we'll have shane harris, the lead reporter, we'll have shane harris here in just a moment to go through this. basically, here is the scoop. last month in what was then the biggest story of the year, they the new yorker magazine reported that senior law enforcement official himself come to the white house in december and given senior officials at the white house a stark warning that a member of the president's family was being targeted by a chinese influence operation. in that same article, evan and adam for "the new yorker" reported jared kushner had basically been blowing off the national security protocols with meetings, including meetings alone on at least one occasion from the chinese ambassador. further reported on u.s. intelligence intercepts that turned up some worrying discussions about kushner's dealings with the chinese. quote, u.s. intelligence agencies aggressively target chinese government communications including the ambassador's reports about meetings in the u.s. according to current and former officials briefed about chinese communications, chinese officials said that in

shane harris at the washington post, thank you very much.on this — he served as special agent for the fbi for almost thirty years and joins me now in the studio. his there any upside in terms of intelligence gathering in releasing little bits of intelligence in this way that the republicans have already and the democrats want to do? first of all, there was no reason they should have released classified material. that in itself isa classified material. that in itself is a problem. in this case, some of this information is out. it's only a very small part of the total picture of the information and any information that gets out can be damaging, ouradversarial, information that gets out can be damaging, our adversarial, the russians in particular are laughing at this. they can't wait to see what comes out of this to help them understand how the fbi collect intelligence. this isn't a criminal investigation. it is a huge difference. this process of criticising the fbi that we have witnessed over the last few weeks in particular, how damaging is i

she's shane harris, take a listen. >> when he came into his job he was discovered that kushner was having his own discussions with officials and not reporting that through normal channels of people in the white house. what we're learning now that contact with foreign officials he was having, the conversations that i'm describing, the ones that mcmaster doesn't know about, there's something in those conversations and actions that become a major impediment to him. >> that's shane harris from "the washington post" about that clearance down graded from disturb ner. he had no longer to access security information according to most sources citing the white house memo. wouldn't be able to go to many of those national security meetings. kushner had served for more than a year without a security clearance, that's something that's rare for someone at his level. a spokes person stating a few clearance policy will not effect kushner's able to do the important work he's opinion assigned by the president, adding it's not uncommon for these reviews to take this long at a new administration. in past admi

shane harris's article says they cannot recall so many heads of russian security apparatus coming to washington all at once. yeah. it does seem kind of weird. what were they all doing here? oo and why was this not being kept secret from the russian public, but it was being kept secret from us, by our government? here's the other part of this that is mind-bending. of these three russian intelligence chiefs who were apparently brought to the united states last week to meet with the trump administration in secret, the first one who is reported, the guy of the sbr, the sbr is the foreign-facing intelligence service in russia. this is their service that puts spies in other countries. don't see why there's any reason why you wouldn't invite him here. one of the specific reasons you eye might not have that guy here, that guy in particular here, is that since 2014 he's been sanctioned by the u.s. government. he was the head of a lower house of parliament in russia when russia invaded crimea, and the obama administration levied sanctions on them because of that annexing. the guy now hid of th

shane harris is on the story. he joins us now. can you talk about what countries they were and what they were hoping to use to manipulate him? >> the four countries that were identified are israel, china, mexico and the united arab emirates and what they found was these officials were discussing among themselves that jared kushner might be vulnerable on his lack of experience in government and foreign policy seeing him as someone they could persuade. and also his business arrangements which are complex and involve foreign as well. his business debts and his lack of experience. both of those are reasons he should have never been in the white house in the first place. he's there because of nepotism, and that's the third reason he shouldn't be there. 666 fifth avenue, when acquired it was the most money ever paid for an office tower. he has divested out of the company going back into the government but we know the company has been looking for foreign investors and others to help alleviate that debt. specifically this was coming up, w

shane harris joins us now. can you talk about what countries they were and what they were hoping to use to manipulate him? >> the four countries that were identified are israel, china, mexico and the united arab emirates and what they found was these officials were discussing among themselves that jared kushner might be vulnerable on his lack of experience in government and foreign policy seeing him as someone they could persuade. and also his business arrangements which are complex and involve foreign as well. and the depth they incurred in the kushner companies. looking for international investors trying to shore up the debt. discussing he might be leverageable. >> they paid a huge amount, they refinanced that. that money coming due and even in the transition, kushner was meeting with potential investors. >> meetings with a russian banker. there is discrepancy. it was no secret of course that he had this debt and it is important to remember that a normal person when they go through a process for trying to obt

the post report was written by shane harris their national security correspondent. to him earlier. speu spell out this story for us, according to your reporting us intelligence has overheard or somehow got information that some of america's allies are looking at jared kushner and thinking he's got vulnerabilities? the vulnerabilities the countries see our that he has a lack of experience in government and foreign policy so i naivete as one white house press and it to us. as well as his own complex business history and particularly financial issues he has in the form of large debt on a property in new york city that the company, his family real estate com pa ny owns. that the company, his family real estate company owns. there is about a $1.2 billion debt on that company which comes due and we understand people are looking that is leveraged they may able to use. we don't know precisely what these people said about that but i think what a number of our sources have concerns about is that they may have seen that as a way to try to engage jared kushner in some kind of b