergey Gorkov.
The Post story cited anonymous “people familiar with the investigation,” who said the FBI investigation does not mean that Kushner is suspected of a crime.
Earlier on Thursday, committee chairman US Representative Jason Chaffetz told acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe that he wants records of Comey’s contacts with the White House and the justice department dating to September 2013.
In a letter to McCabe, Chaffetz said he is seeking to review Comey’s memos and other written materials so he can “better understand” Comey’s communications with the White House and the US Attorney General’s office.
Chaffetz previously requested Comey’s recent memos about his private contacts with Trump, but the bureau told him Thursday it could not yet turn them over because of Mueller’s probe.
Chaffetz, who last week said he has his “subpoena pen” ready to force Comey or the FBI to turn over the documents, told McCabe that “Congress and the American public have a right and a duty to examine this issue independently of the special counsel’s investigation.”
“I trust and hope you understand this and make the right decision — to produce these documents to the committee immediately and on a voluntary basis,” he added in a thinly veiled threat.
Chaffetz’s letter comes a month before he is scheduled to leave office after abruptly announcing his resignation earlier this year.
He canceled a hearing scheduled for Wednesday after Comey declined to testify.
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UNILATERAL: The move from China’s aviation authority comes despite a previous 2015 agreement that any changes to flight paths would be done by consensus The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday slammed Beijing for arbitrarily opening the M503 flight route’s W121 connecting path, saying that such unilateral conduct disrespected the consensus between both sides and could destabilize the Taiwan Strait and the wider region. The condemnation came after the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) earlier yesterday announced it “has activated the W121 connecting path of the M503 flight route,” meaning that west-to-east flights are now permitted along the path. The newly activated west-to-east route is intended to “alleviate the pressure caused by the increase of flights,” China’s state-run Xinhua news agency quoted China’s Taiwan Affairs Office
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