White House introduces special counsel amid Russian Federation controversy]

Don Jr and Kushner along with then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, met with Natalia Veselnitskaya believing they would obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton “part of Russian Federation and it’s government’s support for Mr Trump”. That includes a $50,000 charge for the law firm of Alan Futerfas, who is representing Trump Jr. “The president has confidence in Jared”, Huckabee Sanders replied when asked whether Kushner’s security clearance may be revoked.

Kushner has been in hot water for awhile now. Trump Jr.’s explanations of the reason for the meeting evolved after The New York Times published several stories about the meeting in recent days.

Still, that doesn’t mean Kushner is completely out of the woods.

“With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country”, Trump told his nearly 40 million Twitter followers.

This is pretty sketchy for an array of reasons, but largely because USA intelligence agencies would not have been able to monitor such a backchannel.

The public seems to be divided over this issue..

The new poll also shows that 48% of Americans say they “disapprove strongly” of the President’s performance in office.

Does Kushner have a security clearance already?

The White House hopes “Made in America” week can draw attention to actions the administration has taken that officials believe help U.S. manufacturing or promote the interests of USA workers, such as withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, moving to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement or removing a series of environmental and other regulations.

The White House has refused to comment on the status of Kushner’s security clearance.

But there was another component of the clandestine effort to help Trump get elected: Investigators believe that as Election Day approached, Russian trolls and “bots” flooded the social media accounts of key voters in swing states with “fake news” disinformation about Clinton, according to a report Wednesday by McClatchy newspapers.

The President doesn’t typically weigh in on security clearances of any government official.

“The idea was to have someone who could deal directly with Mr. Trump on the matter and coordinate with his personal lawyer, which would allow Mr. McGahn and the rest of the staff to tend to the day-to-day work of keeping the White House functioning”, the Times also reported.

Meanwhile, Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has decided that veteran Washington defense lawyer Abbe Lowell will take the lead in representing him in the Russia-related inquiries being conducted by Mueller and congressional committees, according to a statement and three people briefed on the decision.