Washington: Further contacts between the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and the Trump camp, including Trump family member Jared Kushner, have emerged even as Attorney-General Jeff Sessions battles a storm of controversy stemming from his meetings with the ambassador.
Michael Flynn, then Donald Trump's incoming national security adviser, had a previously undisclosed meeting with the Russian ambassador in December to "establish a line of communication" between the new administration and the Russian government, the White House said on Thursday.
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Sessions to recuse himself from any investigation
Newly appointed US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said he will not participate in any investigation into his failure to disclose contact with Russia's ambassador during the Trump campaign.
Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and now a senior adviser, also participated in the meeting at Trump Tower with Kislyak. But among Trump's inner circle, it is Flynn who appears to have been the main interlocutor with the Russian envoy. The two were in contact during the campaign and the transition, Kislyak and current and former US officials have said.
The extent and frequency of Flynn-Kislyak contacts remains unclear, but the disclosure of the meeting at Trump Tower adds to the emerging picture of how the relationship between Trump's incoming team and Moscow was evolving to include some of the president-elect's most trusted advisers.
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USA Today reported on Thursday that at least two additional officials in Donald Trump's presidential campaign spoke to Kislyak at a conference on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention last July, where Attorney-General Jeff Sessions also met Kislyak.
The newspaper said J.D. Gordon, who was the Trump campaign's director of national security, and Carter Page, another member of the campaign's national security advisory committee, met the ambassador.
The conference of diplomats in Cleveland coincided with the Republican convention to select Trump as the party's presidential candidate. Diplomats and political officials often rub shoulders at the Global Partners in Diplomacy event.
Gordon told USA Today that it was not unusual for a presidential campaign to interact with diplomats. "I'd consider it an informal conversation just like my interactions with dozens of other ambassadors and senior diplomats in Cleveland," he said.
Page declined to tell the paper what he discussed with the ambassador citing "confidentiality rules".
However, he did say the discussion was not substantive. Page, who lived in Moscow for three years, later left the campaign amid controversy about a speech he gave in Moscow criticising the US and other Western nations for their "often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratisation, inequality, corruption and regime change".
The New Yorker reported this week that Kushner had met with Kislyak at Trump Tower in December. Hope Hicks, a White House spokeswoman, confirmed on Thursday that Flynn was also at the meeting.
It is common and not improper for transition officials to meet with foreign officials. But all meetings between Trump associates and Russians are now significant as the FBI investigates Russian interference in the US election and whether anyone close to Trump's campaign was involved.
The meeting in December came just as the Obama White House was preparing to sanction Russia and publicly make its case that Moscow had interfered with the 2016 election.
"They generally discussed the relationship and it made sense to establish a line of communication," Hicks said. "Jared has had meetings with many other foreign countries and representatives as many as two dozen other foreign countries' leaders and representatives."
The Trump Tower meeting lasted 20 minutes, and Kushner has not met since with Kislyak, Hicks said.
The White House has repeatedly sought to play down any connections with Kislyak. Attorney-General Jeff Sessions acknowledged this week that he had met twice with him during the campaign, despite previous denials.
On Thursday he announced he would recuse himself from any investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
Reuters, New York Times