Hillary Clinton on Wednesday joked that China could hack President Trump’s tax returns and it would not be considered conspiracy under the definition established in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
“Imagine, Rachel, that you had one of the Democratic nominees for 2020 on your show and that person said, ‘You know, the only other adversary of ours who is anywhere near as good as the Russians is China,’ ” the former secretary of State said during an interview with MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow.”
{mosads}“ ‘So why should Russia have all the fun? And since Russia is clearly backing the Republicans, why don’t we ask China to back us?’ ” Clinton continued as the hypothetical candidate. ” ‘And not only that, China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns? I’m sure our media would richly reward you.’ ”
Clinton said that, according to the Mueller report, that would not be conspiracy because it’s done “right out in the open.”
Clinton said that there would apparently be “nothing wrong” with a foreign adversary extracting Trump’s financial documents and passing them off to “whatever the new Wikileaks happens to be.”
Clinton mentioned how current FBI director Christopher Wray said on Friday that Russia’s election interference efforts are expected to continue in 2020.
“Just saying that shows just how absurd the situation we find ourselves in is,” Clinton said of her scenario.
Mueller’s redacted report released last month detailed how Russian military officers targeted Clinton with hacking attempts within hours of then-candidate Trump suggesting Moscow find her emails.
“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,” Trump said in 2016 during a campaign stop.
He later backtracked and said his comment was meant to be sarcastic.
According to the Mueller report, Russia’s military intelligence agency targeted Clinton’s personal office for the first time “five hours after Trump’s statement.”
Russian officers sent malicious links to 15 email accounts linked to the domain of Clinton’s personal office, and the “investigation did not find evidence of earlier GRU attempts to compromise accounts hosted on this domain,” according to the report.
Mueller’s 22-month investigation found that Russia sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, but that the Trump campaign did not coordinate with Moscow as part of its election interference efforts.