By Jerry Dunleavy
Article Source
Hillary Clinton personally signed off on sharing since-debunked Trump-Russia allegations related to Alfa-Bank with the media during the 2016 election, according to her campaign manager.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified Friday he was “briefed about the Alfa-Bank issue first” by Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias in the summer of 2016. He said the campaign leadership quickly had a meeting about whether to share the information with the media, which they decided to do. Also present in the meeting were campaign chairman John Podesta, communications director Jennifer Palmieri, and policy adviser Jake Sullivan (who is now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser), according to Mook.
He said that “we discussed it and then made that decision” and “we did” decide to share the claims with a reporter. When asked by a prosecutor on special counsel John Durham’s team about the highest level of approval for pushing the Alfa-Bank claims to the press, Mook replied that “John and I were involved,” but “I discussed it with Hillary as well” after the campaign team had discussed it. Mook said that he framed it to Clinton as: “Hey, you know, we have this, and we want to share it with a reporter.” Mook added, “She agreed to that.”