Julian Borger:

Well, this is about Trita Parsi, who is the head of the National Iranian American Council, who is a very fierce advocate of the Iran nuclear deal.

And during the transition in late 2016, he was approached through an intermediary with a message from U.S. intelligence, someone in — high up in U.S. intelligence, warning him to look out because the Trump crowd were coming after him and would seek to discredit him as a means of discrediting the deal.

And several months later, he was approached by someone he believed to be a journalist who turned out to be working for this Israeli private security firm who was asking him, after asking general questions, asked him about whether these two these two officials, Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl, had in some way maybe profited or benefited from the deal.

He didn't think anything more about it other than to think it was a bit odd, until we read from the transcript of that conversation that we got ahold of from sources close to that firm.