Russian Oligarch Paid Man Hired By Hillary To Claim Trump Colluded With Russia
Origins of the Russia investigation begin to reveal Clinton's Russia connections
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To even suggest the notion that Russian connections lead back to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign you would be branded a 'conspiracy theorist.'
But as the origins of the Russia investigation into whether Trump colluded to with Russia to steal the 2016 election become more transparent, so does the connection to the former secretary of state.
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska admitted that he also hired Christopher Steele - the former MI5 intelligence agent hired by the Clinton campaign to compile the now discredited anti-Trump “Steele Dossier," according to The Hill.
“It was a research project to support one of the cases against me in London,” Deripaska told Solomon.
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“But my understanding was that lawyers trust him for some reason and he was for quite a time on retainer.”
Deripaska hired Steele in 2012, but the oligarch was unaware he had been working for the FBI.
Notably, the Trump administration levied sanctions against Deripaska, and he is engaged in a legal battle with the State Department over them and his failure to obtain a visa to come to the U.S.
The suggestion that Steele had been paid by Deripaska has been floating around for some time.
Lee Smith published an article at Tablet Magazine in 2018, which included a letter from then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) requesting information regarding Steele’s connections to Russia.
In a follow-up article to the interview, Solomon wrote that Deripaska validated this story he had heard from law enforcement sources a year earlier - that the FBI reached out in September 2106 to get t dirt on the Trump campaign.
Hillary Clinton’s personal attorney had given conflicting reports on when she learned about the former secretary of state using a private email system to conduct official U.S. diplomatic business
— Neon Nettle (@NeonNettle) July 1, 2019
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Deripaska was targeted because he had worked with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
From Solomon:
“I told them straightforward, ‘Look, I am not a friend with him [Manafort]. Apparently not, because I started a court case [against him] six or nine months before … . But since I’m Russian I would be very surprised that anyone from Russia would try to approach him for any reason, and wouldn’t come and ask me my opinion,' ” he said, recounting what he told the FBI agents.
“I told them straightforward, I just don’t believe that he would represent any Russian interest. And knowing what he’s doing on Ukraine for the last, what, seven or eight years.”
Solomon said that Deripaska’s FBI interview was allegedly never priested to Manafort’s attorneys.
Kevin Downing, Manafort’s defense attorney stated the interview, which would be exculpatory evidence, was not presented
“Recent revelations by The Hill prove that the Office of Special Counsel’s (OSC) claim that they had a legitimate basis to include Paul Manafort in an investigation of potential collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government is false,” Downing told Solomon.
“The failure to disclose this information to Manafort, the courts, or the public reaffirms that the OSC did not have a legitimate basis to investigate Manafort, and may prove that the OSC had no legitimate basis to investigate potential collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government.”
Citing sources close to Steele last month, The Times (UK) reported that the ex-Mi5 agent is set to be interviewed in London by Attorney General William Barr's investigators.
The development comes as attention has returned to the dossier authored by Steele -- especially since its more sensational claims were not substantiated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose report found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.
