Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a White House adviser, said Sunday he does not know whether he would contact authorities if he received an email similar to the one that led to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to do hypotheticals,” Mr. Kushner said in an interview with “Axios on HBO,” adding the email did not contain “salacious” information that “set off an alarm bell.”
The email in question, subject line “Re: Russia – Clinton – private and confidential,” was forwarded to Mr. Kushner by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to set a meeting time between them and publicist Rob Goldstone so he could “provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
It added the meeting would contain “very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Mr. Kushner first inquired about which email Axios’ Jonathan Swan was referring to, then continued that asking why he didn’t call the FBI was “playing Monday morning quarterback.”
“We’re in a place now where people are playing Monday morning quarterback, and they’re being so self-righteous. Let me put you in my shoes at that time, OK? I’m running three companies, I’m helping run the campaign. I get an email that says show up at 4 instead of 3 to a meeting that I had been told about earlier that I didn’t know what the hell it was about,” he said.
“I show up at the meeting. I stay for 15 minutes. It’s a clown show,” Mr. Kushner continued. “I text my assistant and say can give me a call and get me the hell out of here. This is a waste of time. I leave. I never would have thought about that meeting again.”
“Had there been something that actually was nefarious at that meeting that came up, maybe we would have done something different. But the reality is, is that the meeting was a total waste of time,” he said.
• Bailey Vogt can be reached at bvogt@washingtontimes.com.
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