RNC officials now acknowledge that $34,100 went towards reports that sought to prove conflicts of interest between Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State and her family’s foundation. | Getty RNC paid intel firm for Clinton dirt Firm started by ex-CIA officers initially denied probing Democratic presidential candidate.

As the general election was taking shape last summer, the Republican National Committee initiated a series of payments to a low-profile firm started by retired CIA officers that worked closely with an ex-Russian spy.

The payments attracted attention in political and intelligence circles, largely because the Virginia-based firm, Hamilton Trading Group, had particular expertise in Russia, which was emerging as a major campaign issue at the time.


RNC officials and the president and co-founder of Hamilton Trading Group, an ex-CIA officer named Ben Wickham, insisted the payments, which eventually totaled $41,500, had nothing to do with Russia.

Instead, they initially claimed the payments were entirely for an assessment by Hamilton Trading Group of building security concerns at the RNC’s Capitol Hill headquarters.

But RNC officials now acknowledge that most of the cash — $34,100 — went toward intelligence-style reports that sought to prove conflicts of interest between Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state and her family’s foundation.

The firm produced two dossiers that tried to make the case that Clinton intervened in Bulgaria and Israel, respectively, on behalf of energy companies that had donated to the Clinton Foundation, according to people briefed on the reports.

Wickham on Thursday explained that he initially insisted his work for the RNC was limited to the building security assessment because “any other work we may have done for them” was subject to a nondisclosure agreement. “I’m not denying that I wasn’t totally forthcoming, but I’m telling you why,” Wickham said. “The security stuff that we did, which is legitimate, was not covered by any kind of a confidentiality agreement, so I can discuss that.”

When a $3,400 payment to Hamilton Trading Group for “security services” first appeared in June on the RNC’s campaign finance reports to the Federal Election Commission, it raised eyebrows among political operatives, intelligence consultants and security experts.

That was partly because the firm had never previously received a disclosed payment from a federal political campaign or committee, and also because Hamilton Trading Group wasn’t well-known in the building-security consulting industry.

Adding to the intrigue are the firm’s intelligence connections in Russia, where it was known to perform background checks and provide security services for American officials and companies.

That work was handled by a former KGB agent named Gennady Vasilenko, a Cold War adversary-turned-friend of Wickham’s co-founder, Jack Platt, a retired CIA officer who passed away in January.

Vasilenko declined to comment.

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But Wickham said “Gennady has very good contacts in Russia.”

Wickham and the RNC denied, though, that the firm did any work related to Russia for the RNC, and Wickham brushed off as coincidence the timing of the payments. They were made between May and August 2016, as Russia was emerging as a liability for the GOP nominee Donald Trump and his presidential campaign, including its then-chairman Paul Manafort.

Wickham added that he’s “never had any contact with … Trump or Manafort or their people.”

The RNC provided documentation that appeared to list the specific Clinton-related research projects for which Wickham's firm was paid.

As for the building-security payments, Wickham told POLITICO that his firm “did a security audit” to assess the vulnerability of the RNC’s headquarters to a range of hypothetical attacks, including a “McVeigh-type” explosive attack or a gunman “something like San Bernardino.”

He said that, while “we didn’t find anything too problematic,” the RNC did make some changes to address concerns raised by the audit.

Wickham conceded “We certainly are not widely known, as we have always been a two- to three-man company and have done little advertising.” But he said the firm has done plenty of security work, including training Amtrak police to do counterterrorism-related security assessments and providing security years ago for the International Monetary Fund’s facilities in Moscow.