Top Trump White House adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, secretly talked to the Russians about setting up a covert line of communications between the Trump transition and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities, in an effort to avoid monitoring by US intelligence, according to US officials who spoke to the Washington Post.

They were talking about using Russian embassies as safe spaces to have highly-classified discussions with Vladimir Putin's senior advisers. Why? So they could hide their talks from the CIA, NSA, DOD, and State Department.

Who does that?

Former acting director of the CIA, John McLaughlin, said that if this report is true, "we'd consider it espionage."

"I can’t keep out of my mind the thought that, if an American intelligence officer had done anything like this, we’d consider it espionage.”

Then things got even worse. We learned that last summer Kushner joined Donald Trump Jr. and then- campaign director Paul Manafort in a meeting in which they expected Russian government officials to pass along damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The Russians offered to help Kushner with the election, and he accepted. And then, Kushner didn't tell anyone about it until just recently, and didn't even include it on his security clearance application.

Join us in demanding that Jared Kushner lose his security clearance, and step down from his White House position, until these allegations are investigated and resolved to the satisfaction of the FBI. Add your name to the right.

We've been down this path before. A senior Trump White House official under investigation for allegations that could be considered espionage is giving a pass, and permitted to continue in his job at the White House, and attend the most highly-classified of meetings. Before it was Michael Flynn. Now it's Jared Kushner.

In a normal White House, in a normal administration, as soon as someone is under FBI investigation for conspiring with the Russians, they temporarily lose their security clearance and are put on administrative leave, because you can't afford the risk of them continuing to receive classified information.

We don't know if Jared Kushner was following Trump's orders. We don't know if this was an effort, as was reported by Reuters, to possibly broker the easing of US sanctions in exchange for money flowing from Russia banks to Trump business ventures and allies. What we do know if that Donald Trump's most trusted confidante was involved in something so sensitive that he trusted the KGB more than the CIA.

Join us in demanding that Jared Kushner lose his security clearance, and step down from his White House position, until these allegations are investigated and resolved to the satisfaction of the FBI. Add your name to the right.

(Jared Kushner image by Lori Berkowitz Photography.)