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 Jared Kushner told reporters Monday he had done nothing wrong, that no collusion with Russia had taken place, and that his father-in-law won in November because he ran a better campaign than Hillary Clinton — not because he got help from Moscow. 
 
 "Let me be very clear. I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so," Kushner, a senior presidential adviser, said at a podium in front of the White House after more than two hours of questions behind closed doors from staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. 
 
 Related: Jared Kushner’s Full Statement to Congress 
 
 "Records and documents I’ve provided will show all of my actions were proper and occurred in the normal course of events in a very unique campaign," he said. "I had no improper contacts, I have not relied on Russian funds for my businesses, and I have been fully transparent in providing all requested information." 
 
 He added, "Donald Trump had a better message and ran a smarter campaign and that is why he won. Suggesting otherwise ridicules those who voted for him." 
 
 Earlier in the day, before Kushner was interviewed by the committee staff, he released an 11-page statement detailing four contacts with Russians during the election and transition and denying any collusion with Moscow. 
 
 Among the meetings with Russian officials he addressed in his written statement was a June 2016 sit-down that included Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. In his statement, Kushner said that meeting was such a "waste of time" that he asked his assistant to call him out of the gathering. 
 
 Ahead of that meeting, Donald Trump Jr. had been promised potentially damaging information about Clinton, according to emails he released earlier this month — although the president's son has said the meeting did not produce any information and that Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss an adoption program of Russian children. 
 
 Democrats have pounced on the meeting as evidence that Trump Jr. was willing to collude with a foreigner purporting to have information tied to the Russian government to help his father's presidential campaign and influence the results of the election. 
 
 Kushner said in his initial Monday statement that he had not spoken to the lawyer since. "I thought nothing more of this short meeting until it came to my attention recently," he said. 
 
 In his statement, Kushner said his first meeting with a Russian official came in April 2016 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Following a speech there by then-candidate Trump about foreign policy, the event’s host, Dimitri Simes, introduced Kushner "to several guests, among them four ambassadors, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak." 
 
 Kushner wrote of two additional meetings with Russian officials, both which occurred after Trump won. 
 
 President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior White House advisor, Jared Kushner, arrives for a meeting with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on July 24 in Washington. Win McNamee / Getty Images 
 
 A Dec. 1 meeting with Kislyak at Trump Tower "lasted twenty- thirty minutes," where "Lt. General Michael Flynn (Ret.), who became the President's National Security Advisor" was also present, Kushner said he "stated our desire for a fresh start in relations. Also, as I had done in other meetings with foreign officials, I asked Ambassador Kislyak if he would identify the best person (whether the Ambassador or someone else) with whom to have direct discussions and who had contact with his President," he wrote. 
 
 Kushner, in his statement, also wrote of a Dec. 13 meeting with Sergey Gorkov, who Kislyak had said "was a banker and someone with a direct line to the Russian President who could give insight into how Putin was viewing the new administration and best ways to work together." 
 
 "I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Ambassador has been so insistent, said he had a direct relationship with the President, and because Mr. Gorkov was only in New York for a couple days," Kushner wrote. 
 
 "As I did at the meeting with Ambassador Kislyak, I expressed the same sentiments I had with other foreign officials I met. There were no specific policies discussed. We had no discussion about the sanctions imposed by the Obama Administration," Kushner wrote. 
 
 NBC News had reported in June that members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees proving Russian interference might be looking into whether Kushner had been looking for a customer in Moscow to buy the massively expensive 41-story tower at 666 Fifth Avenue from his family's real estate company. 
 
 The Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating Russia's alleged attempted interference in the 2016 presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the covert operation was intended to damage Clinton's campaign and evolved into an attempt to help Trump win. 
 
 Kushner arrived at Capitol Hill for his interviews around 9:40 a.m., and did not respond to questions being shouted by reporters. 
 
 He emerged more than two hours later, responding to more shouted questions from reporters that his interviews had gone "very well" and that he had answered "as many (questions) as they had." He later spoke to reporters in front of the White House at a podium with the White House seal on it. 
 
