Russia Hacked Hillary Clinton Computer Hours After Trump Request—Attorney

Russia hacked into Hillary Clinton‘s computer about five hours after Donald Trump asked them for her emails, a lawyer involved in the Mueller investigation has said.

Aaron Zebley revealed that Trump couldn’t be prosecuted because he made his request publicly and did not directly conspire with the Russian government.

Zebley was speaking on Friday to former federal prosecutor, Preet Bharara, on the Stay Tuned With Preet podcast.

He appeared on the podcast with attorney Andrew Goldstein. Both of them worked on the Mueller investigation into alleged links between Trump and the Russian government and have published a new book: Interference: The Inside Story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller Investigation.

Zebley said that there was a “call and response” going on between Trump and the Russians but, legally, it could not be considered a conspiracy.

Zebley was referring to a July 27, 2016, press conference in Florida, in which Trump publicly asked Russia to supply Clinton emails.

“In July 2016, then-candidate Trump gives a speech and he calls out and he basically says: ‘Hey Russia, if you’re listening, wouldn’t it be great if you found these emails that belong to Hillary Clinton?’ And then about five hours later, for the first time ever, the Russians attempted to break into Hillary Clinton’s office email account,” Zebley said.

“And so what we describe that as is call and response. We distinguish that still from conspiracy, which requires some kind of agreement, either explicit or tacit. And we just, in that conduct, we didn’t see an actual agreement. So we labeled that, potentially call and response.”

At the Florida press conference on July 27, 2016, Trump said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

The “30,000 emails” referred to emails that Clinton had sent from her personal email while she was President Obama’s Secretary of State and which she should have sent through her official Secretary of State email account.

In 2018, Prosecutor Robert Mueller indicted 12 alleged members of Russia’s Unit 26165, which was accused of hacking into U.S. politicians’ emails in an attempt to disrupt the U.S. elections.

They are accused of using a “phishing” technique to capture thousands of Clinton’s emails, which it then allegedly placed online.

The indictment notes that their first attempt was on July 27, 2016.

The emails became a major source of attack for Trump against Clinton.

Newsweek sought email comment from Donald Trump’s attorney and from Hillary Clinton

The allegations that the Trump campaign worked with Russia to help them win the 2016 election was the subject of a sprawling investigation by then special counsel Robert Mueller, in which Zabley and Goldstein worked as attorneys.

The long-awaited Mueller report ruled that there was no evidence that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

However, the report did not fully exonerate Trump as Mueller found several examples of the then president allegedly attempting to commit obstruction of justice and hinder the investigation.

Zebley told Bharara that he was surprised by the level of hate they received while investigating Trump’s alleged connections to Russia.

“Frankly, I was ultimately quite surprised at the level of incoming that we took. At the beginning of the investigation, the way I thought about it was, we are examining a foreign adversary’s interference in an election and it was the Russians.”

“How could not the whole country be at our back for that kind of investigation? So I actually came into the investigation with a little bit of that perspective. Of course, the country wants to get to the bottom of this. But over time, that was not necessarily always the way that we were greeted,” Zabley said.