GOP Operative Who Sought Clinton’s Emails Cited Flynn, Bannon, Conway in Recruiting Document

“It was Immediately Apparent Smith was Well Connected” 

A longtime GOP opposition researcher who sought Hillary Clinton’s emails from hackers prior to the 2016 presidential election reportedly implied a connection to Michael Flynn and cited multiple White House officials in a recruiting document. 

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Peter W. Smith, who died last month after speaking with the newspaper, assembled a team of lawyers, tech experts and Russian-speaking investigators to obtain 33,000 of Clinton’s emails that he believed had been stolen by Russian hackers.

Amidst his investigation, Smith reportedly implied that he was affiliated with Donald Trump’s fired and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and in his recruitment efforts, named multiple Trump campaign officials who now serve in the White House.

According to the WSJ:

Officials identified in the document include Steve Bannon, now chief strategist for President Donald Trump; Kellyanne Conway, former campaign manager and now White House counselor; Sam Clovis, a policy adviser to the Trump campaign and now a senior adviser at the Agriculture Department; and retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who was a campaign adviser and briefly was national security adviser in the Trump administration.

Smith told the newspaper that his investigation found that five hacking groups claimed to have Clinton’s emails, two of which he had determined were Russian. Matt Tait, CEO and founder of UK-based Capital Alpha Security, was cited as a source in the article—and has since further spoken out on the matter.

Tait detailed his experience with Smith for Lawfare in “The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians,” leaving behind his anonymity “in the spirit of Benjamin Wittes’s account of his interactions with James Comey immediately following the New York Times story for which he acted as a source.”

“Over the course of our conversations, one thing struck me as particularly disturbing,” Tait wrote. “I expressed my view that the hack had likely been orchestrated by Russia and the Kremlin was using the stolen documents as part of an influence campaign against the United States.”

“Smith, however, didn’t seem to care,” he continued. “From his perspective it didn’t matter who had taken the emails, or their motives for doing so. He never expressed to me any discomfort with the possibility that the emails he was seeking were potentially from a Russian front, a likelihood he was happy to acknowledge. If they were genuine, they would hurt Clinton’s chances, and therefore help Trump.”

Tait further described Smith’s characterization of his interactions with Michael Flynn, saying that it wasn’t clear how independent his operation was from Flynn or the Trump campaign, but that it was “immediately apparent Smith was both well connected within the top echelons of the campaign and he seemed to know both Lt. Gen. Flynn and his son well.” 

Smith’s operation reportedly advised hackers to give the emails they claimed to have to WikiLeaks. The emails in question were not published and as The Hill pointed out, WikiLeaks has not claimed to possess them. 

Former FBI Director James Comey said last year that Hillary Clinton’s private email server did not appear to have been hacked. Donald Trump has frequently praised information released by WikiLeaks.

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