FBI Attempted to Use ‘Attractive’ Woman for Information From Trump Aide
After two years, over 2,800 subpoenas, and nearly 500 search warrants and witness interviews, Special Counsel Robert Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” While the “Trump-Russia collusion” conspiracy theory that has largely driven the mainstream news cycle for two years is dead, the story behind the investigation is getting juicier by the day.
More details about how U.S. intelligence attempted to infiltrate, or “spy” on, the Trump campaign have come to light, including that the FBI used an “attractive” female undercover investigator in an ultimately fruitless attempt to draw out some relevant “collusion”-related information from Trump aide George Papadopoulos.
“The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia?” The New York Times reported Thursday. “The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.”
The role of the woman, who told Papadopoulos her name was “Azra Turk,” is “one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances,” the Times notes.
Trump has decried the FBI’s investigation into his campaign as “Spygate” — and the name seems more appropriate with each new revelation. The Times admits as much, noting that the “Azra Turk” wrinkle could give Trump and his defenders “ammunition” about their “spying” allegations. (Read more from “FBI Attempted to Use ‘Attractive’ Woman for Information From Trump Aide” HERE)
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