Tucker Carlson’s Big Scoop: Mueller Focus Turns To Podesta, Manafort Collusion With Russia

While the rest of the mainstream media was falling over itself to breathlessly report on a sitting US Senator deciding not to run because he faced insurmountable odds within his own party to even eke out a nomination in his next election, Tucker Carlson was engaging in some good old fashioned journalism at Fox News and he seems to have uncovered one heck of a bombshell.

Carlson opened his program with the exclusive report that hyperbolic press reports suggesting that Robert Mueller is gathering impeachment-level evidence implicating President Trump in a collusion scheme with the Russian government are misguided and exaggerated.

“The source we spoke to has been interviewed extensively by Robert Mueller’s independent investigation,” Carlson said. “In press accounts, Mueller’s investigation is still framed as a hunt for collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.”

“Our source says investigators are very interested in Manafort’s behavior while he ran the Trump campaign, but otherwise that description is mostly bogus,” the Fox host said.

According to Carlson’s source, the actual collusion with the Russian government in Mueller’s crosshairs appears to be between Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, Clinton crony and DC power-lobbyist Tony Podesta (his brother) and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The web of alleged influence peddling dates back to the middle of the Obama Administration.

While media reports describe former “Black, Manafort & Stone” principal Paul Manafort as Trump’s main tie to the investigation, the source said it is Manafort’s role as a liaison between Russia and the Podesta Group that is drawing the scrutiny.

The “vehicle” Manafort worked for was what Carlson called a “sham” company with a headquarters listed in Belgium but whose contact information was linked to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. Manafort was, at the time, representing Russian business and political interests during the Obama era. The source said the Podesta Group was in regular contact with Manafort while Hillary Clinton was America’s chief diplomat.

In 2013, the group hired away one of Clinton’s deputies, David Adams, effectively establishing contact between the Washington firm and Clinton’s office in Foggy Bottom, D.C. The source said Tony Podesta spoke regularly with Clinton and was the one who personally hired Adams.

During this time, the Uranium One deal was being facilitated by the White House.

According to Carlson, “Manafort was clear that Russia wanted to cultivate ties to Hillary” because she appeared to be the presumptive 45th president.

Carlson said his source detailed the ties between the Podesta Group and the Obama Administration with Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, as the main focus of their desires:

“Sometimes, our source told us, ties between the Podesta Group and the Clintons were explicit. Tony Podesta spoke regularly to Hillary Clinton while she ran the State Department. Our source remembers Podesta’s assistant announcing that Secretary Clinton is on the line.’”

“At one point, in either 2013 or early 2014, our source says a meeting was held that included both Tony Podesta and a representative of the Clinton Foundation. The explicit subject of that meeting: How to assist Uranium One, the Russian-owned company which controls 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity, and whose board members gave more than $100 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. As our source put it, ‘Tony Podesta was basically part of the Clinton Foundation.’”

Carlson described his source as “a former senior employee of the Podesta Group,” and has been thus-far reliable. The source met with Carlson and his staff at the Fox News DC offices Tuesday. Carlson said he has checked out some of the information given by the source, and it has thus far proved accurate.

This report coupled with the news that the Clinton campaign (under the supervision of John Podesta) financed the bogus “Russian Dossier” that was the source of many of the “Trump Colluded with Russia” stories over the past 12 months paints a very different picture of the tangled web of opposition research, influence peddling and Russian tampering over the past several years.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.