Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort will be testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee this week. It was originally supposed to be an open hearing today, but Precious Jared and Manafort worked it out so that the hearing will not be open to the public or the media. Also, they’re not being sworn under oath. Which makes me wonder: what’s the f–king point? If you’re not going to get either of these a–holes on the record (in a “public record” situation or a perjury situation), you might as well cancel their appearances. Anyway, ahead of his closed-door fake-news testimony, Precious Jared has released a statement, which is being called his pre-written testimony… although, again, I don’t consider it “testimony” if he’s not under oath. Here are some highlights from the 11-page statement:

Jared didn’t collude. “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is required.”

He didn’t have a relationship with Ambassador Kislyak. “I had no ongoing relationship with the Ambassador before the election, and had limited knowledge about him then… In fact, on November 9, the day after the election, I could not even remember the name of the Russian Ambassador… when the campaign received an email purporting to be an official note of congratulations from President Putin, I was asked how we could verify it was real. To do so I thought the best way would be to ask the only contact I recalled meeting from the Russian government, which was the Ambassador I had met months earlier, so I sent an email asking Mr. [Demetri] Simes [the publisher of a foreign policy magazine], ‘What is the name of the Russian ambassador?'”

The meeting with Don Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya. Kushner claims he had no idea what he was walking into. An email from his brother-in-law reminds him of the time change to 4 p.m. for the Trump Tower meeting, and Kushner writes that it was not abnormal to pop into each other’s offices for meetings. “That email was on top of a long back and forth that I did not read at the time,” he writes. “Documents confirm my memory that this was calendared as “Meeting: Don Jr.| Jared Kushner. No one else was mentioned.” The meeting, where Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Trump, Jr., and campaign operative Paul Manafort and four other people were discussing Russian adoptions and were gathered to exchange information about Hillary Clinton, was outside of his purview, he writes. “I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for ten or so minutes and wrote ‘Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting.’”

His meeting with Kislyak during the transition, during which Kushner reportedly sought a back-channel with the Kremlin. The meeting lasted 23 minutes, according to Kushner. “I stated our desire for a fresh start in relation,” he says of the meeting where Kushner reportedly tried to set up a backchannel of communication. It was Kislyak, Kushner writes, that brought up U.S. policy in Syria, and said “he wanted to convey information from what he called ‘his generals.’ He said he wanted to provide information that would help inform the new administration. He said the generals could not easily come to the U.S. to convey this information and he asked if there was a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation.” Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Kushner explained to him that there was not. “I believed developing a thoughtful approach on Syria was a very high priority given the ongoing humanitarian crisis,” he explains. “and I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn. The Ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we would receive this information after the Inauguration.”

What was exchanged between Kushner and Kislyak. Kushner said he declined two attempts by Kislyak in December for a follow-up, eventually sending his assistant instead. It was there that Kislyak recommended that Kushner sit down with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Kremlin-linked Russian bank. All that was exchanged, he said, was a humble piece of art and a bag of dirt from the Belarus village where his grandparents were born. “There were no specific policies discussed. We had no discussion about the sanctions imposed by the Obama Administration. At no time was there any discussion about my companies, business transactions, real estate projects, loans, banking arrangements or any private business of any kind.”

[From Politico]

Politico fact-checks Kushner’s statements throughout the article, like how the Putin-backed bank claimed that Kushner did meet with them about his family business. Kushner also claimed that all of the “forgotten” meetings with Russians were excluded from his security clearance forms because of an assistant’s mistake. His argument throughout the written “testimony” is that he never did anything wrong, that he’s just a forgetful guy and that he’s so overworked and humble. I’m surprised he didn’t say “I’m just really bad with names,” which is my go-to excuse. TL:DR version: Precious Jared is precious and he didn’t know anything and if you can prove that he knew something, he’ll just say that he forgot.

Photos courtesy of Getty.