 His interview took place in a special area used for classified briefings and meetings called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF. The SCIF is on the second floor of the Hart Senate Office Building, the same place where the Intelligence Committee has held recent interviews with James Clapper, Denis McDonough and Susan Rice. 
 
 Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Senate panel, said Monday there was a "broad bipartisan expectation" that Kushner would be called before the committee again. ||||| FILE - In this June 22, 2017, file photo, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner listens during the "American Leadership in Emerging Technology" event with President Donald Trump in the East Room of... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump and the Russia investigations (all times local): 
 
 1:25 p.m. 
 
 White House senior adviser and President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner says he did not collude with Russia. 
 
 Kushner spoke to reporters at the White House Monday after meeting with Senate investigators probing Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties to the Trump campaign. Kushner told reporters he wanted to be "very clear." He said he "did not collude with Russia nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so." 
 
 Kushner says he "had no improper contacts" with Russia and says his actions were entirely "proper." 
 
 Kushner left his private meeting with Senate investigators, nearly three hours after it began. He delivered a brief statement upon his return to the White House but did not answer reporters' questions. 
 
 __ 
 
 12:30 p.m. 
 
 President Donald Trump's son-in-law has concluded his meeting with Senate investigators probing Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. 
 
 Jared Kushner left the private meeting around 12:25 p.m., nearly three hours after it began. A man tried to hand him a Russian flag and police stopped him. 
 
 Kushner is to make a public statement from the White House Monday afternoon. 
 
 In a written statement released before the committee meeting, Kushner said he never colluded with Russians looking to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton and does not know of anyone who did. 
 
 He disclosed four interactions with Russians during the campaign and transition, saying he had nothing to hide. Those were with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., a Russian banker and a Russian lawyer said to have damaging information about Clinton. 
 
 Kushner was to meet Tuesday with the House intelligence committee. 
 
 __ 
 
 11:10 a.m. 
 
 House Speaker Paul Ryan says special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, isn't a biased partisan. 
 
 Ryan's comments in a radio interview in Milwaukee come as President Donald Trump repeatedly has dismissed Mueller's investigation as a political witch hunt. 
 
 On the "Jay Weber Show," Ryan was asked why more Republicans aren't defending Trump in light of the Mueller investigation. 
 
 Ryan says the facts uncovered through the Mueller and congressional investigations will "vindicate themselves." And he says there's no question that Mueller is a Republican, noting that he was first appointed FBI director under Republican President George W. Bush in 2001. 
 
 Ryan says, "I don't think many people are saying Bob Mueller is a biased partisan. He's anything but." 
 
 ___ 
 
 9:45 a.m. 
 
 President Donald Trump's son-in-law has arrived for questioning by Senate investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign. 
 
 Jared Kushner is speaking in a closed session Monday to staff on the Senate intelligence committee. Earlier, he released an 11-page statement detailing four contacts with Russians during Trump's campaign and transition. 
 
 Kushner in those prepared remarks says he "did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government." 
 
 Kushner is to meet with lawmakers on the House intelligence committee Tuesday. 
 
 __ 
 
 9:20 a.m. 
 
 President Donald Trump is calling the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel "sleazy" for conducting what he says is a "biased" Russia investigation. 
 
 The president tweeted Monday that "Sleazy Adam Schiff, the totally biased Congressman looking into 'Russia,' spends all of his time on television pushing the Dem loss excuse!" 
 
 Trump has repeatedly called the investigation a "witch hunt" spearheaded by Democrats because of the Republican victory in 2016. 
 
 California Rep. Schiff has been an outspoken advocate of hearing testimony from Trump associates on their contacts with Russian officials during last year's election. 
 
 ___ 
 
 9 a.m. 
 
 President Donald Trump is questioning why those investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion by members of his campaign aren't digging into Hillary Clinton's "crimes & Russia relations." 
 
 In doing so, the president took his latest swipe at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, including him in the list of people who he says should be investigating Clinton's potential Russia links. 
 
 Trump tweeted Monday, "So why aren't the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?" 
 
 Sessions recused himself from the investigation earlier this year after it was revealed that he had met with a top Russian diplomat last year. 
 
 Trump condemned Sessions' recusal in a New York Times interview last week, saying he never should have taken the job as attorney general. 
 
