Seems Republican operative Peter Smith was in touch with both the Trump campaign the Russian hackers....
Peter Smith was working to get the "Clinton deleted emails" from Russian hackers, and serve as an intermediatiary between the Russian hackers and the Trump campaign - naming Flynn, Bannon, and Conway as contacts.
A longtime Republican activist who led an operation hoping to obtain Hillary Clinton emails from hackers listed senior members of the Drumpf campaign, including some who now serve as top aides in the White House, in a recruitment document for his effort.
The activist, Peter W. Smith, named the officials in a section of the document marked ?Drumpf Campaign.? The document was dated Sept. 7, 2016. That was around the time Mr. Smith said he started his search for 33,000 emails Mrs. Clinton deleted from the private server she used for official business while secretary of state?
As reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Smith and people he recruited to his effort theorized the deleted emails might have been stolen by hackers and might contain matters that were politically damaging. He and his associates said they were in touch with several groups of hackers, including two from Russia they suspected were tied to the Moscow government, in a bid to find any stolen emails and potentially hurt Mrs. Clinton?s prospects.
Mr. Smith?s purpose in listing the officials isn?t clear. There is no indication in the document that he sought or received any coordination from the campaign officials or the campaign in general?
Officials identified in the document include Steve Bannon, now chief strategist for President Donald Drumpf; Kellyanne Conway, former campaign manager and now White House counselor; Sam Clovis, a policy adviser to the Trump campaign and now a senior adviser at the Agriculture Department; and retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who was a campaign adviser and briefly was national security adviser in the Trump administration?
The names of the other campaign officials haven?t surfaced in connection with Mr. Smith?s work except in the document, which the Journal reviewed on Friday.
The document section that lists campaign officials is followed by the words, ?in coordination to the extent permitted as an independent expenditure.??a possible reference to campaign strictures imposed by campaign finance and disclosure laws.
The document was included in a package of opposition research Mr. Smith shared through an encrypted email with Matt Tait, a cybersecurity expert who once worked for British intelligence. Mr. Tait said he was approached last summer by Mr. Smith, who wanted him to help verify whether emails offered to the group by hackers came from Mrs. Clinton?s private serve.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-act...als-1498872923