Sidney Blumenthal

    

A shadowy figure tied to the Clintons has suddenly emerged in the Trump-Russia collusion saga.

His name is Cody Shearer, dubbed “Mr. Fixer” for Bill and Hillary Clinton and a workmate of fierce Clinton defender Sidney Blumenthal.

Last week, his name surfaced in a letter to the Democratic National Committee from Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican. The letter listed nearly 40 names and entities. The two senators asked the DNC to disclose any communications with them from March 2016 to January 2017.

The list included the well-known Russia collusion figures: Fusion GPS, the investigation firm that hired former British spy Christopher Steele, who wrote the infamous Russia-Trump dossier; Fusion’s founders and some heretofore never mentioned Fusion researchers; Mr. Steele’s associates at his London Orbis Business Intelligence firm; and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Two of the letter’s names have not appeared previously: Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Shearer.

Congressional representatives did not comment on the sudden revelation.

Fusion has said it paid Mr. Steele $160,000 with money from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC to write a dossier it hoped would destroy the Trump campaign.

But several days after the Grassley-Graham letter was released, The Guardian published an article that said Mr. Shearer wrote his own Russia dossier on Mr. Trump. It said Mr. Steele handed it to the FBI in October 2016.

At that time, Mr. Steele was trying to persuade the FBI to investigate Mr. Trump. He had supplied the bureau with his dossier, which suggests a series of unverified crimes by Mr. Trump and his aides. The FBI has not confirmed any of the charges.

If The Guardian‘s report is accurate, it means the FBI has been working off of two Democratic Party anti-Trump papers on Mr. Trump.

The Guardian has close ties to Mr. Steele, who faces a libel lawsuit in London for reporting that a Russian entrepreneur hacked Democratic Party computers.

A Guardian reporter, Luke Harding, wrote an homage to Mr. Steele titled “Collusion.”

Mr. Trump and his friends call Mr. Steele’s work fictitious and ridiculous. Former FBI Director James B. Comey called it “salacious and unverified.”

The Guardian wrote: “Unlike Steele, Shearer does not have a background in espionage, and his memo was initially viewed with skepticism, not least because he had shared it with select media organizations before the election.

However, The Guardian has been told that the FBI investigation is still “assessing details in the ‘Shearer memo’ and is pursuing intriguing leads.”

“One source with knowledge of the inquiry said the fact the FBI was still working on it suggested investigators had taken an aspect of it seriously,” the British newspaper reported.

A journalist decades ago, Mr. Shearer has delved into freelance foreign policy. His known incursions include Bosnia, where he tried to broker some sort of peace deal, though he wasn’t a U.S. official, and Libya, where he and Mr. Blumenthal supplied intelligence to Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state.

In 2015, National Review said of him, “Meet Cody Shearer, the Strangest Character in Hillary’s Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.”

Mr. Shearer’s name also surfaced that year in hacked emails from Mr. Blumenthal during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at the State Department.

ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism outfit, described Mr. Shearer this way: “In one exchange in March 2013, Blumenthal emailed Drumheller, ‘Thanks. Can you send Libya report.’ Drumheller replied, ‘Here it is, pls do not share it with Cody. I don’t want “moin” [a Libyan] speculating on sources. It is on the Maghreb and Libya.'”

“Cody is Cody Shearer, a longtime Clinton family operative – his brother was an ambassador under Bill Clinton and his now-deceased sister was married to Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott – who was in close contact with Blumenthal,” ProPublica reported.

Drumheller refers to late CIA officer Tyler Drumheller.

ProPublica said a May 14, 2011, email exchange between Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Shearer told of negotiations with Drumheller to contact a retired general to send four operatives into Tunis, Tunisia.

Mr. Shearer wrote, “Sid, do you think the general has to send four guys. He told us three guys yesterday, a translator and two other guys. I understand the difficulty of the mission and realize that K [a Libyan] will be repaid but I am going to need an itemized budget for these guys.”

For whom Mr. Shearer worked to produce his anti-Trump dossier is unclear.