Michael Caputo, a 2016 Trump campaign adviser who was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators last week, suggested Monday that the entire Russia investigation is a vindictive operation designed to break members of the Trump team financially. “It’s about ruining every single one of us,” Caputo told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer.
Caputo, who has held various Republican positions on Capitol Hill, told Hemmer it took him a little while to understand the “little two-step” Democrats and their allies in the media do.
“Reporters work very closely with the left on the Hill and, for example, in the Obama administration, and these groups are organized and funded by high-dollar Democratic donors,” he explained.
He added that reporters “get addicted” to the regular briefings they get from left-wing outfits like Fusion GPS and want the pipeline of disinformation to continue. That’s a problem, Caputo explained, because then they’re afraid to ever report on the oppo-research firm negatively.
“If you write a bad story about Glenn Simpson, it’s like somebody cut off your drugs,” he said.
Caputo has said in numerous interviews that he became a target of left-wing harassment after Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) mentioned his and his wife’s names during a House Intelligence Committee hearing in March of 2017.
During the hearing, Speier characterized him as “Putin’s image-consultant,” and Caputo says his family has been besieged with threats ever since, including an individual who called him twice threatening to burn his house down with his wife and children inside. He told reporters in July of 2017 that that kind of “loose and irresponsible rhetoric” would get people killed.
Caputo explained that he and his family aren’t in any legal peril because he has only been named a “witness” in the investigation, rather than a “subject” or “target.”
“If they bring me back, it’s only … to punish me with more legal fees,” said Caputo, going on to explain why he’s no longer fearful: “Now that the Trump supporters around the country have gone to my GoFundMe page and been so generous, I’m not afraid of them anymore,” he said. [Emphasis added]
Caputo pointed out that there are lots of other people caught up in the investigation who are afraid to talk because they are afraid they’ll get hauled in for another interview with Mueller’s team of Democrat attack dogs. “There are another dozen or more people, middle-class families, whose dad or mom has been dragged into this and they’re racking up legal fees,” he explained.
“If you’re not going to be investigated, if you’re not going to be indicted, if you’re not going to jail, they’re going to break you financially because it’s about ruining every single one of us,” he said. [Emphasis added]
Caputo told Hemmer that Mueller’s team is still very much invested in the Russia collusion narrative, but none of the collusion questions he was asked last week had to do with the president.
“They don’t have anything new,” he said. “What they thought might be new is not even factual.” Caputo was with the Trump campaign from November of 2015 to June of 2016.
“There is no Russian collusion on the Trump campaign, there never was, and I don’t think the Mueller team has anything,” he added.
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