House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, should lose his security clearance following revelations that he attended a meeting with a Russian lawyer claiming to have damaging information about then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
“His security clearance must be revoked immediately,” Pelosi said at a press conference in the Capitol, without going so far as to demand Kushner resign from the White House.
President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., released a stunning email chain this week that showed him trying to set up a meeting with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have information helpful to the campaign as part of that government’s effort to boost Trump over Clinton.
{mosads}Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who acted as the intermediary for the meeting, wrote in an email that the information “is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
“If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer,” Trump Jr. replied.
Trump Jr. then invited Kushner and Paul Manafort, who was serving as the Trump campaign chairman at the time in June 2016, to the meeting with the Russian lawyer.
Pelosi disparagingly compared Trump Jr.’s eagerness to obtain help from a foreign adversary to the response of the Al Gore campaign in 2000 after it received the debate prep material for George W. Bush’s team. The Gore adviser who got the package turned the material over to the FBI.
Trump Jr.’s actions amounted to taking “fruit from the poisonous tree,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi blasted Republican leaders in Congress for declining to condemn Trump Jr.’s actions. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have deferred to the congressional Intelligence committees and Justice Department investigations of Russia’s 2016 election interference.
When asked on Wednesday if he would take a meeting with a Russian official offering opposition research on a political opponent, Ryan replied that he wouldn’t be “going into hypotheticals.”
Pelosi reiterated her calls for Republicans to allow the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
“Republicans in Congress have become enablers of the Trump-Russia assault on our democracy,” Pelosi said.
“After these latest revelations, it’s becoming clear we have suffered a desecration of our democracy not seen since Watergate.”