Plenty of people have suspected all along that the congressional investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election are nothing but a sham. Now there's proof.
No legitimate probe aimed at getting to the bottom of what really happened with the Russians would allow three proven liars to meet with Senate and House investigators behind closed doors without being under oath.
But Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort _ the three people most likely to have colluded with the Russians during the presidential campaign _ are getting a chance to lie to the Senate and House judiciary committees with impunity.
It would be difficult to trust anything these men said even if they were sworn to tell the truth. But it's pretty much a sure bet that interviews held behind closed doors won't reveal the true story.
Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior aide, was the first to appear before Senate investigators on Monday. He'll speak to House investigators on Tuesday.
Trump Jr. and Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, struck a deal with leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide records and be privately interviewed rather than face a subpoena to appear at a public hearing. No date has been set for those interviews.
Kushner beamed with that dimpled smile as he left the two-hour Capitol Hill meeting to issue a prepared statement to reporters waiting outside. He even smiled when a protester tried to get him to sign a Russian flag.
Of course, we don't know what he actually said in the meeting, but based on the 11-page statement Kushner released Monday morning, there isn't much reason to believe his testimony got to the truth.
Kushner acknowledged that he had four meetings with the Russians during the campaign and transition _ two with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., one with a Russian banker and another with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
Kushner initially failed to disclose any of those meetings on his security clearance forms. But after the news media got wind of them, he revised the forms several times.
Kushner claims it was a clerical error made by staff, but let's be honest. He lied.
Now he wants the American people to believe these lies too.
"At no time was there any discussion about my companies, business transactions, real estate projects, loans, banking arrangements or any private business of any kind," he said in the statement.
Kushner claims he had no idea that meeting with the Russian lawyer was to obtain dirt on Hillary Clinton. He just showed up because his brother-in-law, Trump Jr., asked him to.
He got there late and was so bored by what was being discussed that he emailed his assistant asking for help getting out of there.
"Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting," he wrote. In other words, he asked his assistant to lie for him.
Kushner also acknowledged that during the White House transition, he sought a direct line of communication with Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Kushner, the fact that this happened after the election is proof that he's telling the truth about having no communications with senior Kremlin officials during the campaign.
According to Kushner, the meeting with a Russian banker had nothing to do with his family's business dealings either. He met with the lender, who is under U.S. sanctions, to get some insight on what Putin thought about the Trump administration.
The banker didn't hand out any loans, but he did give Kushner a piece of art and _ literally _ a bag of dirt, a ceremonial gift from his grandparents' village. The fact that he disclosed the dirt to the transition team, Kushner said, proves that he wasn't trying to sneak around.
After presumably repeating these lies to Senate investigators, Kushner looked at the American public through the TV cameras and lied again.
"All of my actions were proper and occurred in the normal course of events of a very unique campaign," he told reporters. "I did not collude with Russians, nor do I know of anyone in the campaign who did."
Then he repeated another lie that his father-in-law brings up regularly.
"Donald Trump had a better message and ran a smarter campaign," Kushner said. "That is why he won."
Hopefully, Americans will soon learn whether that's also a lie.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Dahleen Glanton is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Readers may email her at dglanton@chicagotribune.com.
