GOP operative made ‘suspicious’ cash withdrawals while attempting to obtain Clinton emails: report

A GOP operative who told reporters that he sought personally to obtain Hillary Clinton‘s personal emails deleted from her private email server made several cash withdrawals around the time of those efforts deemed “suspicious” by his bank.

BuzzFeed News reports that Northern Trust received a subpoena from the FBI on behalf of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation to look into the transactions made by Peter Smith, a Republican activist who told The Wall Street Journal last year that he had independently sought Clinton’s emails. Smith committed suicide shortly after the claim.

{mosads}The bank investigated nine accounts controlled by Smith and reported 88 suspicious withdrawals of cash totaling about $140,000 that occurred between January 2016 and April 2017.

One of those suspicious transactions, according to BuzzFeed, was a $3,000 cash withdrawal days after the election. The bank deemed the withdrawals suspicious because it could not ascertain their purposes and because they occurred during the time of his supposedly independent efforts to obtain Clinton’s emails.

Smith told the Journal last year that his operation was in contact with several hacker groups, including two that he personally suspected of being tied to the Russian government.

The bank has submitted the report of Smith’s transactions to Mueller’s investigation, as well as the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit and the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting an ongoing investigation into Russian election interference.

Several sources added to BuzzFeed that Mueller’s team is investigating whether Smith was in contact with former national security adviser and Trump campaign official Michael Flynn, who left the White House last year and plead guilty to lying to investigators about his foreign contacts.

Smith’s financial transactions, the sources said, are key to determining whether Flynn assisted Smith in his operation to obtain the stolen emails.

Mueller’s campaign has indicted dozens of Russian nationals for an alleged effort to spread stolen emails and spread disinformation during the 2016 campaign, but has not yet charged any Americans with aiding their effort.

Several former members of the Trump campaign have also been indicted for a slew of charges unrelated to 2016 election interference, including former campaign chair Paul Manafort, who faces trial this week.