Chuck Ross • September 21, 2021 3:55 pm
Senate Democrats tapped a political operative bankrolled by George Soros to investigate debunked allegations that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia, claims that are now at the center of an indictment in Special Counsel John Durham's investigation.
According to court filings, a staffer for Sen. Jack Reed (D., R.I.) enlisted Daniel Jones—a former FBI agent who has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Soros—to analyze computer data that purportedly connected Trump's real estate company with the Russian oligarch-owned Alfa Bank. Democrats pushed the allegation and others about Trump and Russia to build a narrative that Trump's campaign colluded with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election. The FBI disproved the Alfa Bank claim, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of a larger Trump-Russia conspiracy.
The Alfa Bank allegation has resurfaced in the wake of Durham's indictment of Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity attorney who represented the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. A federal grand jury indicted Sussmann on Sept. 16 on charges that he lied to the FBI about his efforts to investigate the purported Alfa-Trump links. Sussmann provided research to the FBI's general counsel on Sept. 19, 2016, which he claimed showed that Alfa Bank's computer servers had secret communications with the Trump Organization. Durham was appointed in April 2019 to investigate whether any U.S. officials improperly surveilled the Trump campaign.
Jones, a former FBI agent, has reportedly been called to testify before Durham's grand jury in Washington. Best known as the Senate Intelligence Committee staffer who investigated CIA torture of suspected terrorists, Jones formed a nonprofit research group in January 2017 to investigate Trump's alleged ties to Russia.
George Soros and other wealthy progressives have funded Jones's operation. Tax filings show that Soros gave $1.5 million to Jones's group, the Democracy Integrity Project, in 2017 and 2018. Television producer Norman Lear has also contributed to a related group formed by Jones called Advance Democracy, Inc. Jones worked closely with opposition research firm Fusion GPS and former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled a largely discredited dossier accusing Trump of colluding with Russia. Jones's organizations paid Fusion GPS more than $5 million and Steele more than $1 million for research in 2017 and 2018, according to tax filings.
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/senate-dems-tapped-soros-funded-operative-to-research-trump-russia-conspiracy/