Jared Kushner Dismisses Russian Election Interference as ‘Couple of Facebook Ads’

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, dismissed Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign on Tuesday as a “couple of Facebook ads” and said the investigation of it was far more damaging to the country than the intrusion itself.

“You look at what Russia did — you know, buying some Facebook ads to try to sow dissent and do it — and it’s a terrible thing,” Mr. Kushner said during a panel sponsored by Time magazine. “But I think the investigations, and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years, has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple of Facebook ads.”

“Quite frankly, the whole thing is just a big distraction for the country,” Mr. Kushner said in his first public comments since the release of the report of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, last week.

Facebook estimated that Russia-backed ads and social media posts reached 126 million Americans during the election, only about 10 million fewer than voted in 2016. Moreover, Russians hacked accounts of the Democratic National Committee and leaked damaging information about Mr. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, at critical moments during the campaign.

In his report, Mr. Mueller concluded that “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

Mr. Kushner is a recurring character in the Mueller report: He took part in a much-scrutinized June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower, and in meetings during the transition with a Russian banker and Moscow’s ambassador to Washington. Mr. Kushner said during the panel that he did not focus on Russia’s motives in seeking those meetings, arguing that it was natural for interested parties to try to contact people around Mr. Trump, given the outsider nature of his campaign.

He attributed the unrelenting scrutiny of Russia’s role to the inability of the political and news media establishment to accept his father-in-law’s victory over Mrs. Clinton, though the F.B.I.’s investigation of Russian interference predated the election by months.

Mr. Kushner’s remarks came during a daylong conference in New York that provided yet another window into the lingering conflicts of 2016. A few hours later, Mrs. Clinton appeared on the same stage to render her own verdict on the Mueller report: that it laid out a convincing case that Mr. Trump had obstructed the investigation of his ties to Russia.

“Any other person who had engaged in those acts would certainly have been indicted, but because of the rule in the Justice Department that you can’t indict a sitting president, the whole matter of obstruction was very directly sent to the Congress,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton said she hoped the House would hold further investigations by calling people like Donald F. McGahn II, the former White House counsel. She compared Mr. McGahn to John Dean, President Richard M. Nixon’s counsel, who became a critical witness in the Watergate scandal. And she repeated her contention that Russia’s hacking had tipped the election against her.

While the Mueller report found that no members of the Trump campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russians to tilt the election, it established that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

Few members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle have had as much exposure to Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors as Mr. Kushner. He was one of the first senior officials summoned as a witness, sitting for an hour in the fall of 2017 for an interview focused on Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, who is awaiting sentencing for lying to federal investigators about his ties to Russia.

Then, last April, Mr. Kushner was called back again for a nearly seven-hour interview that covered much of Mr. Mueller’s investigation, including Mr. Trump’s behavior in office. Both interviews are cited repeatedly in the report.

Mr. Kushner’s remarks on Tuesday drew an enthusiastic response from the president, who tweeted, “Great interview by Jared.” He received a polite, if low-key, reception at the conference, which brings together public figures named to Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was interviewed by the magazine’s senior White House correspondent, Brian Bennett, who also pressed him on the timing of his long-awaited Middle East peace plan.

He said the administration planned to present it after Ramadan, the Muslim holiday that ends in early June. The plan has been basically ready since the beginning of the year, but the administration delayed the rollout for several months because of the election in Israel, which was a resounding victory for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally of Mr. Trump’s.

As he has in the past, Mr. Kushner declined to share details of the plan. But he pointedly ignored a question about whether it would call for an independent state for the Palestinians — a feature of American diplomacy for decades — and suggested that the “two-state solution” was a failed formula of the past.

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“If people focus on the old, traditional talking points,” Mr. Kushner said, “we will never make progress.”

He singled out the Arab Peace Initiative, a 2002 proposal that enshrined the concept of two states for the Israelis and Palestinians. “If that would have worked, we would have made peace a long time ago on that basis,” he said.

Mr. Kushner described his plan as a “bottom-up” approach that would improve the economic fortunes of the Palestinians, as well as resolving core issues like borders, the political status of Jerusalem and security for Israel. But many analysts said they expected the plan to fall short of providing for a viable Palestinian state.

Mr. Kushner also addressed American intelligence assessments that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, with whom he has cultivated a close relationship, had ordered the killing of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He said he had advised Prince Mohammed “to be as transparent as possible.”

Asked whether the prince had heeded his advice, Mr. Kushner said, “We’ll find out.”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com

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