Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Sunday said he doesn’t think the reports that White House senior adviser Jared Kushner sought to establish a backchannel line of communication between the Trump transition team and Moscow are a cause for concern.
“I don’t know if its true or not. I know it’s being reported in the press,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I would just tell you that I think any channel of communication, back or otherwise, with a country like Russia is a good thing.”
Kelly said he favors multiple ways of communicating with any country.
{mosads}”It doesn’t bother me,” he said.
“You just have to assume, obviously, that what you’re getting is — may or may not be true, they may be working you.”
But, he said, that’s the “whole point.”
“That communication then goes into the White House as a data point in terms of discussion, so I don’t see a big deal,” he said.
“Any time you have channels of communication with a country, particularly one like Russia, I wouldn’t criticize it.”
The Washington Post reported on Friday that Kushner in December sought to establish a backchannel line of communication during a meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. That channel was never set up.
The FBI is looking at meetings that Kushner fielded with Kislyak and Russian banking executive Sergey Gorkov in December as part of the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.