Prior to the release of the Mueller report, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump managed to stay largely out of the conversation regarding alleged campaign collusion with Russia. But the redacted version of the report released Thursday contains 265 references to the president’s son-in-law and 15 to his most politically involved daughter. (Ctrl + F is a beautiful thing.) Below, the report’s most important details on the billionaire couple toying around in politics. All quotations are from the Mueller report.
Ivanka was involved in talks to build Trump Tower Moscow and other properties in Russia.
As early as February 2014, Ivanka Trump had visited Moscow to tour a potential building site in Crocus City. During the fall of 2015, Michael Cohen “also discussed the Trump Moscow project with Ivanka Trump as to design elements.” In the past, Ivanka has said that she knew “almost nothing” about Trump Tower Moscow.
During the campaign, Ivanka received an email from a Russian whose husband “has done Putin’s political campaign.”
In November of 2015, Ivanka Trump received an email from a Russian woman named Lana E. Alexander, who offered the support of her husband, Dmitry Klokov: “If you ask anyone who knows Russian to google my husband Dmitry Klokov, you’ll see who he is close to and that he has done Putin’s political campaigns.” At the time, Klokov was working for a Russian utility company, “and had been previously employed as an aide and press secretary to Russia’s energy minister.” Ivanka told Michael Cohen about the email, and Cohen looked up Klokov. Cohen “conducted an internet search for Klokov’s name and concluded (incorrectly) that Klokov was a former Olympic weightlifter.”
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner attended a conference on Clinton “negative information” just prior to the Trump Tower meeting.
“Rick Gates, who was the deputy campaign chairman, stated during interviews with the Office that in the days before June 9, 2016 Trump Jr. announced at a regular morning meeting of senior campaign staff and Trump family members that he had a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation. Gates believed that Trump Jr. said the information was coming from a group in Kyrgyzstan and that he was introduced to the group by a friend. Gates recalled that the meeting was attended by Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Paul Manafort, Hope Hicks, and, joining late, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. According to Gates, Manafort warned the group that the meeting likely would not yield vital information and they should be careful. Hicks denied any knowledge of the June 9 meeting before 2017, and Kushner did not recall if the planned June 9 meeting came up at all earlier that week.”
Ivanka was involved in Donald Trump Jr.’s 2017 decision to release emails related to the Trump Tower meeting.
In July 2017, when Donald Trump Jr. surprise released his “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer” emails setting up the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Ivanka Trump was present at a meeting that determined the plan to get ahead of a leak by releasing the emails.
Jared Kushner was warned by Russian CEO Dimitri Simes that continued contact with Russia would be “bad optics.”
In March of 2016, Kushner got in contact with Dimitri Simes, the Russian CEO of the Center for National Interest. Simes, who helped draft the Trump campaign’s position toward Russia, told Kushner in August 2016 that it was “bad optics for the Campaign to develop hidden Russian contacts, and told Kushner both that the Campaign should not highlight Russia as an issue and should handle any contacts with Russians with care.”
Kushner received dirt on Bill Clinton from Simes, which he forwarded to the campaign.
Prior to their August 2016 meeting, Simes sent Kushner a memo “laying out ‘what Mr. Trump may want to say about Russia.’ Simes mentioned ‘a well-documented story of highly questionable connections between Bill Clinton’ and the Russian government, ‘parts of [which]’ (according to Simes) had even been ‘discussed with the CIA and the FBI in the late 1990s and shared with the [Independent Counsel] at the end of the Clinton presidency.’”
“Kushner forwarded the email to senior Trump Campaign officials Stephen Miller, Paul Manafort, and Rick Gates, with the note ‘suggestion only.’ Manafort subsequently forwarded the email to his assistant and scheduled a meeting with Simes.”
Kushner emailed assistants during Trump Tower meeting looking for excuse to leave.
During the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Kushner texted Paul Manafort telling him it was a “waste of time” and sent two emails to “assistants at Kushner Companies with requests that they call him to give him an excuse to leave.” Alas, the detail is not new to the Mueller report.
Kushner circulated a “reconciliation plan” between Russia and the U.S.
The report states that “Immediately after the November 8 election, Russian government officials and prominent Russian businessmen began trying to make inroads into the new administration.” One of these efforts was made by Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who sent a message to a “friend of Jared Kushner who had not served on the Campaign or Transition Team.” These two “collaborated on a short written reconciliation plan for the United States and Russia, which Dmitriev implied had been cleared through Putin. The friend gave that proposal to Kushner before the inauguration, and Kushner later gave copies to Bannon and incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.”
Kushner asked the Russian ambassador if he could use secure facilities at the Russian embassy
In November 2016, during a transition-team meeting at Trump Tower involving Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Kushner asked if they “could communicate using secure facilities at the Russian Embassy. Kislyak quickly rejected that idea.”
