Matt Bevan

I'll, you know, keep... I'll remember that.

But didn't think all that much of it at the time.

It was only after the campaign emails started to be released online...

That Downer went, oh, hang on.

Someone told me that this was going to happen a couple of weeks ago.

That guy works in the Trump campaign.

That's something that's probably interesting.

And reported this back to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra.

And the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra went, whoa, that's...

Well, not well above our pay grade.

We don't know what to do with that.

We're going to tell the Americans.

And so they called up the FBI and informed the basically informed the Americans of what Downer had heard.

Yes, so this is about midway through 2016.

There is still seven months to go of the Obama administration and the FBI have received this report that someone on the Trump campaign knew ahead of schedule about the Russians having information from inside of the Hillary Clinton campaign and it was told to us by the Australians.

Well, the New York Times found out about it a year and a half later.

They sort of went, oh, this is an odd thing.

The context was, of course, that by the end of 2017, so this is when the New York Times started reporting on it, there was now already a massive conspiracy

government investigation into the Trump campaign's connections or alleged connections with the Russian government during the presidential campaign of 2016.

Are they working together on something?