he was just doing his job as a diplomat at the time
Donald Trump wants investigation into Australia's role in 'Russian hoax'
This is the first time the US president has publicly named Australia while discussing the FBI inquiry into his election campaign
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/25/donald-trump-wants-investigation-into-australias-role-in-russian-hoax?CMP=share_btn_tw
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Trump’s former campaign aide George Papadopoulos has claimed that Australia’s former high commissioner to the UK, Alexander Downer, spied on him during a meeting at a London bar in May 2016.
Downer has rejected this, but said that during the meeting Papadopoulos had told him Russia had damaging material on Trump’s presidential rival, Hillary Clinton.
In an interview with the ABC’s Matt Bevan, Downer said Papadopoulos told him during the meeting he was confident Trump would win the election because the Russians had some information on Clinton which could be damaging to her if released. Downer then passed this information on to Canberra.
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After being forwarded to Canberra the information was passed on to US intelligence services and the FBI.
US special counsel Bob Mueller, in his report on the links between the Trump campaign and Russia, said the Papadopoulos-Downer meeting was what prompted the FBI to open its inquiry on 31 July 2016.
“This sort of idea that there is a kind of a Asis-Asio-MI6-MI5-FBI-CIA-Ukrainian government conspiracy to bring down the Trump administration, that this is treason, that I should be in Guantanamo Bay... I mean it’s a little bit sad that people take that kind of thought seriously,” Downer told the ABC.
He added that he was just doing his job as a diplomat at the time.
“If people tell me things like that, which I think are damaging to western security interests ... expect me, Alexander Downer, former for minister of Australia, to be supporting western interests against Russian intelligence. You can count on me.”
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