Political | Process

He said the campaign leadership quickly had a meeting about whether to share the information with the media, which they decided to do. Also present in the meeting were campaign chairman John Podesta, communications director Jennifer Palmieri, and policy adviser Jake Sullivan (who is now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser), according to Mook.

He said that “we discussed it and then made that decision” and “we did” decide to share the claims with a reporter. When asked by a prosecutor on special counsel John Durham’s team about the highest level of approval for pushing the Alfa-Bank claims to the press, Mook replied that “John and I were involved,” but “I discussed it with Hillary as well” after the campaign team had discussed it.

Mook said that he framed it to Clinton as: “Hey, you know, we have this, and we want to share it with a reporter.” Mook added, “She agreed to that.”

When pressed by Durham prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis on what else Clinton said, Mook replied that “all I remember is that she agreed with the decision” to share the Alfa-Bank claims with the media. Mook said that “she thought we made the right decision.”

Mook said he couldn’t recall “the exact sequence of events” on whether Clinton was giving final approval or if she was approving of something the campaign had already done.

“I recall it being a member of our press staff,” Mook said when asked how the Alfa-Bank claims were pushed to the media. “We authorized a staff member to share it with the media.”

Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was indicted in September for allegedly concealing his clients, Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and “Tech Executive-1,” former Neustar executive Rodney Joffe, from FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016 when he pushed since-debunked claims of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.