Russia meddle plots began as early as 2009

THE RUSSIAN political influence campaign began long before last year’s election, according to a report.

Hillary Clinton had just begun her tenure as secretary of state when Moscow unleashed its meddling machine to win access to her, former President Bill Clinton and members of their inner circle, according to The Hill.

Citing interviews and oncesealed FBI records, the report said Moscow operatives were hard at work as far back as 2009. That year, a Russian spy posing as an American accountant used a false identity to win a job with a major Democratic donor in hopes of gaining intelligence on Clinton’s department, The Hill found. The spy was arrested and deported.

FBI agents were concerned about the timing and size of a $500,000 payday Bill Clinton earned from a Kremlin-linked bank for a single speech in 2010.

Weeks earlier, Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, helped arrange for American executives to go to Moscow to help establish a hightech business community.

The report said there was no evidence that the Clintons did anything illegal. But the FBI believed the Russians were trying to influence American policy.

“There is not one shred of doubt from the evidence that we had that the Russians had set their sights on Hillary Clinton’s circle because she was the quarterback of the ObamaRussian reset strategy and the assumed successor to Obama as President,” a source told The Hill.

A spokesman for Hillary Clinton said the story was “the right’s transparent attempts to distract from their own Russia problems,” according to the report.