Michael Isikoff Suggests Trump Coordinated Russia Q&A with Spy During Freedom Fest

RUSH EXCERPT:

ISIKOFF: "Well, first of all, it's important to remember when this was. This is very early in Trump's campaign. He had just announced a few weeks earlier, and fair to say the issue of Russia sanctions was hardly at the front of the American political dialogue. It's not something anybody was talking about. But it was something of very much concern to Vladimir Putin and his government, and the fact that she, Maria Butina, asked that, was there at that event and then asked the question and got Trump on the record saying you won't need the sanctions if I'm elected was very important to the Kremlin. Now months later when the whole Russia thing blew up, Trump's top advisers, and this is what we lay out in the book, Steve Bannon, the campaign chairman, we're talking now 2016, and Reince Priebus are watching that video, and they're puzzling over this. How is this that this -- how is it that this woman happened to be there at that event? How is it that Trump happened to call on her? How is it that Trump happened to have a well developed five-minute answer to the question? It was something had concerned them. They didn't have answers, but it seems puzzling. Now we learn from the new criminal charges unveiled this week that this was no incidental act by Maria Butina. She had been -- there is e-mail correspondence produced in the criminal charges in which she is talking about a well thought out strategy of trying to tilt the Republican Party in a more favorable direction towards Russia."