Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is reportedly worried that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will eventually “get” the US president as part of his ongoing investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign.
Kushner is especially concerned about the reach of the Russia inquiry following the indictment of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates, according to a report by the Vanity Fair magazine.
“Do you think they’ll get the president?” Kushner asked a friend, the report said, citing a source familiar with the conversation.
US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia tried to help Trump win the election by hacking and releasing emails damaging to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Mueller is looking into whether there were any links between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.
President Trump and Russia have denied the allegations.
It emerged earlier this year that Manafort, along with Trump Jr. and Kushner, met with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower last summer, after being promised damaging information on Clinton.
That meeting is now at the center of the Mueller investigation. Kushner is also accused of failing to disclose emails he received about "a Russian backdoor overture" in 2016.
Mueller’s team has questioned witnesses about some of Kushner's conversations and meetings with foreign leaders during Trump’s transition, during which Kushner hosted then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak at Trump Tower, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Investigators are also looking into Kushner's role in efforts to block a December UN resolution that condemned Israel for building settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.
Trump, who was president-elect at the time, urged the US to veto the resolution, denouncing it as being “extremely unfair to all Israelis.”
The Security Council passed the resolution days later with the US abstaining from vetoing it.
Israeli officials reportedly reached out to several people in Trump’s transition, including Kushner and former chief strategist Stephen Bannon, according to the Journal. Mueller’s investigators are asking questions about those overtures.