Is the net closing in on Jared Kushner? It is now being reported that Trump’s son-in-law received a ‘Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite’, which he also reportedly forwarded on. Both Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein are alleging that Kushner did not turn over several important documents to investigators despite numerous requests. If Kushner is engaging in these kind of shenanigans with special counsel Robert Mueller he will be in truly hot water. Kushner’s lawyer has said he was ‘open to responding to any additional requests’.
Each day seems to bring a new story about the Trump campaign and Russia, whether it is Kushner or Donald Trump Junior communicating with WikiLeaks; or Russian diplomat Sergei Kislyak mordantly observing this week that he couldn’t name all the Trump officials he has talked to because ‘the list is too long’. Now it is Hope Hicks, Trump’s longtime aide and White House Communications Director, who will testify next to Mueller and Co. That Mueller is already reaching so deeply into the innards of Trump’s inner circle indicates that he may be close to ending his investigation, moving much faster than his adversaries had anticipated. It may well be that the sheer incompetence and ineptitude of the Trump campaign is making it much easier for Mueller to discern what actually did and did not transpire during the election than his multifarious critics on the right, intent on saving the Trump administration from its own follies, ever anticipated.
For his part, Trump, at least for the moment, seems captivated by a different kind of scandal that is gripping Washington. Today, he tweeted ‘the Al Frankenstien picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3,4 5, & 6 while she sleeps? ….’ Trump is, of course, referring to Senator Al Franken’s concupiscent adventures on a US overseas tour for American troops in Afghanistan in 2006, where Los Angeles radio show host Leeann Tweeden alleges he kissed her without her consent. In addition, she disseminated a photo of Franken apparently groping her breasts on a military plane.
At the same time, Trump has declined to weigh in on the allegations that GOP Alabama candidate for the Senate, Roy Moore, devoted much of his free time in the past to trawling local shopping malls and the like for underage girls. The result is that Trump’s own past conduct is once more becoming a cause célèbre, an outcome that he can hardly welcome.
