2020 Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard declined to comment on whether she believes Hillary Clinton played a key role in the origins of the Russia investigation.
Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo asked the question Sunday, spinning off a feud in which Clinton said Gabbard is “a favorite of the Russians” and implied that the congresswoman is a “Russian asset” being groomed to spoil the 2020 election with a third-party run.
“Do you believe she had anything … to do with the FBI and the CIA — that cabal of people — putting Donald Trump in the story of Russia meddling in the United States?” Bartiromo asked on her Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures.
“I can’t speak to any of that,” the Hawaii Democrat said. The congresswoman did, however, slam Clinton for what she and “her proxies and minions have been putting out and trying to smear my character, reputation, and undermine my campaign.”
Much of Bartiromo’s Sunday program has been dedicated to following developments in the Justice Department investigations into the Russia probe. In speaking with Gabbard, she noted that there is “real speculation out there” that Clinton was “at the core” of the Russia investigation origins, because the 2016 presidential candidate made similar comments about Trump being in Russia’s pocket and her campaign helped fund an unverified dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele used by the FBI to obtain warrants to electronically surveil Carter Page, a onetime member of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Opining that “this is something bigger than just about me,” Gabbard said her public quarrel with Clinton “is really about our freedom. Our freedom of speech and being able to make sure that we as the American people can stand up. We can be critical of our leaders. We can disagree, and the reason why we’re seeing this coming from Hillary Clinton and her proxies and kind of this foreign policy establishment that represents her legacy is they know they cannot control me. And that worries them very much.”
While a report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz focusing on possible abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is expected to be released in the coming weeks, there is a great deal of anticipation among Trump’s allies for U.S. Attorney John Durham’s criminal inquiry into the early stages of the Russia investigation. Democrats are concerned that the Justice Department is being used as a tool for “political revenge” against his rivals.
The official start of the FBI counterintelligence investigation, called Crossfire Hurricane, is known to be late July 2016, spurred by a tip from an Australian diplomat that Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos bragged that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton. This effort was later wrapped into former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. His team was unable to find sufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
But some Republican investigators say the counterintelligence inquiry may stretch back earlier and suggest Clinton may have had something to do with it.
“It is likely that this investigation started in late 2015, but for sure by early 2016 by Clinton operatives and likely people at the highest levels of the FBI and the Department of Justice,” House Intelligence ranking member Devin Nunes told Fox News earlier this year. “Let that sink in a second. This investigation was started in late 2015, early 2016 by Clinton operatives and DOJ and FBI officials. So we have had three and a half years of this. Our counterintelligence capabilities in this country were turned against the political party. The American people should be ticked at this.”
