Jared Kushner: Mueller Investigation Had ‘Harsher Impact’ on U.S. than Russia’s ‘Facebook Ads’

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner fired back at the media narrative surrounding Russia’s disinformation efforts in the 2016 election on Tuesday.

“I thought the whole thing was kind of nonsense, to be honest with you,” he said.

Kushner rarely does media interviews, but he spoke at a Time 100 event in New York City in an interview with TIME reporter Brian Bennett.

“Now the media spent so much time focusing on it and quite frankly the whole thing’s just a big distraction for the country,” Kushner said.

He dismissed the notion that Russia swayed the election by spending $160,000 on Facebook ads, noting that the Trump campaign spent that much in just a few hours.

“It’s a terrible thing, but I think the investigations and all the speculation that has happened for the last two years has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple of Facebook ads,” he said.

Kushner said that the Trump campaign was more focused on running their own operations than whether the Russians were trying to help them.

“The notion of what they were doing didn’t even register to us as impactful,” he said.

He appeared relieved by the end of the Mueller investigation, noting that he cooperated extensively with the investigation.

“I think that everything I said has now proven to be true and very, very thoroughly investigated,” he said.