A recent story released by the Wall Street Journal ties the sudden death in May of Republican operative with him having a key role in retrieving Hillary Clinton’s e-mails from Russian hackers.
Peter W. Smith, 81, killed himself on 14th May with a plastic bag over his head a helium source, and left behind a suicide note, only two weeks after his interview with a reporter from The Wall Street Journal and six weeks before the story was published. His cause of death was listed as “asphyxiation due to displacement of oxygen in confined space with helium.”
The report by the Journal further reveals that the Smith had gathered a time to work on obtaining emails that they believe were stolen from the private sever that Clinton has been using during her term as the secretary of stated. Smith indicated that he was in search of more than 30,000 emails that Clinton had claimed that she had delated as they were in relation to matters very personal to her. Smith mentioned that he believed that the Russian hackers had something to do with the missing emails, and him and his team targeted hackers that had the possibility of having ties with the Russian government.
The story uncovering Smith’s role in obtaining Clinton’s emails indicated that he was a key source in the Hillary Clinton email controversy, and that he had reached out to dozens of hacking groups, with al teat two of them having ties with the Russian government.
“We knew the people who had these were probably around the Russian government,” Smith stated.
In his interview, Smith claimed that although he wasn’t working for the then presidential nominee Trump. However, it has been noted that he used Michael Flynn’s name in trying to extract information from the groups of hackers. Eric York, a computer-security expert told the journal that Smith said, “I’m talking to Michael Flynn about this—if you find anything, can you let me know?”
While, Smith’s death has many questions linked to it, and it has been noted that Smith had published two blogs on the day of his death, one of which went on to challenge the findings presented by the United States Intelligence Agency that indicate that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential elections.
According to the police, Smith’s suicide note revealed that Smith had taken his life due to a “recent bad turn in health since January, 2017” and because his some $5 million life insurance was due to expire soon. The note further indicated that there was no foul play whatsoever” that lead him to commit suicide.
The reporter from the Journal on the other hand mentioned that Smith had expressed “no indication that was ill or planning to take his own life,” during their interview and so, his death came as a surprise to all. “When I spoke to Peter Smith I had no indication that he was ill or planning to take his own life,” tweeted Shane Harris, from the Journal.