WHAT DEVIN WAS HIRED TO HIDE:

Schiff went on, "At the end of the day, what should concern us most is anything that can have a continuing impact on the foreign policy and national-security policy of the United States, and, if the Russians were laundering money for the Trump Organization, that would be totally compromising." Schiff hypothesizes that Trump went beyond using his campaign and the Presidency as a vehicle for advancing his business interests, speculating that he may have shaped policy with an eye to expanding his fortune. "There's a whole constellation of issues where that is essentially the center of gravity," Schiff said. "Obviously, that issue is implicated in efforts to build Trump Tower in Moscow. It's implicated in the money that Trump is bragging he was getting from the Saudis. And why shouldn't he love the Saudis? He said he was making so much money from them." As the Washington Post has reported, Trump has sold a superyacht and a hotel to a Saudi prince, a $4.5-million apartment near the United Nations to the Saudi government, and many other apartments to Saudi nationals, and, since Trump became President, his hotels in New York and Chicago have seen significant increases in bookings from Saudi visitors. In a break with the Republican congressional leadership, Trump refuses to take action against Saudi Arabia, notwithstanding substantial evidence that Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince and the putative head of state, directed the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who lived in the United States.

Schiff also pointed out that Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law, met with the C.E.O. of a state-owned Russian bank in December, 2016, and that, the following month, Erik Prince, an informal adviser to the Trump campaign, met with the leader of a Russian sovereign-wealth fund in the Seychelles, an East African archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean. "The American people have a right to know that their President is working on their behalf, not his family's financial interests," Schiff said. "Right now, I don't think any of us can have the confidence that that's the case." All of these subjects, Schiff averred, were fair game for investigation by the committee that he will soon chair.

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