While Donald Trump was begging the Russians to dig into Hillary Clinton’s email, and members of Trump’s staff were possibly in collusion with the Russian government to feed Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, the RNC was taking its own extraordinary approach to finding dirt—and amazingly, it also had a Russian connection.
As the general election was taking shape last summer, the Republican National Committee initiated a series of payments to a low-profile firm started by retired Central Intelligence Agency officers that worked closely with an ex-Russian spy.
The payments attracted attention in political and intelligence circles, largely because the Virginia-based firm, Hamilton Trading Group, had particular expertise in Russia, which was emerging as a major campaign issue at the time.
Since when did the whole Republican Party become Moscow on the Potomac? Yes, there was a Russian issue, but the issue was that the Russians intervened in the election to help Donald Trump. Still, it’s clear that the RNC knew where to go to find people who hated Hillary Clinton as much as they did.
The goal of the RNC’s dirt farming investment was to find “evidence” to support one of the prominent pitches made by Trump—that the Clinton Foundation was involved in influence peddling.
The firm produced two dossiers that tried to make the case that Clinton intervened in Bulgaria and Israel, respectively, on behalf of energy companies that had donated to the Clinton Foundation, according to people briefed on the reports.
If those particular charges don’t seem all that familiar, it’s because they—like the thousands of other such charges levied at Hillary—didn’t produce anything that came close to being evidence of wrongdoing. They should have learned from Trump; when dealing with Russian-related spies, go straight for the real thing.
While the RNC funded the flop dossier on Hillary, one of Donald Trump’s Republican opponents seems to have provided the money behind Christopher Steele’s “shower” of Trump–Russia information. Also unlike the RNC dossier, as time goes by, Steele’s information gains more …
What’s interesting about this is that these sources suggest that Kalugin was under investigation back in August – which would pre-date his mention in the Steele dossier. All of this points to the idea that U.S. intelligence was pretty deeply involved in investigating this story – and as the Steele documents indicate – the Russians knew it. Getting Kalugin out of the country would have been a way to ensure that his secrets left with him.
and more credibility.
CBS News has learned that some members of Congress want former British spy Christopher Steele to testify before the House Intelligence Committee investigating whether the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russians during the 2016 election.
Considering everything that’s spilled out connecting the Trump campaign to Russia over the last few weeks hasn’t even required the information from Steele’s dossier, it would be extremely interesting to see how Steele filled in the gaps.