GOP operative reportedly secretly raised $100,000 to obtain emails he believed were stolen from Hillary Clinton

An Illinois businessman long involved in Republican politics and opposition research secretly raised $100,000 from donors in his quest to purchase what he believed were emails stolen from Hillary Clinton, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Peter W. Smith received $100,000 from at least four people in the weeks before the 2016 election, and donated $50,000 himself, the Journal reports. Smith discussed his efforts with the Journal in 2017, just 10 days before he died by suicide, but the extent of his planning wasn't known until the Journal interviewed people close to Smith and looked at documents and emails he sent.

Smith wanted everything to be private, and set up a Gmail account under the name Robert Tyler. Several people had access to the account, and would write notes for Smith in the drafts folder, the Journal reports. One email showed the money Smith raised was referred to as a donation to a D.C.-based scholarship fund for Russian students.

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office is interested in Smith's actions as part of its probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and his family turned over encrypted hard drives and documents, the Journal reports. Several people also told the Journal that associates of Smith, who implied to some people he spoke with that he was working with Trump campaign senior adviser Michael Flynn, have been interviewed by the special counsel or summoned before a grand jury. Flynn pleaded guilty last year to lying to investigators about phone calls he had with Russia's ambassador to the U.S. before the inauguration.