The hits just keep coming. Americans have got be wondering how much we should trust the FBI to conduct an honest investigation into the hacking of Hillary’s emails. Since when did our intelligence community become part of the partisan DC swamp? President Trump couldn’t have been more accurate when he insisted one of the first things that needed to do when he got to DC was to #DrainTheSwamp…
A Russian man wanted by the Justice Department on charges connected to hacking U.S. companies now claims the FBIoffered him immunity in exchange for accepting responsibility for cyberattacks targeting former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Yevgeny Nikulin, the alleged hacker, laid the claim to Russian media Thursday in a letter sent from a Czech Republic prison cell amid an international extradition battle currently underway between Washington and Moscow.
FBI agents promised Mr. Nikulin money, American citizenship and a free apartment for taking the fall over hacking Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, he alleged in a letter published Thursday by Nastoyashchoe Vremya, a Russian-language website.
“He was offered to falsely testify that he was cooperating in the attack on the Democratic Party,” defense attorney Martin Sadilek said Thursday, the Associated Press reported.
The FBI declined to comment.
Mr. Nikulin was apprehended in Prague last October pursuant to an internal arrest warrant and was subsequently charged by a federal grand jury in California with hacking LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring, three San Francisco-based internet companies. He’s wanted in both the U.S. and Russia, however, and has remained for months in Czech custody as authorities review requests from both countries.
FBI agents interviewed Mr. Nikulin twice since his arrest, he wrote, and each time asked him to confess to hacking American political targets. Mr. Nikulin said he refused their initial request last November, then received a second offer three months later.
FBI agents asked Mr. Nikulin to admit hacking Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, Democratic Party computers and American polling stations “on Putin’s orders,” he wrote. In exchange, he alleges, the FBI said he’d be extradited to the U.S. but ultimately given money, citizenship and a free apartment. –Washington Times
