After forgetting to mention doing White House business on a personal email account, and forgetting to mention his personal contacts with a Russian Mafia ‘godfather,’ forgetting to mention his knowledge of contacts between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, forgetting to mention a ‘Russian backdoor overture,’ and producing a background check document with a level of mistakes no one had ever seen before … maybe it’s a good thing that Trump son-in-law/adviser Jared Kushner is getting a little more time to produce documents on his contacts with Russia.
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Jared Kushner got a reprieve from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday and will not have to meet the November 27 deadline for handing over documents related to his Russia contacts during the 2016 presidential election, officials told Newsweek.
The deadline was apparently re-set to the tenth of never, as the Senate Judiciary Committee under Chairman Chuck Grassley has decided to work directly with Kushner’s attorneys to get the information they asked for rather than embarrassing poor Jared for being such a miserable, lying, screw-up.
Kushner's attorneys had initially pushed back on the follow-up request for additional material in a scathing rebuke that condemned the committee for making the issue a "media event" by releasing its letter publicly.
But, if it’s not an inconvenience to Jared, the committee would like to see information about his conversations with a man named Sergei Millian. Millian is the supposed head of the “Russian American Chamber of Commerce,” but that organization is interesting—both for its ties to the Russian government, and for ties to Donald Trump.
Both Kushner and Trump have worked extensively with Millian, with Millian once claiming a semi-official position in the Trump Organization as well as running his … interesting civic group.
Most of the board members are obscure entities and nearly half of their telephone numbers went unanswered when called by the Financial Times. An FT reporter found no trace of the Chamber of Commerce at the Wall Street address listed on its website. At the same time, the chamber appears to have close official ties, arranging trips for visiting Russian regional governors to the US.
Millian might be best remembered as the guy who Donald Trump met in a private suite at a horse race in Miami, where the two apparently discussed the Moscow real estate market. He’s one of those guys who Trump later claimed to have barely known, despite a rather extensive acquaintance.
“Trump team, they realized that we have a lot of connection with Russian investors. And they noticed that we bring a lot of investors from Russia,” Millian told ABC News in a 2016 interview. “And they needed my assistance, yes, to sell properties and sell some of the assets to Russian investors.” Millian says that following this meeting with Trump, he works as a broker for the Trump Hollywood condominium project in Miami, selling a “nice percentage” of the building’s 200 units to Russian investors.
But Millian also has another connection to Trump and Kushner, one that’s been a subject of speculation for some time.
In June, a Belarusan American businessman who goes by the name Sergei Millian shared some tantalizing claims about Donald Trump.
Trump had a long-standing relationship with Russian officials, Millian told an associate, and those officials were now feeding Trump damaging information about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Millian said that the information provided to Trump had been “very helpful.”
That’s June 2016—the same month that Trump’s campaign team was meeting with a Russian team at Trump Tower to discuss the “dirt” provided them by Moscow.
Millian’s connection of Trump to Russia made it into the famous Steele Dossier. The Wall Street Journal named Millian as “Source D,” who not only had an inside scoop on the Trump campaign access to those stolen emails, but had other stories to tell.
The most explosive allegation that the dossier says originally came from Millian is the claim that Trump had hired prostitutes at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton and that the Kremlin has kept evidence of the encounter.
And Trump wasn’t the only member of the campaign running around with Good Time Sergei. There was Kushner.
President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was copied on emails sent to the Trump campaign last year from Sergei Millian, the Belarus-born businessman who has worked with the Trump Organization and was reportedly a key source in the explosive dossier alleging ties between Trump and Russia.
And Cohen.
Subsequently, Millian later recounted, “We met at his office in New York, where [Trump] introduced me to his right-hand man—Michael Cohen. He is Trump’s main lawyer, all contracts go through him. Subsequently, a contract was signed with me to promote one of their real estate projects in Russia and the CIS. You can say I was their exclusive broker.”
And Papadopoulos.
A Washington Post profile from March noted an additional point of contact: Millian told associates last year that he was in regular touch with George Papadopoulos — a campaign foreign policy adviser who pleaded guilty late last month to making false statements to the FBI about the extent and nature of his contacts with Kremlin-linked foreign nationals.
And possibly Epshtyn.
Papadopoulos tried to connect another Trump aide, Boris Epshtyn, with Millian in September 2016, according to the Post. Epshtyn said the meeting never happened.
So … while Kushner’s team wants to wave away the Millian emails that came through Kushner’s in-box as unimportant and unconnected to Kushner, it’s fairly obvious why this information might be of interest to the committee.
Someday. No hurry. Whenever it’s convenient for Jared.