Question Of The Day: Is Jared Kushner Just Stupid -- Or Corrupt?
Joy Reid's guests look at the many pieces of the puzzle: Why was Jared Kushner meeting with Sergey Gorkov?
Joy Reid's panel this morning looked at the many angles of the story about Jared Kushner's meeting with Russian banker and alleged spy Sergey Gorkov.
"If there's an innocent explanation for all of this, one wonders why the stories keep shifting," Joy Reid said.
"So you now have -- the Tribune had a piece, there's discrepancy between what the Russians say was going on and the White House. The Russian side, VEB side said it was a business meeting. They were meeting with Jared Kushner as head of the company.
"This is after the election. The White House is saying, no, he's on a diplomatic mission. How do we square that?"
"We can't," journalist Kurt Eichenwald said. He said there was no innocent explanation.
"Every answer they have is bad. You're left with, is Jared Kushner a fool -- or is he corrupt?
"Let's assume it was a business meeting. You want to borrow money. Do you know of many bankers who come flying from another country to you to talk to you about giving you money? This is not making any sense, that's number one. Number two, Jared Kushner knew what his role was. Jared Kushner knew his father-in-law was about to become president of the United States. and he feels like it's appropriate to be going to banks connected to the Kremlin and say, hey, I want some money. That's the business operation idea.
"Number two, you have a meeting between Jared Kushner and the bank in terms of dealing with national security issues supposedly, or getting into issues of diplomacy.
"What is Jared Kushner doing getting involved in that to begin with? Secondly, why are they doing this at a time when Donald Trump is not the president of the United States. Nothing should have been going on without it being done in coordination with the State Department," he said.
"That is how these things are handled. You don't start with an incoming administration now starts running secret meetings."