Conspiracy theorist and national security blogger Louise Mensch asserted that former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page took a recording to Russia of Donald Trump personally authorizing Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime to hack the 2016 election.
In a column over the weekend, Mensch alleges that "sources with links to the intelligence community" believe that "Carter Page went to Moscow in early July carrying with him a pre-recorded tape of Donald Trump offering to change American policy if he were to be elected, to make it more favorable to Putin."
The report claims that Page "was authorized directly by Trump to request the help of the Russian government in hacking the election."
Mensch comes to the conclusion that Page, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former aide Boris Epshteyn were "were all acting in concert as agents of the Russian state first and foremost, and Trump staffers second."
"Because the provision of such a tape to Putin would clearly be the ultimate in kompromat on a future American President (far worse than any sexual blackmail tape)," Mensch notes.
The Washington Postreported last week that the FBI obtained a secret court order allowing agents to spy on Page as part of an investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Mensch writes: "[T]he point is that intelligence sources say that Page, Manafort and Epshteyn, possibly also with Trump, are on tape discussing how Page should carry a recording of Donald Trump to Moscow, offering his bona fides in exchange for Russia’s help hacking the election."
"[M]ultiple foreign intelligence services, among them the UK, Germany and Ukraine, have a tape of this; and that finally, in October, the FBI was able to listen to that tape."
