Earlier on Monday, the Washington Post reported: "Jared Kushner, President Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, plans to detail four meetings he had with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign and transition period - including one set up by Donald Trump jnr with a Russian lawyer - but will deny any improper contacts or collusion in testimony to a congressional panel on Monday." Of most interest, he describes the meeting with Donald Trump jnr and a Russian attorney, former Russian counterintelligence agent and Russian interpreter:

"Kushner also describes attending a June 2016 meeting organised by his brother-in-law, Donald Trump jnr, with a Russian attorney. He says it was listed on his calendar as "Meeting: Don Jr. | Jared Kushner." He writes that he arrived at the meeting late, and when he got there the Russian lawyer was talking about a ban on US adoptions of Russian children.

"'I had no idea why that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not well-spent at this meeting,' Kushner writes. 'Reviewing emails recently confirmed my memory that the meeting was a waste of our time and that, in looking for a polite way to leave and get back to my work, I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for 10 or so minutes and wrote, "Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting." ' "

Kushner, in this telling, is a distracted, unobservant rube. He apparently did not recall the email heading that initiated the meeting ("Re: Russia - Clinton - private and confidential"). We are asked to believe that he did not understand that the issue of Russia's ban on adoptions by Americans, a petty act of retaliation for the US passage of human rights sanctions (the Magnitsky Act), was a way to pressure US decision-makers. (Lift the sanctions, and adoptions can resume.) Kushner is not the worldly Boy Wonder in his version, but a distracted dilettante.