The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump by Gregg Jarrett

Author:Gregg Jarrett [Jarrett, Gregg]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9780062872753
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

The Kislyak Meeting at Trump Tower

In May 2017, the Washington Post ignited a media firestorm by publishing a story that Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn met with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, in December 2016 after Trump won the presidential election but before he was sworn into office on inauguration day.25 The article stated that Kushner broached a discussion about “the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin.”26 Both Kushner and Flynn were key members of the transition team preparing for the many challenges facing the incoming administration.

Within an hour of the report, television anchors and pundits declared it a “bombshell”—their favorite description of anything related to Trump. Very few bothered to point out that nearly every recent president had established and relied on similar back-channel contacts with Moscow and other nations.

Notably, President John Kennedy depended on two sets of back-channel communications with the Soviets to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. His brother Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, arranged an urgent deal with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to remove the missiles in Cuba in exchange for the U.S. removing obsolete missiles in Turkey. At the time, the State Department commandeered ABC correspondent John Scali to work out other details with Soviet Embassy official Alexander Fomin. A catastrophic nuclear exchange was averted.27

It made no difference whether the idea of a private communications channel was broached before or after President Trump took office. It is a distinction without a difference. As then homeland security secretary John Kelly observed, “It’s both normal, in my opinion, and acceptable.”28 Richard Moss, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, pointed out, “There’s a long tradition of it—it goes back as long as diplomacy itself.”29 He was right. Back-channels were utilized in the Roosevelt, Nixon and even the Obama administrations. Nevertheless, stories in the press persisted that laws must have somehow been broken.

What Kushner did was neither improper nor different from what other incoming presidential administrations have done. It certainly did not constitute a crime.

After the election and before Trump took office, Kushner received “over one hundred contacts with people from more than twenty countries” while he was acting on behalf of the president-elect.30 Previous entering presidents and their transition teams have engaged in similar contacts and conversations.

According to Kushner’s public statement, he met with Kislyak to discuss improved relations and “to address U.S. policy in Syria.”31 Later, Kushner met with a Russian banker, Sergey Gorkov, “who could give insight into how President Putin was viewing the new administration and best ways to work together.”32 How exactly were those meetings counterproductive, uncommon, or illegal? They were not.

Professor W. David Clinton, chairman of the Political Science Department at Baylor University, who co-authored the seminal book entitled Presidential Transitions and American Foreign Policy, told me that he read Kushner’s statement and found nothing wrong with his meetings with Kislyak.33 Professor Clinton pointed out that it is the very same practice employed by other

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.