Special counsel Robert Mueller asked for information about Nigel Farage, the former leader of the far-right United Kingdom Independence Party, according to one of the people who had been questioned by Mueller.
Mueller's team is currently investigating whether the Trump campaign collaborated with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and Farage is one of President Donald Trump's staunchest supporters abroad. He was also one of the main voices who advocated for the U.K. to leave the European Union, and many analysts said that Russia backed Farage's campaign for Britain to cut ties with Brussels. The U.K. is currently investigating whether Russia attempted to influence the outcome of the June 2016 referendum, in which a slim majority of British citizens voted to leave the EU.
Mueller's investigation appears to be currently focused on whether Trump's allies had ties to WikiLeaks, the organization responsible for publicly releasing thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by Russian hackers. WikiLeaks has been accused of publishing the stolen emails at the behest of Russia in an attempt to hurt the Democrats and help Trump's campaign.
In March 2017, the former UKIP leader visited Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, in his current hideout in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
The news about Mueller requesting information about Farage was revealed by Jerome Corsi, a conservative author and commentator for the website InfoWars, which is well known for promoting outlandish conspiracy theories. Mueller's team has questioned Corsi and the conservative commentator recently claimed that he was about to be indicted by the special counsel. A spokesman for Farage told The Guardian that Corsi's comments about Mueller's alleged interest in the former UKIP leader were nothing but gossip.
Corsi, a close associate of Republican strategist and Trump ally Roger Stone, told The Guardian that Mueller's team had also asked for information about the American academic Ted Malloch, who is based in the U.K. and is friends with Farage. Malloch has already been questioned by Mueller's team on several occasions and confirmed to the media that the investigators had asked him about his ties to WikiLeaks and to Stone.
For months, many analysts said they suspected that Stone would be the next person indicted by Mueller. During Trump's campaign for president, Stone bragged about his communication with Assange and suggested that he knew WikiLeaks had the Democratic National Committee's stolen emails before they were released publicly.
Aside from his alleged interest in Farage, Mueller's team was reportedly investigating Arron Banks, a British businessman who had donated millions to the campaign in favor of Britain's exit from the EU. During the height of the "Leave" campaign, Banks and Farage were introduced by Jim Mellon, a British millionaire.
British investigators revealed that they suspected that Banks did not invest his own money into the Leave campaign, and many analysts said they believed the money was funneled into the campaign by Russians connected to Banks.
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Cristina Maza is an award-winning journalist who has reported from countries such as Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, India, Lithuania, Serbia, and Turkey. ... Read more
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