 __ 
 
 7:20 a.m. 
 
 President Donald Trump's son-in-law says he received a "random email" during the presidential campaign from someone claiming to have Trump's tax returns and demanding ransom to keep the information secret. 
 
 Jared Kushner says he interpreted the email as a hoax. Kushner says the email came from a person going by the name "Guccifer400." The name is an apparent reference to Guccifer 2.0, an anonymous hacker who has claimed responsibility for breaking into the Democratic National Committee's computer systems. 
 
 Kushner says the emailer demanded payment in Bitcoin, an online currency. Kushner says he showed the email to a Secret Service agent, who told him to ignore it. Kushner disclosed the details of the email ahead of a closed-door interview Monday with a Senate committee investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. 
 
 __ 
 
 6:33 a.m. 
 
 The son-in-law of President Donald Trump is blaming his assistant for filing a version of his security clearance questionnaire that left off any contacts with foreign governments. 
 
 Jared Kushner says the assistant accidentally filed the questionnaire while it was still being prepared. He says the initial form left off all foreign contacts, not just ones with Russians. Kushner says he eventually disclosed more than 100 contacts with people from more than 20 countries. Kushner says that list includes the King of Jordan, the prime minister of Israel and a high-ranking Mexican government official. 
 
 Kushner is disclosing the information about his foreign contacts just hours before he speaks behind closed doors with a Senate committee investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and any possible collusion with Trump associates. 
 
 ___ 
 
 6:06 a.m. 
 
 The son-in-law of President Donald Trump says a June 2016 meeting with a Russian-American lawyer was such a "waste of time" that he asked his assistant to call him out of the gathering. 
 
 That's according to a statement Jared Kushner is providing to congressional committees this week. 
 
 Emails released this month show Donald Trump Jr. accepted the meeting at Trump Tower with the idea that he would receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton. But Kushner says he hadn't seen those emails until recently shown them by his lawyers. 
 
 Kushner says in his statement that Trump Jr. invited him to the meeting. He says he arrived late and heard the lawyer discussing the issue of adoptions. He says he texted his assistant to call him out of the meeting. 
 
 ___ 
 
 6:00 a.m. 
 
 President Donald Trump's son-in-law says that he only had four contacts with Russians during the campaign and presidential transition and that none of them were improper. 
 
 Jared Kusher also says he never colluded with any foreign government during the presidential campaign. He also is denying that Russians finance any of his business in the private sector. 
 
 Kushner is disclosing the information in an 11-page statement provided to The Associated Press. The release of the statement comes just hours before he is to be interviewed by a Senate committee investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and any possible collusion by Trump associates. 
 
 The interview with the Senate intelligence committee is behind closed doors. 
 
 ___ 
 
 3:20 a.m. 
 
 Congressional investigators probing Russia's meddling in the U.S. election will have their first opportunity this week to hear from someone in President Donald Trump's innermost circle: son-in-law Jared Kushner. 
 
 Kushner, who is a senior adviser to the president and is married to Trump's daughter, Ivanka, will talk to staff on the Senate Intelligence Committee Monday behind closed doors. On Tuesday, he'll talk privately to members of the House Intelligence Committee. 
 
 Both panels are investigating Russian interference and possible connections to Trump's campaign. Kushner has attracted attention for a December meeting with a leading Russian diplomat. He oversaw digital strategy for the campaign, and some lawmakers have said they want more answers about whether Russian social media "trolls" were connected to Trump's election efforts. ||||| White House senior adviser Jared Kushner leaves a meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Kushner defends his Russia contacts: 'I did not collude' In his statement to Senate investigators, the president's son-in-law recounts but downplays four meetings with Russians. 
 
 In his first public defense of his meetings with Russian officials during Donald Trump’s campaign and transition, Jared Kushner on Monday presented his encounters with those operatives as innocent interactions, according to testimony submitted to Senate investigators. 
 
 In an 11-page opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is part of the ongoing investigation into possible collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign, Kushner — now a senior White House adviser — attempted to exonerate himself, writing: “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government.” 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Instead, the powerful son-in-law painted a picture of himself as a loyal, overworked, and underexperienced senior adviser to his father-in-law during a novice campaign that was never staffed up to win. 
 
