The shake-up on Jared Kushner’s legal team comes as President Donald Trump’s son-in-law faces increasing scrutiny over a meeting with a Russian lawyer he attended last year in the heat of the presidential campaign. | AP Photo Kushner lawyer Abbe Lowell taking over Russia case from Gorelick

One of the high-powered lawyers representing senior White House adviser Jared Kushner in the ongoing Russia investigation, Jamie Gorelick, is stepping back from the case, and Abbe Lowell, another attorney representing Kushner, will now be in charge of the inquiry.

Gorelick “will continue to work on the matters for which we were originally retained, with regard to ethics compliance, the SF-86 process, and related issues,” she told POLITICO on Friday.


Gorelick said Kushner decided on the change.

"As we have stated, once Bob Mueller and three of our partners left the firm to form the Special Counsel's Office, we advised Jared to get independent legal advice on whether to continue with us as counsel," she said. "As a result of this process, Jared decided that Abbe would represent him in the Russia-related inquiries. We are currently helping Abbe’s team."

Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether any Trump campaign associates colluded in the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including its cyberattacks on Democratic Party officials. The White House has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The shake-up on Kushner’s legal team comes as President Donald Trump’s son-in-law faces increasing scrutiny over a meeting with a Russian lawyer he attended last year in the heat of the presidential campaign.

Donald Trump Jr., who organized the meeting after he was informed that the Russian government wanted to aid the Trump campaign and share dirt on Hillary Clinton, has maintained that he told Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who also attended, nothing of substance before asking them to join. But emails he posted on Twitter earlier this week show that he had forwarded both Kushner and Manafort details about it beforehand.

Kushner did not initially report the meeting on his security clearance form and has since updated it to reflect it.

Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.