MSNBC terrorism analyst, and retired US Navy Officer Malcom Nance, made a very serious charge against Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, all depending on how true a new Washington Post report is. He made the accusations last Friday on MSNBC to Chris L. Hayes.
“You also said that you thought under the Espionage Act,” Hayes asked, referring to the previous panelist saying it sounded like Kushner committed a felony, “what do you mean by that, Malcolm?”
“Right now there’s just take it from the perspective of every intelligence watch officer in the world who is watching the program right now,” he responded. “There are thousands of people who are out there who are on duty who are watching this, who have top secret SCI, special access program clearance, knowing that in one instance, even a fraction of this, would lose their clearances, will have to ask themselves the question they would have to ask in any counter-intelligence environment and that is simply this: Why?”
“What is the motivational device that Jared Kushner,” he said forcefully, “should this story be true, because we don’t know if it’s entirely true. We don’t even know what the source of this was. The Russians themselves could have leaked this story to create chaos.”
“But why would he want to hide, covert,” he continued, “his communications from the U.S. government, believing that he would want to be able to use a facility, obviously that would have more secure communications to create a back channel that U.S. cryptologic collection couldn’t get.”
“That right there along is covert communications,” Nance said.
“That is indicative of espionage activity of an American citizen that is working in league with a hostile government,” he concluded. “And right now there is no FBI counterintelligence officer in the world right now that does not believe that if this story is true.”
The Washington Post reported on Friday that Kushner originally floated the idea of initiating a back channel of communications between the Russian government and the Trump transition team to escape any monitoring by US investigation authorities. The anonymous source also revealed that Kushner made this offer to Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the US, in December, during their meeting at the Trump Tower.
The White House has declined to comment on the story.
