Even as federal investigators continue to look into alleged collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, recently released FBI documents detail how Russian spies worked to get close to Hillary Clinton.
The Hill documents efforts by Russian agents to curry favor with both Hillary and Bill Clinton after Hillary Clinton became President Barack Obama’s secretary of state in 2009.
In one instance, a woman posing as an American accountant used a false identity to get hired by a major Democratic donor in hopes of getting close to Clinton and the State Department. She was arrested and deported as she moved closer getting inside State, the Hill reports.
In another instance, a Kremlin-linked bank paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for a 2010 speech just weeks after Hillary Clinton helped arrange for American executives to travel to Moscow to support Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to build a Russian “Silicon Valley.”
There’s no indication in the FBI files that agents believe the Clintons did anything illegal, the Hill reports.
But “There is not one shred of doubt from the evidence that we had that the Russians had set their sights on Hillary Clinton’s circle,” an FBI source told the Washington publication, “because she was the quarterback of the Obama-Russian reset strategy and the assumed successor to Obama as president.”
Bristow Marchant: 803-771-8405, @BristowatHome, @BuzzAtTheState