FBI raids home of Russian-born 2016 Trump adviser: report

The FBI has conducted a raid and search at the home of a Russian-born analyst who advised former President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign, reported The Guardian on Friday.

Dimitri Simes, whose name came up over 100 times in former special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian interference in the election, told the Rappahannock News he was out of the country and wasn't notified of the search ahead of time. He was also not aware that he was the focus of a law enforcement investigation, he said.

A spokesperson for the FBI said, “The FBI conducted court-authorized law enforcement activity. We have no further comment as this is an ongoing matter.”

Simes, speaking to Russian state media company Sputnik, suggested he is a target of political persecution, saying that the FBI search “clearly is an attempt to intimidate, not only somebody from Russia, but just anyone who goes against official policies and particularly against the deep state.” He added, “My suspicion is that instead of trying to get me to come to the United States and to interrogate me or even to arrest me, their real purpose is to make sure that I would not come back.”

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Echoing this sentiment, Simes' son posted on X, “The Biden regime is terrified of being called out over Ukraine and Israel.”

Simes has worked as a political adviser since the 1970s when he first emigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union and worked with the Nixon administration. He helped craft foreign policy speeches for the Trump campaign, including one where Trump suggested closer cooperation with Russia. The Mueller report specifically linked Simes to the work of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Ultimately, Mueller found ample evidence Trump accepted help from the Kremlin and obstructed justice but stopped short of recommending charges of criminal conspiracy against the then-sitting president, which led Trump to falsely claim that the report was a complete exoneration of his actions and showed there was "no collusion" with Russia.