WHO DID THE “COLLUDING?”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Apr. 24, 2019) — On Wednesday night’s “Hannity,” investigative reporter John Solomon said he “hopes to report” on Thursday evidence that the Obama White House solicited the assistance of Ukraine in connection with the 2016 election.
Solomon is executive vice president of video at “The Hill” and formerly worked for Circa News, which is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group and will soon cease publication.
Even before the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report last week, which found no “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russians as alleged by the FBI, Solomon has said that Ukraine was actively attempting to provide an advantage to Hillary Clinton by releasing information at strategic times on Trump-campaign figures.
One of the individuals apparently targeted by the Ukrainians was Paul Manafort, who served as Trump’s campaign chairman for approximately 100 days and is now serving an 81-month prison term following convictions on tax-evasion and failing to register as a foreign agent, among others.
On March 20, two days before Mueller turned in his report to Attorney General William Barr with the conclusion that no one in the Trump campaign, nor any American, conspired with Russian operatives to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, Solomon reported, “After nearly three years and millions of tax dollars, the Trump-Russia collusion probe is about to be resolved. Emerging in its place is newly unearthed evidence suggesting another foreign effort to influence the 2016 election — this time, in favor of the Democrats.”
While Clinton on Tuesday claimed that Trump should have been indicted as a result of the Mueller probe but for a Justice Department policy maintaining that a sitting president cannot be indicted, Solomon, investigative journalist Sara A. Carter and Fox News Legal Analyst Gregg Jarrett opined that Clinton herself is facing legal exposure due to her use of a private email system while serving as Barack Hussein Obama’s secretary of state between 2009 and 2013 and mishandling of classified information.
As an FBI probe ensued, Clinton’s aides reportedly destroyed electronic devices, saw that Clinton’s server was wiped clean with BleachBit by a private company, and may have lied to FBI agents during interviews for which they were granted immunity for unknown reasons. During a July 2, 2016 FBI interview, two of the aides, Heather Samuelson and Cheryl Mills, were permitted to act as Clinton’s attorney despite their status as witnesses.
Emails from Clinton using the private server to and from Obama, who used an alias, were found during the FBI’s probe, belying Obama’s statement that he knew nothing about the private server until “the media” divulged it in early 2015.
Classified information was found not only on Clinton’s server, but also on a laptop belonging to the estranged husband of one of Clinton’s closest aides, Huma Abedin. On July 5, 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey declared at an unprecedented solo press conference that Clinton lacked the necessary “intent” in the handling of classified information for the FBI to recommend prosecution to the Justice Department.
A transcript of former FBI Counsel James Baker to members of Congress revealed that he believed Clinton’s actions rose to the level of criminal investigation but that he changed his mind under what could have been pressure from his then-supervisor, Comey.
Solomon, Carter and Jarrett have all suggested on previous “Hannity” shows that Comey placed himself in legal jeopardy after admitting in June 2017 to leaking at least one of his memos memorializing his interactions with Donald Trump to “a friend,” who then read its contents to a New York Times reporter. Comey testified that his purpose in doing so was to prompt the hiring of a special counsel, which cost taxpayers approximately $30 million and found no “collusion” or “obstruction of justice” on Trump’s part.
When Trump was still president-elect, Comey told Trump that he was not under investigation and that the Clinton-paid-for Russia “dossier” was “salacious and unverified.” However, more than two months earlier, Comey signed a FISA warrant application on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page claiming that the information included in the warrant, consisting mainly of the dossier, was accurate to the best of the FBI’s knowledge.
The compiler of the dossier, Christopher Steele, admitted in court in Great Britain that the dossier was not verified.
Last week, Solomon reported that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign had its origins in the Obama White House and that it launched much earlier than the FBI has reported, in January 2016 rather than on July 31, 2016.