Jared Kushner is reportedly in the sights of FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing the White House senior adviser’s involvement with foreign officials over a U.N. debate during the transition period after Trump’s election victory.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Mueller, who has taken an extremely broad view of his mandate to investigate alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, is looking at Kushner’s involvement in pushing back against a U.N. resolution that condemned Israeli settlements.
Trump came out against the measure as president-elect and said that the U.S. should use its veto power on the U.N. Security Council. The resolution later passed after the Obama administration said it would not use the veto power.
According to the Journal, Kushner was one of the officials reached out to by Israeli officials to attempt to persuade Trump’s transition team to speak out on the measure.
However, it is far from clear what an intervention by Kushner has to do with Mueller’s probe into Russian interference. The Journal notes that inquiries don’t necessarily indicate suspicion, and Mueller may be attempting to get a broader feel for Kushner’s role within both the transition team and the administration at large.
Kushner is believed to be a frequent feature in Mueller’s investigation. Kushner was part of a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Kremlin-linked lawyer in Trump Tower in 2016 that Trump Jr. took, believing that the Russians had information that would incriminate Hillary Clinton.
Mueller is also believed to be probing Kushner’s meeting with a Russian banker during the transition, one meeting out of 100 that Kushner left off his initial security clearance declaration. His team blamed the omission on an administrative error.
Senate investigators have also expressed significant interest in Kushner’s actions. Investigators in the Senate Judiciary Committee asked last week why contact from another banker was not revealed to them on the first request.
The Journal reports that Mueller’s latest interest in Kushner also includes his role in “arranging meetings or communication with foreign leaders during the transition.”
The move could also be connected to multiple reports that Kushner was a key voice in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey — a move that Mueller is believed to be investigating as to whether it could be counted as an attempt to obstruct justice by the Trump administration.
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.