Vladimir Putin claims that Bill Browder slipped 1.5 billion dollars out of Russia without paying taxes on it and with help from US Intelligence moved it to the United States where $400 million found it’s way into the Hillary campaign.
But, he offered no proof and although I don’t think Hillary is above accepting illegal cash, I find it almost impossible to believe that you could possibly launder that much cash into a political campaign without getting noticed. Since no donation over 200 dollars needs to be recorded as to who gave the money and that loophole can be used to contribute more than is legally allowed. $400 million is literally impossible to cover.
The Washington Post reported:
Browder appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he testified that Prevezon “hired Glenn Simpson of the firm Fusion GPS to conduct a smear campaign against me and Sergei Magnitsky. . . . He contacted a number of major newspapers and other publications to spread false information that Sergei Magnitsky was not murdered, was not a whistleblower and was instead a criminal.” As a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Simpson had extensive contacts with his former media colleagues he could use to spread anti-Magnitsky propaganda.
Browder alleged that “Glenn Simpson was trying, on behalf of the Putin regime, to cover up the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, knowingly lying to journalists in Washington to write false stories. . . . Natalia Veselnitskaya hired him to lie, and Natalia Veselnitskaya was working for Putin. So it’s pretty clear to me that this was a major Putin operation.” (In a statement, Fusion GPS counsel Joshua Levy strongly denied Browder’s claims: “William Browder has an ax to grind with Fusion GPS. His retaliatory attacks on the company are not supported by a shred of evidence. His latest claim that Fusion GPS was hired by the Kremlin to cover up the murder of Sergei Magnitsky — five years after it occurred — is untrue and defamatory. His death was a tragedy, and no one at Fusion GPS has ever said anything to the contrary.”)
Earlier this year, Browder filed a complaint with the Justice Department accusing Fusion GPS and others involved in the anti-Magnitsky campaign of unlawfully lobbying on behalf of Russian interests in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In a letter to the department, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote, “The issue is of particular concern to the Committee given that when Fusion GPS reportedly was acting as an unregistered agent of Russian interests, it appears to have been simultaneously overseeing the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier of allegations of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians.”
Here’s the bottom line: We have congressional testimony, under oath, that Clinton hired the same firm to smear Trump that Putin reportedly used to smear Magnitsky. Moreover, we also know that the Fusion GPS dossier relied on senior Russian government officials for much of the dirt it compiled, including “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure” and a “former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin.” Together, those are bombshell revelations.
No doubt Putin will stick by his guns but unless he has some form of physical proof and he releases it, this looks very much like propaganda. We should keep an open mind but the ball is in Putin’s court and it’s up to him to put up or shut up.