Former President Donald Trump has now responded to the news that Hillary Clinton was responsible for leaking a story about Trump’s alleged connection to a Russian bank in 2016.
Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager, gave testimony on Friday of last week that Clinton, who was the Democratic nominee for president, signed off on the release of information that allegedly tied Trump to Russia’s Alfa Bank.
This took place just before the 2016 election for the presidency.
Mook’s testimony was a portion of the ongoing trial of the Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. He has been accused of lying to the FBI about information he turned over while he was working for Hillary’s campaign.
“This is one of the greatest political scandals in history. For three years, I had to fight her off, and fight those crooked people off, and you’ll never get your reputation fully back,” Trump told Fox News.
Regarding getting his reputation back, Trump said that if we had real leadership in the Senate, instead of people like Mitch McConnell, they would do something about it.
While Mook was testifying, he said that Clinton’s campaign was not “totally confident” of how legitimate the information they released to the media was, but they decided to contact a reporter so they could “run it down” themselves.
“We thought this was highly suspect, and, if it was true, we wanted the American public to know about it for sure,” Moot said before adding that the Clinton campaign did not think it would become a “silver bullet.”
When the story ran, Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser for Clinton indicated that the story could be the most direct link yet between Trump and Moscow. He then described that computer scientists uncovered a “covert server” that linked the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.
The story was significantly trumpeted by Clinton’s social media forces just a few days before the American public went to the voting booths.
Leak from the top
James Baker, the former FBI general counsel, gave testimony last week that he was “100 percent confident” that when Sussmann came to him with the data on Trump he was not working on behalf of a client. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
These are the very allegations that Trump has called a fabricated “witch hunt.” The FBI has determined that the information shared by Sussmann and the Clinton campaign had no truth to it that would criminally connect Trump to Moscow.
The most important thing uncovered with Mook’s testimony is that the permission from the campaign to leak the information did come from the top, Hillary herself.
Special Counsel John Durham is leading the charge against Clinton’s campaign team and Michael Sussmann. Prosecutors are adamant that even though Sussmann claims he wasn’t working for any client, he in fact was working for Clinton at the time the data was leaked to the media.
They have presented evidence that Sussmann worked with cyber-researchers and opposition-research firm Fusion GPS to produce the claims on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
An FBI agent testified that a bureau analysis was able to quickly reject the information as implausible. Those involved in making the decision to leak the information were Mook, Jake Sullivan (He is now Biden’s national security adviser), and John Podesta. Mook testified clearly that Clinton was asked about the plan and approved it.
Even with Trump’s response, most of the press will ignore this story.