 Kushner reiterated the message in a brief statement to reporters gathered outside the White House after testifying to the Senate panel, during which he answered senators’ questions. He took no questions from reporters. 
 
 But the statements, designed to look fully transparent and take Kushner out of the Russia investigation spotlight, appeared to raise more questions about Kushner’s judgment than they answered. 
 
 To wit: The former real estate developer explained the glaring omissions on his security clearance forms — which did not originally include several meetings with Russian officials that have since come to light — as an honest mistake made by his assistant at the time. And like others in the Trump orbit who met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Inauguration Day, Kushner also said he had trouble remembering the official after their first brief, previously unreported encounter at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. — the same event at which Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with, but didn’t remember, the Russian ambassador. 
 
 Overall, his account of events “still feels incomplete; it was not fulsome,” Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, said of the testimony. “I still wonder exactly what he discussed with Kislyak,” she said. But more importantly, she added, Kushner’s testimony provides no explanation for why he was cavalier in his interactions with Russians after intelligence community reports that Russia tried to meddle in the U.S. election. 
 
 “After that,” Farkas said, “why not alert the FBI? It doesn’t exhibit good judgment, or concerns for national security or the integrity of our democracy to be taking those meetings with the Russians.” 
 
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 The testimony also raised questions about how a man who blamed multiple foul-ups on sloppy paperwork, unread emails and misunderstandings, is overseeing such a vast portfolio in the White House. As a top West Wing official, Kushner’s situation does not appear to have changed much since the campaign. He still operates with a bare-bones staff, little bureaucracy and impossible burdens (see: overseeing the Middle East peace process while also innovating the entire federal government). 
 
 “I am not a person who has sought the spotlight,” Kushner said in his opening statement. But he explained that after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, his father-in-law asked Kushner to be the point of contact for foreign governments, and he was in touch with emissaries from 15 countries, including Russia. To put his hectic life and schedule into context — and explain away his presence at a meeting at which a Russian lawyer was hawking opposition research about Hillary Clinton — he also wrote that he typically received about 200 emails a day during the campaign and often didn’t read through every exchange. 
 
 In his opening testimony, Kushner walked through each of his four meetings with the Russians, downplaying all of them as brief, pro forma interactions that led to no follow-ups. 
 
 “I had no ongoing relationship with the Ambassador before the election, and had limited knowledge about him then,” he wrote of Kislyak, with whom he reportedly tried to set up a communications back channel during the transition. “In fact, on November 9, the day after the election, I could not even remember the name of the Russian Ambassador.” 
 
 Trying to prove his point, he added: “when the campaign received an email purporting to be an official note of congratulations from President Putin, I was asked how we could verify it was real. To do so, I thought the best way would be to ask the only contact I recalled meeting from the Russian government, which was the Ambassador I had met months earlier, so I sent an email asking Mr. [Dimitri] Simes [the publisher of a foreign policy magazine], ‘What is the name of the Russian ambassador?’” 
 
 Kushner also responded to a Reuters report that he had two follow-up calls with Kislyak. “A comprehensive review of my landline and cell phone records from the time does not reveal those calls,” he wrote of the reported calls in April and August 2016. 
 
 His second interaction with a Russian official was the now infamous Donald Trump Jr. meeting with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, that June. 
 
 Kushner claimed he had no idea what he was walking into. An email from his brother-in-law reminded him of the time change to 4 p.m. for the Trump Tower meeting, and Kushner wrote that it was not abnormal to pop into each other’s offices for meetings. “That email was on top of a long back and forth that I did not read at the time,” he wrote. “Documents confirm my memory that this was calendared as ‘Meeting: Don Jr.| Jared Kushner.’ No one else was mentioned.” 
 
 The meeting, at which Veselnitskaya, Trump Jr., campaign chairman Paul Manafort and four other people were discussing Russian adoptions — and at which Trump Jr. expected to receive damaging information about Clinton — was outside his purview, he wrote. 
 
 “I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for ten or so minutes and wrote ‘Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting,’” Kushner wrote. “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.” 
 
