Three more members of President Trump’s campaign spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to reports Thursday evening.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who is now a White House senior adviser, met with Kislyak at Trump Tower in December, though it’s unclear what they discussed, according to the New York Times.
Staffers J.D. Gordon and Carter Page also met with Kislyak at a diplomacy conference last July, according to USA Today.
The conversations are in addition to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions’ talk with Kislyak at the same Global Partners in Diplomacy event, as well as in September. A number of Trump campaign associates were in attendance of the July event, according to the Times.
Gordon oversaw the advisory committee as the campaign’s national security director.
“I’d consider it an informal conversation just like my interactions with dozens of other ambassadors and senior diplomats in Cleveland,” Gordon told USA Today about his conversation with Kislyak.
In a statement to CBS, Page, also on the national security advisory committee, said: “I can neither confirm or deny any meeting with him at that event in the interest of respecting the confidentiality rules that people agreed to as it was an off-the-record session.”
While it is not unorthodox for campaign teams to speak with foreign officials during elections, the incident has attracted attention because of the role Russia played in the U.S. election, hacking Democratic officials’ emails and leaking them to the public to hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning.
The finding comes after former national security adviser Michael Flynn spoke with Kislyak during the transition about rescinding U.S.-imposed sanctions on Russia. Flynn lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the talks and was fired by Trump.
Late Wednesday, a report stated Attorney General Jeff Sessions had spoken with Kislyak during the campaign season despite testifying before the Senate in January that he had not spoken with anyone from Moscow. On Thursday, Sessions recused himself from any federal investigation into the presidential campaign.
