House and Senate investigators are turning their attention to a Republican operative's hunt for Hillary Clinton's private emails from Russian hackers -- and his possible connections to senior members of the Trump campaign.
The operative, Peter W. Smith, was an Illinois-based Republican activist who during the presidential campaign sought to obtain emails he believed were likely stolen by Russian hackers from Clinton's private email server. He later was found dead in an apparent suicide weeks after telling a reporter about his efforts.
In a private interview earlier this month, a cybersecurity analyst Smith recruited for the effort reiterated to House investigators a comment that he had publicly made: He believed that Smith had ties to members of President Donald Trump's inner circle, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former chief strategist Steve Bannon and White House aide Kellyanne Conway and may have been helping build opposition research for the Trump campaign, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Smith claimed connections to Flynn and senior Trump campaign aides in his effort to recruit cybersecurity experts to help him obtain and verify Clinton's emails, and now the House and Senate intelligence committees are probing whether those connections in fact existed.
The House panel has interviewed Matt Tait, the British security analyst who was recruited by Smith, and Jonathan Safron, a law student who worked as Smith's assistant. The Senate committee has reached out to Eric York, another security expert Smith enlisted in his email hunt, according to a source familiar with the matter.
