Clinton Campaign Spread Alfa Bank Ruse Throughout Obama Admin to Press Trump-Russia Probe

In addition to the FBI, the 2016 Clinton campaign tried to convince the Obama administration's State Department, Justice Department and Central Intelligence Agency to look into the hoax, and continued pressing the issue even after Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.

The former Clinton campaign lawyer was charged last month with making a false statement to the former general counsel of the FBI when he claimed he was not working "For any client" in bringing to the FBI's attention allegations of a secret channel of communication between computer servers in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia.

After Sussmann's meeting with the FBI in September 2016, the Clinton campaign approached the State Department the following month with the same lead, this time using paid Clinton campaign subcontractor Christopher Steele to feed the rumors.

Fusion GPS, the Washington opposition-research group that worked for the Clinton campaign as a paid agent, and helped gather dirt on Alfa Bank and draft the materials Sussmann would later submit to the FBI, reportedly pressed Slate to publish the story by the account of its author, journalist Franklin Foer.

That month, Ohr advised the FBI that Steele had told him that the Alfa Bank server was a link to the Trump campaign.

In his grand jury indictment, Durham accused Sussmann of also misleading the CIA, which he referred to only as "Agency-2." The special counsel alleges that Sussmann, as he did when meeting with an FBI official, had also failed to inform contacts at Langley that he was representing a client - in the latter case specifically Joffe - tied to the Clinton campaign operation and who had been promised a high-level job in a Clinton administration.

Jones, in turn, reached out to his former colleagues at the FBI, who reopened the investigation into the old allegations of a cyber-link between Trump and Alfa Bank.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/10/28/clinton_campaign_spread_bogus_alfa_bank_story_obama_admin-wide_to_press_trump-russia_probe_800927.html