Washington (CNN) Senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner suggested Tuesday that special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation was more harmful to the US than Russian meddling in the 2016 election. In his first public comments since a redacted version of Mueller's report was released last week, Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, downplayed and twisted the conclusions of the report, which found there was a massive effort by Russia to manipulate the election via social media. "You look at what Russia did, you know, buying some Facebook ads to try and sow dissent and do it, it's a terrible thing," Kushner said in an interview at Time 100 Summit in response to a question about the Mueller investigation. "But I think the investigations and all of the speculation that's happened for the last two years has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple Facebook ads," he continued. In the redacted version of the Mueller report, the special counsel explained that the investigation into possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia found that members of the Trump campaign knew they would benefit from Russia's illegal actions to influence the election, but didn't take criminal steps to help.

Source: CNN April 23, 2019 15:41 UTC