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"This does not feel like a group of people that has nothing to hide," he says of Trump's team

Washington (CNN) Minnesota Sen. Al Franken said he thinks it is "very suspicious" that Jared Kushner reportedly proposed setting up a secret communication channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin.

"Normally a back channel isn't something where you go to the other country's communication systems so your own intelligence can't hear it," Franken told Anderson Cooper on "AC360" on Tuesday. "That's what it sounds like Kushner thought he was doing. It's also very suspicious that he did not report this meeting. This is the kind of meeting you'd remember."

The Democratic lawmaker's comments come several days after news broke that Russia's ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, told higher-ups that Kushner, a trusted aide to President Donald Trump and husband to Ivanka Trump, proposed the back channel to him at a meeting at Trump Tower in December.

A source told CNN the channel was meant to discuss military operations in Syria and other matters.

"This is very suspicious," Franken said again. "And we know, at that time that Kushner and Flynn met with Kislyak, Trump was denying that the Russians had interfered in the campaign and was kind of at war with our intelligence services."

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