 His third and final contact with a potential Russian agent, he claimed, was a hoax email he received from a hacker trying to obtain Trump’s tax returns. 
 
 During the transition, he said, his only meeting with Kislyak lasted 23 minutes. 
 
 “I stated our desire for a fresh start in relations,” he wrote of the meeting where Kushner reportedly tried to set up a back channel of communication. It was Kislyak, Kushner wrote, who brought up U.S. policy in Syria and said “he wanted to convey information from what he called ‘his generals.’” 
 
 “He said he wanted to provide information that would help inform the new administration. He said the generals could not easily come to the U.S. to convey this information and he asked if there was a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation,” Kushner added. 
 
 Former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Kushner explained to Kislyak that there was not. “I believed developing a thoughtful approach on Syria was a very high priority given the ongoing humanitarian crisis,” he explained, “and I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn. The Ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we would receive this information after the Inauguration.” 
 
 Kushner said he declined two attempts by Kislyak in December for a follow-up meeting. Eventually, Kushner sent his assistant instead. It was there that Kislyak recommended that Kushner sit down with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Kremlin-linked Russian bank. All that was exchanged, he said, was a humble piece of art and a bag of dirt from the Belarus village where his grandparents were born. 
 
 “There were no specific policies discussed,” he said. “We had no discussion about the sanctions imposed by the Obama Administration. At no time was there any discussion about my companies, business transactions, real estate projects, loans, banking arrangements or any private business of any kind.” 
 
 The Putin-linked bank, however, has provided a different explanation. The Washington Post reported that the bank claimed the meeting was part of a new business strategy and that it was held with Kushner in his role as the head of his family’s real estate business, Kushner Cos. 
 
 As for the confusion about his security clearance forms, he blamed the omissions on an assistant. 
 
 “[People at my New York office] sent an email to my assistant in Washington, communicating that the changes to one particular section were complete; my assistant interpreted that message as meaning that the entire form was completed,” he wrote. “At that point, the form was a rough draft and still had many omissions including not listing any foreign government contacts and even omitted the address of my father-in-law (which was obviously well known). Because of this miscommunication, my assistant submitted the draft on January 18, 2017.” 
 
 But lawyers cast doubt on his hurried explanation of the gaps on his security clearance forms. “The idea he’d have his staff fill out the questionnaire is beyond belief itself,” said Nick Akerman, a former assistant Watergate prosecutor, noting the process requires a physical signature. “Someone on this committee has to go through this point by point and take him through this whole process.” 
 
 Kushner is so rarely heard from in public that when he spoke, briefly, at a tech conference earlier this summer, many people joked they didn’t know what his voice sounded like. “It has been my practice not to appear in the media or leak information in my own defense,” Kushner noted in his testimony. But it won’t be his last such appearance. 
 
 Kushner, who will face a second grilling by the House on Tuesday, prepared for both sessions with his lawyers. He claimed, at the end of his lengthy statement: “I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is required.” 
 
 Sen. Mark Warner, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, said he anticipated additional appearances by Kushner before the committee in the future: “There’s broad bipartisan expectation that we’ll want to hear from Mr. Kushner again.” 
 
 While Kushner and his aides may be hoping to make him a less juicy target than other former Trump officials under investigation, like Manafort and Trump Jr., the statement is only the beginning of the story. 
 
 “The key,” said Peter Zeidenberg, who served on the Justice Department’s special prosecution team during the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation, “will be how this story holds up to a thorough cross-examination.” 
 
 Darren Samuelsohn and Austin Wright contributed to this report. ||||| Jared Kushner really wants everyone to believe that he did nothing wrong. 
 
 Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top aide released a public statement about the Russia scandal on Monday morning, a preview of what he’s going to say in closed-door congressional testimony this week. 
 
 “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent,�? Kushner writes. “Hopefully, this puts these matters to rest.�? 
 
 But a close read of the letter suggests that it does not, in fact, put these matters to rest. By Kushner’s own account, he met with Russian nationals four times during the presidential campaign and transition. His descriptions of these meetings are incomplete, full of unconfirmed details, and at times directly contradictory of other sources’ accounts of the same events. 
 
