On May 29th, Herb Weisbaum interviewed Mark Smith on Komo Radio. The topic they discussed was “Did Jared Kushner set up a secret backchannel of communication with Russian officials?”
Smith explains that it is completely reasonable for an incoming administration to have contacts with foreign leaders. However, what is unusual is that Jared Kushner, advisor to the incoming President and his son-in-law, proposed setting up a secret backchannel to the Russian Ambassador using secure communication devices that Russians maintain. “If you're going to have the communications, that's one thing, but then to do it in a way that's this secret backchannel that's the part that many people think crosses an important line.” He tells Weisbaum that it looks like you would only want to do that if you had something to hide.
Weisbaum followed up on this and asked Smith whether he believes this is an administration in crisis. Smith said, “The government is a big, vast, complicated operation. And they've done a lot of things that indicate they haven't planned it all out. Ranging from not even getting all the personnel confirmed, and being very slow in filling positions, to controlling information, to doing things like firing the FBI director and not really anticipating the fallout that would come from it. So I think the administration in turmoil is entirely accurate because they have not really been able to focus on any policy issues.”
To hear the entire interview please visit here.