Why Is Jill Stein Part Of Senate's Trump-Russia Investigation?

Seems like the probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election is far from being over, as yet another name was added to the list of people the investigating committee has its eye on. Green Party’s Jill Stein was contacted by the Senate Intelligence Committee asking her to “comply with a document search,” Buzzfeed News reported Tuesday.

Dennis Trainor, Jr., who worked with Stein as her communications director and campaign manager from January to August 2015, told Buzzfeed Stein informed him Friday of the committee’s request as when he worked with her, he was the “primary point of contact” for those trying to contact Stein. Trainor added the people who contacted him to get to Stein included producers of RT News, the Russian media company funded by the government, which booked her for several appearances.

“Then I was told by Jill just to wait for further instructions,” he said.

Trainor, who had worked on and for Stein since he formally left her campaign in 2015, added he was informed he would be contacted the following week with the committee’s instructions for implementing the document search.

Even though this is the first time Stein’s name propped up in the investigation, she was under fire in 2015 for attending a dinner in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was removed from the White House earlier this year after he pleaded guilty to having misled FBI about his sanction-led communications with the Russians, according to the Washington Post.

Stein was also mentioned in a letter by the investigating committee, which was sent to Donald Trump Jr. in July, requesting him for copies of “all communications to, from, or copied” between Trump Jr and others, which included the Green Party’s former nominee.

Trainor told Buzzfeed he believes the committee would want to know about the Moscow dinner. Stein said at the time she was not paid for the visit and bore all her expenses herself.

Stein, speaking to the Intercept, said she will cooperate with the committee and denied “substantive” communication with RT News. She added she was not asked to testify before Congress, but would be “happy to do so” if the subject was brought up.

“This smacks of the dangerous underbelly of these investigations. The extent to which they exercise overreach, politicizing, and sensationalism is a danger to democracy, especially in the current climate of all-out war on our First Amendment rights. This is not a time to be attacking the rights of political speech and political association,” she told the Intercept.

Stein on Tuesday released a statement responding to the probe by Senate Intelligence Committee. She added a more comprehensive statement would be released in the near future.

Stein, Green Party’s former presidential nominee, said her defunct 2016 campaign was working to produce the necessary documents and added she was not aware of an official deadline for submitting the information. Stein was the Green Party’s nominee for the president of the United States in 2012 and 2016.

“We are trying to comply as quickly as we possibly can…there are a number of people we have to contact that we’re not in touch with, and they have to search as well,” she said.

North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, the Senate committee’s chairman, when contacted about the matter, said the team was looking for “collusion with the Russians,” adding there is one more campaign they are investigating but chose not to elaborate.