 The statement is carefully constructed; the whole thing reads like it was put together by a very talented legal team. But shady behavior is still shady no matter how good the lawyers — and even Kushner’s very precise defense of his actions raises big new questions for the Trump-Russia scandal. What follows are three of the biggest issues it brings up. 
 
 Someone has massively misled us on the Trump-Russia backchannel 
 
 On December 1, 2016, Kushner met with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Trump’s now-disgraced National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was also present at the meeting. 
 
 At this meeting, the Washington Post reported back in May, Kushner had asked Kislyak if it would be possible to set up a secure communications line between the Trump camp and Russia inside the Russian Embassy in Washington. The Post reported that this was “an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to US officials briefed on intelligence reports.�? 
 
 In his statement on Monday, Kushner confirms that this meeting took place. He also confirms that he asked Kislyak about communicating through a secure line at the embassy. But he says it was a one-time proposal for receiving information about the Syrian conflict during the transition and denies that there was any effort to hide communications between the Trump camp and Russia from US snooping: 
 
 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 where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn. The Ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we would receive this information after the Inauguration. Nothing else occurred. I did not suggest a "secret back channel." I did not suggest an on-going secret form of communication for then or for when the administration took office. I did not raise the possibility of using the embassy or any other Russian facility for any purpose other than this one possible conversation in the transition period. We did not discuss sanctions. 
 
 To be clear, experts believe even this limited proposal was a bad idea. Anyone familiar with spying knows that sending a US citizen into a secure Russian communications facility would be rejected by both US and Russian intelligence as too risky. Kushner’s defense, in essence, is ignorance: He briefly proposed a really bad idea, it was shot down by Kislyak, and that was the end of it. 
 
 But this is a very different account of the meeting than what appeared in the Post. A number of US intelligence officials, according to the Post, seemed to believe the effort was a far more ambitious attempt to hide the Trump team’s communications from the US’s own spies. This would be incredibly nefarious: It would suggest that there was some information Kushner wanted to share with the Russians (or vice versa) but did not want anyone in the US government, let alone the American public, to know about. 
 
 There are only three possible options: The Post’s report is wrong, American spies misread the meeting, or Kushner is lying. 
 
 This isn’t an unresolvable conflict. According to the Post, US intelligence officials based their assessment on an intercept of a phone call between Kislyak and his superiors at the Kremlin, wherein he recounted his version of the meeting. 
 
 “Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate,�? the Post’s Ellen Nakashima, Adam Entous, and Greg Miller write. “Officials said that it’s unclear what Kislyak would have had to gain by falsely characterizing his contacts with Kushner to Moscow.�? 
 
 So far from clearing things up, Kushner’s letter has now raised a series of new questions: Why does his account of the meeting differ so sharply from what the intercept of Kislyak’s call seemed to suggest? What did Kislyak actually tell the Russian government about the call? And how does Flynn, who has offered to testify in exchange for immunity for prosecution, recall the meeting? 
 
 Kushner met with a shady Russian banker/former intelligence officer at the Russian government’s urging 
 
 After the December 1 meeting, Kislyak and Kushner stayed in touch. According to Kushner, he turned down multiple requests to meet with Kislyak again, once even arranging a meeting between Kislyak and his assistant to avoid having to sit down again (which seems odd, given Kislyak’s stature). 
 
 The ambassador repeatedly insisted that Kushner meet with a man named Sergey Gorkov, the head of the state-connected Russian bank Vnesheconombank (VEB). Gorkov is known to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and graduated from the Russian FSB’s spy academy; his bank had been directly targeted by sanctions imposed by the Obama administration after the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yet Kushner decided to have a sit-down with Gorkov at the Russian government’s urging. 
 
 “I agreed to meet Mr. Gorkov because the Ambassador has been so insistent, said he had a direct relationship with the President [Putin], and because Mr. Gorkov was only in New York for a couple days,�? Kushner says. 
 
 This meeting has been public knowledge since March. But the details in Kushner’s statement raise new questions about the nature of the meeting itself. 
 
