Longtime Republican political consultant and former Trump campaign advisor Michael Caputo was interrogated Wednesday afternoon by investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Nearly a year after beginning its probe into the possible crime of election collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, Mueller’s team of Democratic sympathizers finally contacted Caputo’s lawyer last month to ask if his client would submit to questioning.
Caputo—who served as a communications advisor for the Trump campaign for two whole months before he resigned in June 2016 over a controversial tweet that cheered the departure of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski—is apparently in Mueller’s crosshairs because he once worked for the Russians. In the 1990s.
On Tuesday, Caputo also took questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee on the same phony matter. After his interrogation, Caputo delivered a harsh rebuke to committee members: “What America needs is an investigation into the investigators. Forget about all the death threats against my family. I want to know who cost us so much money, who crushed our kids, who forced us out of our home, all because you lost an election. I want to know because God Damn you to Hell.”
Caputo’s legal bills already exceed six-figures: He’s liquidated his children’s college funds, lost paying clients, and faces financial ruin. (He was also interviewed last year by the House Intelligence Committee, which just released its report concluding there was no collusion or coordination between Trump’s campaign and the Russians.)
Since becoming a character in the Trump-Russia charade, Caputo and his family have endured online harassment and threats of physical harm. Friends have created an account to help defray his legal costs.
Caputo is just one of many Trump associates targeted by congressional Democrats and Mueller’s henchmen who are in search of a crime—any crime—that will delegitimize the president and destroy everyone associated with him. And unlike the folks ensnared in this debacle, Mueller isn’t spending a dime out of his own pocket to pay his legal team: We are.
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