with the other stories today, on the new york times -- >> this is the paul manfort. >> paul manfort -- we picked up russian intelligence that they were trying to focus their efforts on changing policies. what needs to be chloroand -- is there are a series of things that russia did, right, that we know. the wikileaks, the fake news, trying to get manfort, the meetings, all that stuff. there's a group of things that the trump campaign and his surrogates and maybe trump did. promoting wikileaks, hiding the meetings, bringing the ambassador through the back door, not discussing financial dealings. those two things are different pieces of evidence. what this investigation is doing is figuring out if there are linkages of all of this. it's just -- >> jason, are you surprised to learn that paul manfort and general flynn as we've reported and now the new york times is reporting were actively being sought after by the russians to influence donald trump? >> again, lisa be clear with what the story says. it's from highly classified information that was ilare legally leaked out it says there was

they're certainly looking at paul manfort and mike flynn, too, but to put jared kushner up in that class of people who they're interested in. >> to your point, this is somebody -- they are not alleging wrongdoing but they are investigate i investigating the person perhaps closest to the president. >> that's right. that's why we think that this is so significant, even that they can't allege significant wrongdoing, it's important for the public to know this. >> and at this time you're talking about meetings with the russian ambassador, meetings with a russian bank. what other developments do you know of at this time link that jared kushner may have had with the russians that they are looking at? >> we know in april there was an event at the may flour that he was at and sergey kislyak was at. we don't know if they interacted at all. i'm sure investigators are interested in that. what we're focused on is the series of meeting in december -- >> april 2016. j ok. >> then december 2016 is what they're really scrutinizing now. that's a meeting between kushner and the ambassador. then curb her se

relationships between those in the trump circle and russia, from michael flynn to paul manafor the to -- paul manfort. republican jason chai fits and elija cummings said flynn may have broken the law by failing to disclose on his security forms money linked to russia. yet the administration continues to stonewall documents related to general flynn. the white house ethics lawyer during the george bush administration, richmond -- richard painter wrote of this stonewalling zero tolerance for white house cover-up of white house payoffs. is it any wonder why in recent testimony to congress, f.b.i. director comey acknowledged an investigation of russian ?eerches -- interference in our election which he said included possible links between russia and trump associates? finally, over the recess, on tax day to be precise, there were nationwide protests calling on president trump to take the necessary step to dispel concerns by releasing his taxes once and for all. the concern over his taxes goes to a serious question as to how much russian money is part of the trump business empire. in 2008, donald trump jr. s