Ryan Lizza: How Jared Kushner Helped the Russians Get Inside Access to the Trump Campaign

[highplainsdem]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/how-jared-kushner-helped-the-russians-get-inside-access-to-the-trump-campaign

Yesterday, Kushner insisted, “I did not read or recall this e-mail exchange before it was shown to me by my lawyers.” Whether or not that’s true, he attended the meeting. According to Kushner’s account of the meeting, it was uneventful. He got there late, some Russians he never heard of were discussing adoption policy, and he quickly messaged his assistant to call him so he had an excuse to bail. Longtime intelligence officials have a more jaundiced view. Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency, told me that he was convinced the meeting was a classic “soft approach” by Russian intelligence. He cited a recent Washington Post article, by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, that argued that the meeting “is in line with what intelligence analysts would expect an overture in a Russian influence operation to look like,” and that it may have been the “green light Russia was looking for to launch a more aggressive phase of intervention in the U.S. election.”

Hayden told me, “My god, this is just such traditional tradecraft.” He said that he has talked to people in the intelligence community about Mowatt-Larssen’s theory and that “every case officer I’ve pushed on this” agreed with it. “This is how they do it.”

Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach. “Would they take the meeting?” he said. “So, then you get the willingness. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. So, while Kushner claimed that the meeting was irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”

The intelligence community’s report makes a similar point, noting, “Russian influence campaigns are multifaceted and designed to be deniable because they use a mix of agents of influence, cutouts, front organizations, and false-flag operations.”

[Achilleaze]

1. Republican traitors against America

Must be prosecuted and punished. Lock them up.

[moondust]

2. Manafort knew.

He had plenty of experience dealing with corrupt Russians and their ways. He likely knew exactly what the meeting was all about and probably discussed it with Kushner, Flynn, and the others including TheRump.

[oasis]

3. They likely arranged to have more meetings during that meeting. nt

[dalton99a]

4. Kick.

[kentuck]

5. There had to be more emails about the meeting...

Otherwise, it would have been incomprehensible. Nobody would have had any idea what it was about except for the subject line: Hillary, Russia, and very sensitive.