White House denies Trump son-in-law is target of Mueller investigation

Developments on Day 287 of the Trump Administration:

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Kushner Examined Over Role in Comey Firing

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has handed over documents in recent weeks to the Trump-Russia investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

“Sources familiar with the matter” say Mueller’s team has begun examining Kushner’s role in Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey in May, as the President tried to curb the Trump-Russia inquiry. The investigation is determining whether Trump obstructed justice with the dismissal.

See Timeline: Papadopoulos, Trump-Russia Connections, and Clinton’s E-mails

“Sources close to the White House” insisted that, based on their knowledge, Kushner is not a target of the investigation.

However, two other sources said investigators have asked witnesses about Kushner’s role in firing Comey, and investigators have also asked about a false statement was issued, in the name of Donald Trump Jr., over a June 2016 meeting between Trump Jr., Kushner, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort with three Kremlin-linked envoys.

Clovis Withdraws Name for Agriculture Undersecretary, Following Trump-Russia Revelations

Sam Clovis, the former co-chairman of the Trump campaign, withdraws his name from consideration as Agriculture Undersecretary.

His letter to Donald Trump came days after he was identified as the line manager of George Papadopoulos, the Trump advisor who tried for months to set up a meeting between senior campaign staff and Russian officials in 2016.

Papadopoulos was arrested in July and pled guilty in early October to lying to investigators. He apparently has been cooperating with the team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Clovis brought Papadopoulos into the Trump campaign as a “foreign policy advisor” in early March 2016, even though the oil and gas consultant had almost no experience. He supported Papadopoulos’ efforts — “Great work” — and in August encouraged a meeting between Papadopoulos and another campaign advisor with the Russians.

On Monday, as the news broke of Papadopoulos’ guilty plea, it was revealed that Clovis has met with Mueller’s investigators.

See TrumpWatch, Day 285: Papadopoulos — Trump Campaign Approved Meeting with Kremlin

“The political climate inside Washington has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position,” Clovis wrote Trump. “The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity each day.”

Observers noted that Clovis had no professional or scientific qualifications to become the chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture.

In his letter, Clovis told Trump he would remain as the senior White House adviser to the Department.

Page: I Told Sessions I Was Going to Russia

Former Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page testifies that he told Jeff Sessions, a senior member of the campaign, that he was traveling to Russia in July 2016.

In more than six hours of closed-door testimony to the House intelligence committee, Page said that it was the only time he met Sessions and that the trip was unconnected to his campaign role:

Back in June 2016, I mentioned in passing that I happened to be planning to give a speech at a university in Moscow. Completely unrelated to my limited volunteer role with the campaign and as I’ve done dozens of times throughout my life. Understandably, it was as irrelevant then as it is now.

However, sources — including in a Trump-Russia dossier compiled by former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele — have claimed that, while Page was in Moscow, he met senior Kremlin officials. Discussions included a possible 20% brokerage stage in the privatization of the Russian oil giant Rosneft, in return for future easing of sanctions by a Trump Administration.

See Timeline: Trump-Russia Connections and Clinton’s E-mails

In his January 2017 confirmation hearings to become Attorney General, Sessions said he had no contact with Russian officials. In June, he told Congress under oath in June that he had “no knowledge” of any conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign about “any type of interference with any campaign” by the Russians.

But GOP Representative Mike Conaway, who is leading the House Intelligence Committee inquiry, tried to downplay Page’s remarks:

I don’t make anything sinister out of it. He said Sessions did not react or comment one way or the other. If I were Sessions, I wouldn’t have recalled it either. It was just in passing. He was walking out of the room. A guy he had never met before, grabs him, “Hey, I’m out on the team. I changed my travel plans to go to Russia.”

A “source familiar with the meeting” said the encounter was at a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club, held in late June or early July and attended by members of Trump’s national security team. Near the end of the dinner, Page approached Sessions to say hello and thank the then-senator for the dinner, mentioned that he was headed to Russia. Sessions didn’t respond and moved on to the next person waiting to shake his hand.

The court record of George Papadopoulos, another Trump advisor who has pled guilty to lying to investigators, says that he sat besides Sessions at the Capitol Hill dinner. Papadopoulos tried for months to arrange a meeting between campaign staff and Russian officials.

There is no indication yet that the Page-Sessions encounter was connected to Papadopoulos’ efforts.

Page reached a rare agreement to allow the committee to release a transcript of his testimony. The publication is expected early next week.

Even before Page’s testimony, Democratic Senators such as Patrick Leahy, Richard Blumenthal, and Al Franken have called on Session “to explain why he cannot seem to provide truthful, complete answers to these important and relevant questions” over the Trump-Russian interactions, given the Papadopoulos account.

In an eight-page letter, Franken told Sessions that he fears “the Senate — and the American public — cannot trust your word.”

Report: Justice Department Close to Charging Russian Government Officials Over Hacking

The Justice Department has gathered enough evidence to charge six members of the Russian government over the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers during the 2016 US Presidential campaign, according to “people familiar with the investigation”.

Federal agents and prosecutors in Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco are cooperating in the investigation and the case could come to court.

With the charges, US authorities can impede the travel of the officials, but arrests and detention are unlikely.

US intelligence services have also concluded that Russian hackers were responsible in spring 2016 for the theft and dissemination of information from the computer of John Podesta, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff.

In March, the Justice Department charged two Russian intelligence agents and two hackers with masterminding the 2014 theft of 500 million Yahoo accounts.