Former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign manager Robby Mook testified that the then-Democratic candidate personally green-lighted disseminating now-debunked claims regarding Donald Trump’s ties to Russian banks on Friday.
Former US President Donald Trump has reacted to bombshell testimony that revealed Hillary Clinton’s personal involvement in spreading allegations that the Trump Organization was connected to Russian banks.
“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 lamented when speaking to Fox News on Saturday. “Where do I get my reputation back?”
He suggested that should the US have had “real leadership, instead of people like Mitch McConnell”, some action would have been taken to prevent his reputation from being damaged so much.
According to Trump, the FBI investigation into his alleged ties with the Kremlin that started in 2016 distracted officials from what “could have been a real danger with Russia.”
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was tasked with looking into the allegations after Trump was elected, ruled that the claims that Trump made use of ties with Moscow during his 2016 presidential campaign lacked credible evidence.
The allegations spun by the media notably claimed that the Trump Organization possessed a channel to communicate with two servers registered to Russia’s Alfa Bank.
On Friday, Clinton’s former presidential campaign manager Robert Mook testified that the then-Democratic candidate personally authorized the release of materials supporting the claim into the press, even though the campaign was not totally confident in the data’s legitimacy. However, Clinton and her campaign officials deemed it appropriate to hand the information to a reporter who would “run it down” to decide whether it was “accurate” or “substantive.”
Mook was summoned by the defense team of Michael Sussman, the legal counsel of Clinton’s 2016 campaign, who was accused of lying to the FBI about the capacity in which he was bringing materials to federal investigators. According to the prosecution, the dissemination of allegations that Trump had ties with Russian banks was a plot orchestrated by the Clinton campaign to undermine Trump’s chances in the 2016 election.
Hillary Clinton has not commented on the matter so far.
Reporting from Sputnik.
