© GettyFormer Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo says he has spent $125,000 on lawyers to comply with the demands of the Senate Intelligence Committee
A former campaign communications adviser to Donald Trump blew up at Democratic U.S. Senate aides on Tuesday at the end of a behind-the-scenes grilling connected to their wide-ranging Russia investigation.
New York-based political consultant Michael Caputo said he has spent $125,000 on attorneys to help him navigate the committee's demands for documents and testimony, ruining his children's economic future and forcing him to sell his family home.
Calling the probe a 'witch hunt,' Caputo demanded to know who is funding a secretive effort to continue digging into unsubstantiated allegations that Trump has ties with the Kremlin.
'What America needs is an investigation of the investigators,' he said. 'I want to know: Who is paying for the spies' work and coordinating this attack on President Donald Trump?'
'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 complete statement is at the end of the article.)
Caputo lived in Russia for two decades but says he has no knowledge of any connections or contacts between the Trump campaign and agents of Moscow. He has launched a legal defense fund, collecting more than $10,000 from the public so far.
He told senators that he 'can't possibly pay the attendant legal costs and live near my aging father, raising my kids where I grew up.
'Your investigation and others into the allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia are costing my family a great deal of money - more than $125,000 - and making a visceral impact on my children,' he said.
Caputo lives in a small town near Buffalo, New York. But he said he has no choice other than moving 'to Washington, New York City, Miami or elsewhere, just so I can make enough money to pay off these legal bills.'
© ReutersThe inquisitors: House Intelligence Committee senators Mark Warner (left, Democrat) and Richard Burr (right, Republican),
A Warner spokeswoman told CNN after the closed-door interview that the senator wouldn't comment on any witnesses, 'regardless of how outlandish or attention-seeking they might be.'
Caputo told WBEN radio that he blames 'every single one of these people for what's happening to my family,' citing 'death threats that are coming at us every single week.'
'I blame them for the fact that my wife, last month, got a piece of a sniper rifle in the mail from an anonymous sender.'
Caputo's testimony on Tuesday leaned heavily on news that a shadowy group of wealthy donors has spent $50 million to continue the work that resulted in the pre-election 'dirty dossier' of salacious claims against Trump.
The dossier's creator, former British spy Christopher Steele, wrote that the Kremlin held compromising information about Trump including proof that he caroused with prostitutes during a visit to Moscow.
The president has denied everything in the dossier, but the Justice Department and FBI reportedly used it to obtain surveillance warrants targeting a member of the Trump campaign team.
In a report published Friday, the House Intelligence Committee quietly revealed the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign paid Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm, to compile the dossier. But its eventual dissemination to reporters and the FBI failed to derail Trump's White House aspirations.
Now another Washington firm, the Penn Quarter Group, has collected $50 million from a handful of funders to keep the ball rolling.
It has hired Steele and Fusion GPS to take part, and promises to share its findings with the FBI and the media.
The Penn Quarter Group's founding principal, Daniel Jones, is a former senior staffer to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and worked for her on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Caputo has launched a legal defense fund to recoup some of the six-figure costs of complying with the Senate committee's demands
© ReutersCaputo also says Democratic aides are helping a former committee staffer who is continuing to add to the salacious anti-Trump 'dirty dossier'
'Of course Dan's in touch with you guys. We know from the news that he's been briefing Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of this committee.'
'Which one of you works for Senator Warner? Please give Danny my best.'
Jones's $50 million effort is operating under the name 'Democracy Integrity Project.' He incorporated it in late January 2017, just 11 days after Trump took office.
Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson refused to answer a Senate hearing question last year about whether he was still being paid for work related to the Steele dossier.
Steele's links to Jones were outed in February with the leak of a series of text messages between Jones and Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner.
In the March 2017 texts, Jones suggested that he was the point of contact for Steele
Caputo's statement to the House Intel Committee
Caputo, a former Trump campaign adviser, delivered this statement to the committee on Tuesday, May 1, 2018:
'In 2009, my wife and I moved to my hometown of East Aurora, New York to have a family. Making far less money back home, we had a far better quality of life. That is, until the Trump-Russia narrative took off. Today, I can't possibly pay the attendant legal costs and live near my aging father, raising my kids where I grew up.
'Your investigation and others into the allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia are costing my family a great deal of money - more than $125,000 - and making a visceral impact on my children.
'Now I must to move back to Washington, New York City, Miami or elsewhere, just so I can make enough money to pay off these legal bills. And I know I have you to thank for that.
'Here's how I know: how many of you know Daniel Jones, former Senate Intelligence staffer for Senator Dianne Feinstein? Great guy, right? Most of you worked with him. One of you probably just talked to him this morning.
'Of course, very few of us in flyover country knew Daniel until recently. Now we know that he quit his job with your Senate committee not long ago to raise $50 million from ten rich Democrats to finance more work on the FusionGPS Russian dossier. The one the FBI used to get a FISA warrant and intimidate President Donald Trump, without anyone admitting -- until months after it was deployed -- that it was paid for by Hillary Clinton.
'In fact, good old Dan has been raising and spending millions to confirm the unconfirmable - and, of course, to keep all his old intel colleagues up-to-speed on what FusionGPS and British and Russian spies have found. Got to keep that Russia story in the news.
'Of course Dan's in touch with you guys. We know from the news that he's been briefing Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of this committee. Which one of you works for Senator Warner? Please give Danny my best.
'I saw some of his handiwork just last month. Remember this lede paragraph, from McClatchy on April 13?'The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump's personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.'That's your pal Dan, isn't it? He came up with some kind of hollow proof that Michael Cohen was in Prague meeting with Russians when he wasn't. He tried to sell that to reporters, and they didn't buy it because it doesn't check out. So, to get a reporter to write up his line of bull, he gave the documents to the Office of Special Counsel.
'We know that's likely, because he's told people he's briefing investigators.
'So, technically, the special counsel's office has evidence. Your pal Dan gave them more of the Democrats' dossier, funded by more Democrats, provided again by Russian and British spies. Information no reporter would write up, but now there's an angle: the Special Counsel has it. Now it's a story.
'It's a clever but effective ruse. That's a story, just like when reporter Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News wrote this gem on September 16, 2016:'"...U.S. officials have since received intelligence reports that during that same three-day trip, Page met with Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin associate ... a well-placed Western intelligence source tells Yahoo News. That meeting, if confirmed, is viewed as especially problematic by U.S. officials..."'Dozens of stories were written from the Isikoff piece, doing real damage to the Trump campaign. Of course, now we know Isikoff's reference to "intelligence reports" was just him renaming a dossier funded by Democrats and dug up by his longtime pal Glenn Simpson and some foreign spies. Once Simpson gave his Clinton campaign opposition research to the feds, it was news.
'This was especially true after Isikoff intentionally labeled the campaign materials as intelligence - just like McClatchy called Dan's information "evidence."
'But who is McClatchy's second source? It couldn't be Dan; he was the first source. It couldn't be Simpson; he works for Dan. It can't be the Mueller investigation; they kicked the McClatchy story to the curb with aplomb. So who could it be - perhaps one of his former Senate Intelligence colleagues? I mean, you're all in this together. You're the swamp.
'What America needs is an investigation of the investigators. I want to know who is paying for the spies' work and coordinating this attack on President Donald Trump? I want to know who Dan Jones is talking to across the investigations - from the FBI, to the Southern District of New York, to the OSC, to the Department of Justice, to Congress.
'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.'
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