DHS Secretary John Kelly defends Trump son-in-law over meetings with Russians
DHS Secretary John Kelly again defended senior White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's dealings with Russian entities, regarding his alleged attempt to set up backchannel communications with Russian officials before the election.
CBS News confirmed that when Kushner met with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak in December, Kushner discussed setting up a backchannel for communications between the Trump transition team and Russian officials.
Kelly said that at the time, no "red flags" were raised about Kushner's specific communications.
While Kelly said he had not directly spoken with Kushner about the communications, he told lawmakers that are within the "course of normal interaction with another country."
"We have to make the assumption that Kushner is a great American, he's decent, he has a security clearance at highest level and if he was opening backchannel communications to pass information through that channel to get to Putin and say 'hey, look we're concerned about this,'" said Kelly. "If it's official it's a whole other dynamic."
Kelly noted that he himself has backchannels established through religious leaders in the United States and leaders in Latin America.
"It's one thing if I call a president of a country. It's different if it comes from another direction, it's just the reality of the situation," he explained. "Whether you met them here in the building or went to the embassy, that's essentially a backchannel communication."
During the hearing, Kelly also testified about Mr. Trump's proposed "travel ban" on a handful of Muslim-majority nations, which lower courts, as well as the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, have blocked from going into effect. The Justice Department filed an appeal to the Supreme Court last week to ask the court to reinstate the ban.
Kelly said that there is a "need to prevent bad actors regardless of religion nationality from entering our country."
"The president issued a clear direction to prevent the entry of aliens who seek to do us harm." Kelly said, "While some debate title or a label or a name" he hopes Congress "sees the wisdom of what the president is trying to do in protecting his people."
Kelly added, "It has nothing to do with religion or skin color or the way they live their lives, but all about security in the U.S. and nothing else."
Kelly told members that while he "anxiously awaits" court action, he was not "fully confident" DHS was doing it can to weed out potential wrongdoers in the selected countries named in the ban.
