Hillary Clinton appeared to suggest that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is the “favorite of the Russians” to win the 2020 presidential election and is being groomed by Moscow to run as a third-party candidate against the eventual Democratic nominee.
In an interview on the podcast “Campaign HQ,” the former secretary of State warned that the Russian government was poised to once again meddle in the U.S. presidential election through online disinformation efforts and by encouraging a third-party challenger to stir chaos in the contest.
The Russians already have their “eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” she said, in an apparent reference to Gabbard.
“She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her, so far,” Clinton told David Plouffe, the podcast’s host and the campaign manager for former President Obama’s 2008 campaign.
“And that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset,” Clinton added, referring to the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate.I voted for Jill Stein, does that make me a Russian asset too?
A growing body of evidence, however, indicates that the meeting may have been a setup -- part of a broad effort to tarnish the Trump campaign involving Hillary Clinton operatives employed by Kremlin-linked figures and Department of Justice officials. This view, that the real collusion may have taken place among those who arranged the meeting rather than the Trump officials who agreed to attend it, is supported by two disparate lines of evidence pulled together for the first time here: newly released records and a pattern of efforts to connect the Trump campaign to Russia.
The first line of evidence includes emails, texts, and memos recently turned over to Congress by the Department of Justice. They show how closely senior Justice Department officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation worked with employees of Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research firm reportedly paid $1 million by Clinton operatives to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign.
They reveal that then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, the fourth-highest-ranking official at DOJ, coordinated before, during and after the election with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who did work for the Clinton campaign and Russians; and with former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was employed by Simpson...
The second line of evidence reframing the Trump Tower meeting -- after the Ohr-Steele-Simpson correspondence – was first reported in June by RealClearInvestigations. It shows that, starting in March 2016, FBI confidential sources and other figures associated with Western intelligence services and the Clinton campaign approached the Trump team promising damaging information on Clinton. The Trump Tower meeting appears to have been the most successful of these approaches, since it was the one instance where the Trump campaign signaled it was willing to receive incriminating information on its opponent.
These two strands of evidence – the DOJ’s collaboration with Clinton-paid researchers and efforts to connect the Trump campaign to Russia – came together in midtown Manhattan on June 9, 2016 at Trump Tower.
At the center of it all was Fusion GPS, which had two clients whose interests were served by the Trump Tower meeting: the Russians and the Clinton campaign...
In fact, the Russian lawyer at the center of the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was his client. She has publicly stated that she used talking points developed by Simpson for the Russian government in that discussion. Kremlin officials also posted the allegations on the Prosecutor General’s website, and shared them with visiting U.S. congressional delegations. In addition, Simpson has testified that he had dinner with Veselnitskaya the night before the meeting and the night after...
Veselnitskaya hired Simpson in spring 2014 for work that lasted, according to Simpson’s Senate testimony, until “mid to late 2016.” ...
Although the Trump campaign agreed to meet Veselnitskaya to receive dirt on Clinton, she succeeded in turning the meeting’s focus instead to the Magnitsky Act and Browder – including Simpson-generated claims accusing Browder of tax evasion and embezzlement. Citing her public acknowledgement, Browder told RealClearInvestigations, “It seems to me that Simpson wrote the talking points about me that Veselnitskaya used in her meeting with Donald Trump Jr.”
Although Browder was unaware of the Trump Tower meeting, he was so concerned about Fusion GPS’s work on behalf of Russian interests that in July 2016, he lodged a complaint with the DOJ against both Simpson and Akhmetshin, for failing to properly register as foreign agents while working for the Russian government...
“Simpson approached the Clinton campaign through its law firm and said he could dig up dirt on Trump and Russia,” said one congressional investigator. “The difference between the Trump and Clinton campaigns’ willingness to take dirt on its opponent is that the Clintons went through with it and paid for it. While their source, Glenn Simpson, was working for a Russian oligarch” -- a reference to the Katsyv connection.
CHABOT:
Thank you. Director Mueller, my Democratic colleagues were very disappointed in your report. They were expecting you to say something along the lines of he was (ph) -- why President Trump deserves to be impeached, much as Ken Starr did relative to President Clinton back about 20 years ago. Well, you didn't, so their strategy had to change. Now they allege that there's plenty of evidence in your report to impeach the president, but the American people just didn't read it. And this hearing today is their last best hope to build up some sort of groundswell across America to impeach President Trump. That's what this is really all about today. Now a few questions: On page 103 of Volume 2 of your report, when discussing the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, you referenced, quote, "the firm that produced Steele reporting," unquote. The name of that firm was Fusion GPS. Is that correct?
MUELLER:
And you're on page 103?
CHABOT:
103 (ph), that's correct, Volume 2. When you talk about the -- the firm that produced the Steele reporting, the name of the firm that produced that was Fusion GPS. Is that correct?
MUELLER:
Yeah, I -- I'm not familiar with -- with that. I (inaudible)
CHABOT:
(inaudible) It's not -- it's not a trick question, right? It was Fusion GPS. Now, Fusion GPS produced the opposition research document wide -- widely known as the Steele dossier, and the owner of Fusion GPA (sic) was someone named Glenn Simpson. Are -- are you familiar with...
MUELLER:
This is outside my purview.
CHABOT:
OK. Glenn Simpson was never mentioned in the 448-page Mueller report, was he?
MUELLER:
Well, as I -- as I say, it's outside my purview and it's being handled in the department by others.
CHABOT:
OK. Well, he -- he was not. In the 448 pages the -- the owner of Fusion GPS that did the Steele dossier that started all this, he -- he's not mentioned in there. Let me move on. At the same time Fusion GPS was working to collect opposition research on Donald Trump from foreign sources on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, it also was representing a Russian-based company, Probison (ph), which had been sanctioned by the U.S. government. Are you aware of that?
MUELLER:
It's outside my purview.
CHABOT:
OK, thank you. One of the key players in the -- I'll go to something different. One of the key players in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was Natalia Veselnitskaya, who you described in your report as a Russian attorney who advocated for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Veselnitskaya had been working with none other than Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS since at least early 2014. Are -- are you aware of that?
MUELLER:
Outside my purview.
CHABOT:
Thank you. But you didn't mention that or her connections to Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS in -- in your report at all. Let -- let me move on. Now, NBC News has reported the following: quote, "Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she first received the supposedly-incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower describing alleged tax evasion and donation to Democrats from none other than Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS owner." You didn't include that in the report, and I assume you (inaudible).
MUELLER:
This is a matter that's being handled by others at the Department of Justice.
CHABOT:
OK, thank you. Now, your report spends 14 pages discussing the June 9th, 2016 Trump Tower meeting. It would be fair to say, would it not, that you spent significant resources investigating that meeting?
MUELLER:
Well, I'd refer you to the -- the report.
CHABOT:
OK. And President Trump wasn't at the meeting...
MUELLER:
No, he was not.
CHABOT:
... that (ph) you're aware of (ph)? Thank you.
Now, in stark contrast to the actions of the Trump campaign, we know that the Clinton campaign did pay Fusion GPS to gather dirt on the Trump campaign, from persons associated with foreign governments. But your report doesn't mention a thing about Fusion GPS in it, and you didn't investigate Fusion GPS' connections to Russia (ph).
So let me just ask you this. Can you see that from neglecting to mention Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS' involvement with the Clinton campaign, to focusing on a brief meeting at the Trump Tower that produced nothing, to ignoring the Clinton campaign's own ties to Fusion GPS, why some view your report as a pretty one-sided attack on the president?
MUELLER:
Well, I'll tell you, this is still outside my purview.
