Former campaign adviser Michael Caputo met with special counsel's team
Michael Caputo, a former communications adviser to the Trump campaign, met with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team on Wednesday as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday as part of both ongoing Russia investigations, CBS News' Jacqueline Alemany confirms.
CNN first reported that Caputo had been interviewed by special counsel investigators. Caputo had previously met with the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door session as part of its probe. In a statement to CBS News, Caputo said that Mueller's team "knows every single chapter and verse about the Trump campaign." He added that while the team is still "trying to find evidence of collusion, I don't think he will."
Caputo, a longtime GOP political operative, resigned as communications adviser in June of 2016, after tweeting "the witch is dead" when former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was fired.
Caputo's name came up during a House Intelligence Committee hearing in March, when then-FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers were testifying. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-California) said Caputo is a part of the "tarantula web" of ties to Russia. At the time, Speier noted Caputo's marriage to a Russian woman and former work in the Kremlin in the early 1990s.
In October 2012, long before he became involved in the Trump campaign, Caputo on Twitter noted that he "worked for the Kremlin" at one point. In 2016 he told the Buffalo News, "I'm not proud of the work today, but at the time, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wasn't such a bad guy."
During his nearly four hour interview with the House panel last year, Caputo denied that he had any contact with Russians and "never heard of anyone in the Trump campaign talking with Russians." He said he testified that he had zero contacts with Russians during his time on the campaign.