Hillary Clinton approved an effort to leak allegations that Donald Trump was colluding with Russia via Alfa Bank, according to her 2016 presidential campaign manager, Robby Mook, who testified Friday in federal court in Washington, DC.
The Alfa Bank allegations were later disproven, as was the broader “Russia collusion” conspiracy theory that they supported.
Mook is a witness in the trial of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, whom Special Counsel John H. Durham charged with lying to the FBI by allegedly saying he was not working for a client when he passed along the Alfa Bank allegations. Much of the trial has consisted of arguing that Sussmann was, in fact, working for the Clinton campaign.
Mook testified that he was informed of the Alfa Bank allegations by Democrat lawyer Marc Elias, who was then with the Perkins Coie law firm.
Elias hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS on behalf of the campaign and the Democratic National Committee, though the funding was obscured (for which both the DNC and the campaign were recently fined by the Federal Elections Commission). Fusion GPS compiled the fraudulent Russia “dossier” with salacious claims against Trump.
Mook testified that he did not know if Clinton approved of the idea that Sussmann would go to the FBI. Earlier this week, prosecutors argued that Sussmann hoped to use the fact of an FBI investigation to launch an “October surprise” against Trump. While others testified that the Clinton campaign did not fully trust the FBI, John Haughey of The Epoch Times noted that Mook said the Clinton campaign preferred to go to the media rather than the FBI because they were not sure that the allegations about Alfa Bank were true, and they believed a reporter would do further investigation before publishing them.
As the New York Post notes, Mook also discussed the Alfa Bank allegations with Clinton aide Jake Sullivan. Sullivan played a key role in misleading reporters and Congress about “Russia collusion,” telling the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had colluded with Russia. Sullivan now has Flynn’s former position.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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