Clinton Scandal's Fallout Led to Trump-Russia Probe, Journalist Claims

An attempt to address a significant political vulnerability for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign ultimately initiated the Russia collusion probe into then-candidate Donald Trump, according to investigative journalist John Solomon.

Solomon, founder of Just the News, argued in an interview on the podcast "Pod Force One" that polling data presented to Clinton in late 2015 revealed the Uranium One scandal as her most significant perceived weakness among voters. He contends that Clinton's campaign team then devised a strategy to deflect this by associating Trump with Russia.

"The origins of that wash, rinse, repeat cycle are in the November/December 2015 timeframe," Solomon told host Miranda Devine. "It’s around that time… that Hillary Clinton does a poll and it takes all the scandals that have been in the Clinton world."

The poll reportedly indicated that voter concern about the Uranium One deal, which involved Bill Clinton receiving a $500,000 fee for a speech from Moscow while Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, approved Russian acquisition of American uranium, was higher than other potential scandals.

"The one they’re most concerned about is Uranium One and the Clinton family’s relationship with Russia," Solomon stated. "But the Clintons find in this poll… that that scandal was going to be the largest impediment to her election."

Solomon asserts that following this discovery, the campaign decided to "hang a Russian shingle on Donald Trump’s campaign house." He pointed to the hiring of Fusion GPS by Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Clinton campaign, in April 2016 to conduct opposition research on Trump, which later involved former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

This research led to the Steele dossier, which Solomon described as a "now-debunked" document. In September 2016, former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann allegedly presented the FBI with computer data, since discredited, suggesting a link between Trump and the Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank.

"They need to project their sins on Donald Trump, or whoever the Republican nominee is going to be," Solomon said, characterizing the Russia collusion narrative as an effort to "hang a fake Russian scandal on the Republicans to neutralize Hillary Clinton’s campaign."

Solomon further claimed that the Obama administration, including President Barack Obama, was aware of the Clinton campaign's strategy to create a "fake scandal" against Trump. "They know about it. Even briefed the President of the United States, Barack Obama, at the time, and nobody stops it," he said.

He added that the FBI's subsequent investigation into the matter, which he referred to as "Russia delusion," consumed a significant portion of the country's political attention for over two and a half years.