Kushner denies any wrongdoing in Senate grilling

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner denied Monday

that he colluded with Russians in the course of President Donald Trump’s

White House bid, declaring in a statement ahead of interviews with

congressional committees that he has “nothing to hide.”

The

11-page statement, released hours before Kushner’s closed-door

appearance before the Senate intelligence committee, details four

contacts with Russians during Trump’s campaign and transition. It aims

to explain inconsistencies and omissions in a security clearance form

that have invited public scrutiny.

After meetings at

the Capitol, Kushner spoke to reporters at the White House Monday.

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.

“I did not collude, nor know of

anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government,”

Kushner said in the prepared remarks in which he also insists that none

of the contacts, which include meetings at Trump Tower with the Russian

ambassador and a Russian lawyer, was improper.

Kushner

arrived Monday morning at a Senate office building, exiting a black

sport utility vehicle and greeting photographers gathered outside with a

grin and a wave.

In speaking to Congress, Kushner –

as both the president’s son-in-law and a trusted senior adviser during

the campaign and inside the White House – becomes the first member of

the president’s inner circle to face questions from congressional

investigators as they probe Russian meddling in the 2016 election and

possible links to the Trump campaign. He is to meet with staff on the

Senate intelligence committee Monday and lawmakers on the House

intelligence committee Tuesday.

Kushner’s appearances

have been highly anticipated, in part because of a series of headlines

in recent months about his interactions with Russians and because the

reticent Kushner had until Monday not personally responded to questions

about an incomplete security clearance form and his conversations with

foreigners.

“I have shown today that I am willing to

do so and will continue to cooperate as I have nothing to hide,” he said

in the statement.

The document provides for the first time Kushner’s own

recollection of a meeting at Trump Tower with the Russian ambassador to

the US to talk about secure lines of communications and, months earlier,

of a gathering with a Russian lawyer who was said to have damaging

information to provide about Hillary Clinton.

In the

document, Kushner calls the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya such a “waste of time” that he

asked his assistant to call him out of the gathering.

Emails

released this month show that the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.,

accepted the meeting with the idea that he would receive information as

part of a Russian government effort to help Trump’s campaign. But

Kushner said he hadn’t seen those emails until recently shown them by

his lawyers.

Kushner said in his statement that Trump

Jr. invited him to the meeting. He says he arrived late and when he

heard the lawyer discussing the issue of adoptions, he texted his

assistant to call him out.

“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,” Kushner’s statement says.

Kushner also denied reports he discussed setting up a

“secret back-channel” with the Russian ambassador to the US. But he did

detail a conversation with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in

December at Trump Tower in which retired US Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn,

then-incoming national security adviser, also attended.

During

the meeting, Kushner said he and Kislyak talked about establishing a

secure line for the countries to communicate about policy in Syria.

Kushner

said that when Kislyak asked if there was a secure way for him to

provide information on Syria from what Kislyak called his “generals,”

Kushner asked if there was an existing communications channel at the

embassy that could be used to convey the information to 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,” the statement said.

Kushner said he never proposed an ongoing secret form of communication.

Flynn attorney Robert Kelner declined comment when asked about Kushner’s characterization of the meeting.

He

also said he met with a Russian banker, Sergey Gorkov, at the request

of Kislyak but that no specific policies were discussed.

Kushner also explained that his application form for a

security clearance form was submitted prematurely due to a

miscommunication with his assistant, who had erroneously believed the

document was complete.

He said he mistakenly omitted

all of his foreign contacts, not just his meetings with Russians, and

has worked in the last six months with the FBI to correct the record.

In

addition, Kushner described receiving a “random email” during the

presidential campaign from someone claiming to have Trump’s tax returns

and demanding ransom to keep the information secret.

Unlike

every other major presidential candidate over the last 40 years, Trump

didn’t release his tax returns during the campaign. Since taking office,

he has continued to refuse.

Kushner said he

interpreted the late October email as a hoax and that 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 said 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.

Trump

Jr. and Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was also at

the June 2016 meeting, were scheduled to testify before the Senate

Judiciary Committee this week. But on Friday their attorneys said they

remained in negotiations with that panel. The two men are now in

discussions to be privately interviewed by staff or lawmakers, though

the GOP chairman of the committee, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, has said

they will eventually testify in public.

The president

took to Twitter on Monday to repeat his criticism of the

investigations, and reiterate allegation against his former opponent and

included a swipe at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was the subject

of a scathing public rebuke by Trump in a New York Times interview last

week. “So why aren’t the Committees and investigators, and of course

our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillary's crimes & Russia

relations?” the president tweeted.