Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has hit out at former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, saying she, rather than President Donald Trump, should be investigated for collusion with Russia.
Limbaugh, a vehement Trump supporter, said evidence of collusion between the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign and Russia over the so-called Steele Dossier was far more compelling than any indication of wrongdoing by the Trump campaign revealed by the Mueller report.
"Hillary Clinton is who tried to rig a presidential election… Hillary Clinton and her pals in the Obama Department of Justice and the FBI, they are the ones who colluded with the Russians. They colluded to produce this entirely bogus Steele Dossier," Limbaugh said on Fox New's The Story with Martha MacCallum.
"Talk about irony. For Hillary Clinton to be talking about impeaching Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton needs to be investigated, she needs to be indicted and she needs to be in jail [with] many of her co-conspirators in this whole sordid affair," the conservative commentator said.
Following the long-awaited publishing of the Mueller report (albeit with redactions), Limbaugh said Republicans were not sufficiently rallying around the president. He also claimed Trump had been vindicated by the special counsel's findings of no obstruction (a contentious assertion), and no collusion with Russian state actors during the 2016 election campaign.
"Unelected people came close to pulling off what is a coup," the Republican media figure said over what he viewed as attempts to derail the Trump presidency during the investigation. He also doubled down on his accusations against the Clinton campaign. "Who's working with Russians? Steele, Hillary's guy! They are working with the Russians… the dossier traces right back to Hillary and her campaign in the DNC," Limbaugh said.
The 35-page dossier, written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, was compiled principally during the 2016 presidential campaign. The memos purport to detail a series of dealings between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to give the Republican ticket the advantage in the election. They also contained salacious details of alleged liaisons between Trump and prostitutes. Mueller concluded many claims in the dossier appeared false, others were impossible to verify.
In October 2017 the Washington Post reported that the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign paid in part for research by Fusion GPS that formed part of the dossier. Following Clinton's electoral defeat, a lawyer representing the 2016 Democratic campaign retained the Washington-based firm Fusion GPS to conduct research into ties between Trump and Russia.
Former FBI director James Comey briefed the incoming president on the dossier, which gained prominence when it was published by Buzzfeed in 2017. According to the Post, the FBI's investigation into Russia's involvement in the Trump campaign was not prompted by the dossier, though the agency did use Steele as a source.
According to The New York Times, the dossier will likely now face numerous inquiries and further scrutiny. Also in 2017, FBI agents interviewed one of Steele's sources, a citizen of a former Soviet Republic, who it is believed may have embellished information from his own sources. The prospect that Russian spymasters used the dossier to spread disinformation has also not been ruled out.
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Callum Paton is a staff writer at Newsweek specializing in North Africa and the Middle East. He has worked freelance ... Read more
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