Remember Nigel Farage, the former leader of the euroskeptic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), one of the prime movers behind Brexit, and Trump’s acquaintance (also a boor and a weapons-grade git, but that’s another story)? Well, the Guardian reports in an exclusive story that Mr Farage is a person of interest in the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation regarding possible collusion between the Kremlin and Donald Trump’s campaign.
Via the Guardian:
Nigel Farage is a “person of interest” in the US counter-intelligence investigation that is looking into possible collusion between the Kremlin and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the Guardian has been told.
Sources with knowledge of the investigation said the former Ukip leader had raised the interest of FBI investigators because of his relationships with individuals connected to both the Trump campaign and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whom Farage visited in March.
[...]
Farage has not been accused of wrongdoing and is not a suspect or a target of the US investigation. But being a person of interest means investigators believe he may have information about the acts that are under investigation and he may therefore be subject to their scrutiny.
[…]
The source mentioned Farage’s links with Roger Stone, Trump’s long-time political adviser who has admitted being in contact with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker whom US intelligence agencies believe to be a Kremlin agent.
[...]
But Farage’s relationships with people close to the US president began years earlier. Farage first met Steve Bannon, Trump’s strategist and former campaign chief executive, in the summer of 2012, when Bannon, who was interested in rightwing movements in Europe, invited the then Ukip leader to spend a few days in New York and Washington, according to an account in the New Yorker magazine.
There Farage was introduced to, among others, the staff of the then senator Jeff Sessions, who is now the US attorney general. Speaking of his longtime admiration for Bannon, Farage told the New Yorker last year: “I have got a very, very high regard for that man’s brain.”
Two years later, in 2014, Breitbart News, of which Bannon was executive chair, opened an office in London. A top editor, Raheem Kassam, later went on to work as Farage’s chief of staff.
The plot thickens, the scandal is going international, and with the British being involved we are close to ticking off literally every cheap spy thriller cliche in existence.
UPDATE: Farage has responded to the news, and his response has been… interesting, given that he was named as a person of interest, not as a suspect.
Also in the linked Guardian article:
Farage’s spokesman said he had never worked with Russian officials, and described the Guardian’s questions about Farage’s activities as “verging on the hysterical”.
I think this just might be a case of the gentleman protesting a bit too much...