The FBI has been asked to investigate whether a hoaxer offered women money to make false allegations about Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Several journalists and bloggers in the US received an email this month purporting to be from a woman who had been offered money to smear Mueller with bogus claims of inappropriate behaviour decades ago.

After Mueller’s office was told about the email, it referred the matter to federal investigators, who are now likely to examine whether the hoax scheme described in the woman’s email is real – or if the email itself contains false information.Peter Carr, Mueller’s spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday: “When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the special counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation.”This statement itself was rare for Mueller’s office, which has built a reputation over the past 17 months for almost never making public remarks about its activities outside of court hearings and legal filings.

Mueller has come under sustained pressure from Donald Trump and some Republicans in Congress, who have tried to dismiss his investigation as a “witch-hunt”. Mueller has so far obtained criminal convictions of Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort for financial crimes, along with guilty pleas from several people including Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and Rick Gates, his former deputy campaign chairman.(theguardian)…[+]