Mueller interviews cyber expert who claimed he was ‘recruited to collude’ with Russians: report

Special counsel Robert Mueller has interviewed a cybersecurity expert who claims he was “recruited to collude with the Russians” in the 2016 election, Business Insider reported Tuesday.

Matt Tait, a former information security specialist for Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters was interviewed weeks ago by Mueller, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

Tait claimed that he was recruited by a longtime GOP operative tied to the Trump campaign, Peter W. Smith, to obtain emails deleted from Hillary Clinton‘s private email server that they believed were hacked by the Russians.

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Smith reportedly told people during his investigation that he was affiliated with President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

In an article titled “The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians,” Tait told Lawfareblog.com in June that Smith approached him during the campaign for help determining the veracity of emails Smith said he received from “dark web hackers.”

“Smith implied that he was a well-connected Republican political operative,” Tait wrote. He added that Smith believed “Clinton’s private email server had been hacked—in his view almost certainly both by the Russian government and likely by multiple other hackers too.”

“From [Smith’s] perspective it didn’t matter who had taken the emails, or their motives for doing so,” Taid continued. “He never expressed to me any discomfort with the possibility that the emails he was seeking were potentially from a Russian front, a likelihood he was happy to acknowledge.”

“We knew the people who had these were probably around the Russian government,” Smith told The Wall Street Journal in May.

Smith killed himself days after speaking to Journal about his efforts.

The House Intelligence Committee interviewed Tait as part of its investigation earlier this month, CNN reported.