How did this Palm Beach Gardens man end up in the Mueller report?

Jason Fishbein explains the strange twist of events that included Wikileaks, a password, Donald Trump Jr., and being interviewed by Robert Mueller's team.

"I think they thought I was a bigger player in this drama," said Fishbein, who described the four or five members of the Mueller team who interviewed him as "very professional, very respectful."

"But mostly they seemed to be focused on WikiLeaks communications, namely whether I had notice of the WikiLeaks releases in 2016," said Fishbein. He said he never had advance word of the group's releases. Prosecutors say the documents were stolen by a pair of Russian-front organizations called Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks and passed on to WikiLeaks.

Finding a password: From WikiLeaks to Donald Trump Jr.

In the end, Fishbein ended up in the Mueller report for an incident that he said investigators barely mentioned when interviewing him.

Page 59 of the Mueller report describes "an individual named Jason Fishbein" giving WikiLeaks the password to a not-yet-launched website that was critical of Trump and his purported Russia ties. Promoters of the PutinTrump.org site in September 2016 invited journalists to send an email to obtain a password to preview the site before its launch. Fishbein said he got the password after it was posted in an internet chat room that included political operatives and writers for conservative publications.

Fishbein said he thought WikiLeaks would find the site interesting because it showed "the Trump-Russia narrative was a political attack … Frankly I didn't believe it." He said he sent the password to WikiLeaks via a Twitter direct message.

"What I didn't know was that they turned around and passed it to Don Jr.," Fishbein said.

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