Marlow asked for Schweizer’s take on the news that President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has become a focus of the investigation into possible Russian interference with the 2016 election.
“First of all, Jared Kushner has significant ties to people in Russia, meaning financial ties, deals that have been done,” Schweizer responded. “Some of those are direct ties with investors where he shares investments in a company. In other instances, they’re people that perhaps are investors that are now based out of Israel, but are very tied commercially to Russia. That’s the first part of it.”
“The second part of it, though, is what’s kind of emerged is that some of the individuals that popped up initially in the Russia investigation – Paul Manafort, for example – we now know that actually Paul Manafort, one of the reasons he was hired or brought into the Trump circle was in part because Jared Kushner thought it would be a good idea,” he continued.
That’s really the main reason why the FBI is looking,” he said. “To be very clear, when the FBI uses the term ‘person of interest,’ that does not mean that they’re saying they’ve committed a crime. What they’re looking for is for him to talk and share with them about what he knows, as it relates to individuals, actions, deals that might have been done. They’re simply saying, ‘this is a guy that is going to have interesting things to say to us, and will help us in the investigation.’”
.. “But something that I think is overlooked in this very long article is really one sentence, which talks about the fact that he procured thousands of these apartments in 2011, really at fire-house prices, with the financial backing of Freddie Mac – which is the federal government’s financing agency,” he said.