 In a statement, Gorkov said the meeting was part of a broader strategy of sitting down with “business circles of the US, including with the head of Kushner Companies, Jared Kushner.�? This would suggest that the meeting was about potentially doing business together — which would raise serious conflict of interest questions given Kushner’s role doing policy work for his father-in-law. If they chatted about potentially providing loans to VEB, as my colleague Alexia Fernández Campbell explains, Kushner could face 20 years in prison under US sanctions law. 
 
 Kushner flatly denies all of this. 
 
 “At no time was there any discussion about my companies, business transactions, real estate projects, loans, banking arrangements or any private business of any kind. At the end of the short meeting, we thanked each other and I went on to other meetings,�? he writes in his statement. 
 
 Instead, he says, Gorkov gave him some gifts, “told me a little about his bank and made some statements about the Russian economy,�? and “said that he was friendly with President Putin, expressed disappointment with U.S.-Russia relations under President Obama and hopes for a better relationship in the future.�? 
 
 That sounds extremely boring. So why would Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, badger Kushner — for days, Kushner’s account suggests — to take such a boring meeting? And why does the Putin-linked banker in question have an account of the meeting’s agenda that’s different from Kushner’s? And what “statements about the Russian economy�? did Gorkov allegedly make, exactly? Did they suggest investment opportunities for the Kushner Companies, perhaps loans? 
 
 Again, Kushner’s statement doesn’t really resolve anything — instead, it raises a host of significant new questions about his links to the Kremlin. 
 
 This letter reveals a ton of specific facts about collusion that set up Kushner for trouble 
 
 These two meetings, with Kislyak and Gorkov, took place during the transition. But there’s another key meeting that Kushner took, this time during the campaign: Donald Trump Jr.’s now-infamous June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer to try to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. 
 
 Kushner’s defense of attending the meeting is that he had no clue what it was really about. 
 
 He claims not to have read to the bottom of the email chain in which it was written that the meeting was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.�? He claims to have been “a little late�? to the meeting, and that when he arrived they were talking about “the issue of a ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children,�? implying that he missed the part where they discussed Russian dirt on Clinton (which according to Trump Jr. happened at the beginning). 
 
 He then claims to have been super bored for the whole thing: “I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for ten or so minutes and wrote ‘Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting.’�? 
 
 This, yet again, is an odd account of the meeting in question. It would lead us to believe that Kushner never asked Donald Trump Jr. why he brought Kushner into this waste of time meeting during a vital period in the campaign (right after they secured the nomination, shortly before the Republican National Convention). 
 
 But perhaps more fundamentally, Kushner’s account provides a lot of details that can be checked by reporters, FBI agents, and congressional investigators. For example, was Kushner actually late enough to the meeting to miss every mention of potential assistance with the campaign? There were seven other people there, and you can bet the FBI will be talking to all of them to confirm Kushner’s story. 
 
 There’s a lot for investigators to go on here 
 
 Indeed, the entire section of the letter focusing on the campaign is like this: Kushner sets up very specific factual assertions, many of which can be easily checked by reporters and federal investigators. 
 
 For example, Kushner specifically contests a report, from Reuters, that he had two calls with Kislyak during the campaign (specifically, between April and November 2016). 
 
 “I do not recall any such calls with the Russian Ambassador,�? he writes. “We have reviewed the phone records available to us and have not been able to identify any calls to any number we know to be associated with Ambassador Kislyak and I am highly skeptical these calls took place.�? 
 
 This is a very specific factual assertion: There were no calls between Kushner and any number that could be traced back to Kislyak or one of his associates during a seven-month time frame. The FBI can review the same phone records and see who’s telling the truth. 
 
 His first conversation with Kislyak, Kushner claims, took place at a Trump foreign policy speech delivered in April 2016 in Washington. Reportedly, Dimitri Simes — the CEO of the Center for the National Interest, which convened the speech — introduced the two men. 
 
 “He [Simes] introduced me to several guests, among them four ambassadors, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak,�? Kushner writes. “With all the ambassadors, including Mr. Kislyak, we shook hands, exchanged brief pleasantries. ... Each exchange lasted less than a minute; some gave me their business cards and invited me to lunch at their embassies. I never took them up on any of these invitations and that was the extent of the interactions.�? 
 
