CNN’s Fareed Zakaria sat down with Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, who said that no election talk was discussed throughout the 2016 election with either campaign. He noted, as have others, that the meetings Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak had with aides of Donald Trump isn’t scandalous, and that Kislyak was doing his job.
“This is his job. He was talking about bilateral relations. He was talking about what is going on the in the United States, so we have a better understanding In Moscow,” said Peskov. Even our own ambassador to Russia conducts meetings like this because, as Peskov noted, the more an ambassador talks to the people in his country of residence—the better job he does.
Concerning similar-style meetings between members of the Clinton campaign and Kislyak, Peskov said, “If you look at some people connected with Hillary Clinton during her campaign, you would probably see that he had lots of meetings of that kind.”
Does this mean that members of the Clinton campaign will be subpoenaed to testify in front of Congress? Earlier this month, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook couldn’t really confirm or deny whether members of the Clinton team had meetings with the Russians, instead saying “the folks that were managing that within the campaign have said that there were none.” As the campaign manager shouldn’t he have known about this or maybe John Podesta might know.