May 27, 2017

Joy Reid started on the biggest story of the day by asking former State Department spokesperson Nayyera Haq how "typical" it would be for the son-in-law of the president of the United States or anyone in the administration "to not only set up a back channel with a foreign adversarial country but suggest doing so in that country's secure facility."

Haq didn't mince words.

"It is so beyond the pale, it does start to boggle the mind and lead to why, why do all these actions, all these meetings in such quick order after the election, if there was a goal to have a better relationship with Russia, why not wait a few weeks and months?" she said.

"The idea this was happening during transition, without awareness of intel and diplomatic communities does point to something untoward happening."

Reid pointed out that the Russian ambassador was taken aback by the suggestion by Kushner that they meet inside the Russian facilities which the Russians are monitoring and the U.S. cannot.

Malcolm Nance called the story "bizarre," and said he thought the news media was "pulling their punches" on this story.

"There is no reason that any of these communications should have happened, much less 18 of them," he said.

"No other administration in transition has ever had communications with a foreign adversary at all -- certainly not like this one. Now, with regards to Jared Kushner's recommendation, people are saying that maybe he was just naive.

"This isn't naive. This is a man who came from a billion dollar industry. He knows what the meaning of going into another corporation's headquarters and then using their secure communications would mean, and how that would look certainly to the United States.

Nance said it was important to ask what Kushner planned to do.

"What did he intend to transmit through Russia's system to communicate with Vladimir Putin? Daily presidential briefing? Nuclear codes? I don't know. Everyone in intelligence has to assume that's what he was going to do. There is no reason that any of this should have happened and the FBI needs to dig into this right now."

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