 Again, these are all specific assertions that investigators can look into, to see if they are outright false or at very least omit important context. And there’s every indication that Congress and the FBI will do just that. 
 
 “His description of his financial relationships with individuals and businesses tied to Russia appears incomplete, at best,�? Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said in a statement emailed to press after the letter’s release. “There should be no presumption that he is telling the whole truth in this statement.�? 
 
 Kushner’s legal team may have hoped that this letter would help put suspicion surrounding Kushner’s links to Russia to bed. It seems more likely that the opposite will be true: that the unanswered questions in this statement will lead to even closer scrutiny of one of the president’s top advisers. 
 
 Watch: Why Donald Trump Jr.'s emails change everything ||||| In this Nov. 16, 2016 photo, Donald Trump Jr., son of President-elect Donald Trump, walks from the elevator at Trump Tower in New York. Donald Trump Jr.'s scheduled visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday marks... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's eldest son told lawmakers Thursday he was open to receiving information about Hillary Clinton's "fitness, character or qualifications" in a meeting with a Russian lawyer last year. 
 
 However, Donald Trump Jr. insisted that neither he nor anyone else he knows colluded with any foreign government during the presidential campaign. 
 
 His description of a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, delivered in an opening statement at the outset of a closed-door Senate Judiciary Committee interview, provided his most detailed account of an encounter that has attracted the attention of congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller. 
 
 Multiple congressional committees and Mueller's team of prosecutors are investigating whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the outcome of the election. A grand jury used by Mueller as part of his investigation has already heard testimony about the meeting, which besides Trump Jr., included the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. 
 
 In Thursday's prepared remarks, which were obtained by The Associated Press, Trump Jr. sought to explain emails he released two months ago that showed him agreeing to the meeting, which had been described as part of a Russian government effort to help his father's campaign. 
 
 In his new statement, he said he was skeptical of the outreach by music publicist Rob Goldstone, who said he had information that could be damaging to Clinton. But Trump Jr. said he thought he "should listen to what Rob and his colleagues had to say." 
 
 "To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out," Trump Jr. said in the statement. 
 
 At one point during the email exchange, Trump Jr. had told Goldstone, "If it's what you say I love it especially in the summer." 
 
 Trump Jr. sought to explain that remark Thursday by saying it was "simply a colloquial way of saying that I appreciated Rob's gesture." 
 
 Trump Jr. agreed to the Senate interview after the committee chairman, Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, subpoenaed him and Manafort. The committee withdrew the subpoenas after the two agreed to be interviewed privately by staff. Grassley said they both would eventually be questioned by senators in a public hearing. 
 
 Trump Jr. also is expected to appear before the Senate intelligence committee at some point. 
 
 Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, said the senators want to speak with others who attended the June meeting before interviewing Trump Jr. 
 
 "We want to do this in a thorough way that gets the most information possible," Warner said. 
 
 Manafort met privately with staff on that committee in July. Kushner has met with that staff, as well as members of the House Intelligence Committee. 
 
 That House committee has tried to talk to Trump Jr., too. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said negotiations are underway and a date hasn't been set. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Chad Day contributed to this report.
– With the first of his two days of congressional testimony in the books, Jared Kushner made a rare public statement Monday afternoon to reaffirm his main point: "I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so," he said, per the AP. Kushner spoke outside the White House after meeting behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence Committee. While he largely reiterated points made earlier in an 11-page statement to Congress, Kushner also suggested that the Russia investigation has political undertones. "Donald Trump had a better message and ran a smarter campaign, and that is why he won," he said, per NBC News. "Suggesting otherwise ridicules those who voted for him." Kushner has said all of his actions related to four meetings with Russian nationals were aboveboard, per CNN. He added during his speech that he had "no improper contacts" and has "not relied on Russian funds for my businesses." Kushner is back on Capitol Hill Tuesday, when he again testifies behind closed doors, this time with the House Intelligence Committee. As for that 11-page statement, an analysis by Zack Beauchamp at Vox finds the carefully worded descriptions of the Russian meetings to be incomplete. "The whole thing reads like it was put together by a very talented legal team," he writes. Judge for yourself here.