Author: 'Clinton world' threatened publisher

FPI / October 27, 2019

A long-awaited book on the series of high-powered attempts to topple Donald Trump before and after his 2016 election encountered severe turbulence before its launch this week.

Longtime Hillary Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal tried to halt the publication of a new book on the origins of the Trump-Russia hoax in which the twice failed presidential candidate played a significant role.

Blumenthal made legal threats to the publisher of Lee Smith’s book “The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History”, Fox News reported on Oct. 25.

The book, scheduled for release on Oct. 29, is “defamatory,” Blumenthal claimed, the report said, citing a source familiar with the matter.

“Blumenthal tried to stop it from being published,” the source told Fox News, saying the Hillary Clinton confidant sent threatening letters to Smith and publisher Center Street, a division of Hachette Book Group.

The book examines the involvement of Democratic operatives behind the unverified anti-Trump dossier authored by Christopher Steele. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee engaged Perkins Coie to pay Fusion GPS for the information that became the dossier. The dossier was a key component of the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign.

The source told Fox News that “the Clinton machine wanted to intimidate Lee (Smith).”

Smith acknowledged opposition to the book from Clinton loyalists.

“People in the Clinton world are keen for this book not to come out,” Smith said.

Blumenthal was linked to the dossier by former House Intelligence Committee Chair Trey Gowdy.

“I have seen each factual assertion listed in that dossier, and then I’ve seen the FBI’s justification. And when you’re citing newspaper articles as corroboration for a factual assertion that you have made, you don’t need an FBI agent to go do a Google search,” Gowdy said in a Fox News interview.

“And when the name Sidney Blumenthal is included as part of your corroboration, and you’re the world’s leading law enforcement agency, you have a problem.”

Free Press International