In yesterday’s piece, “Caught in the Crossfire Hurricane Crosshairs: An Interview With Svetlana Lokhova, Part 1 – The Setup,” we told you the story of how Cambridge University historian Lokhova was caught up in the situation that would ultimately lead to the firing and subsequent conviction of Ret. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. It involved Lokhova’s unfortunate proximity to suspected spy Stefan Halper while he was employed at Cambridge. Today, we bring you part two, the story of how Lokhova is fighting back against what she says are smears that ruined her academic reputation and that may bring some of the players in the Russia collusion hoax out from the shadows.

Three years after the dinner that Svetlana Lokhova attended where she spoke briefly with Ret. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the Cambridge academic got — nearly at the same time — several requests from different prominent media outlets, all wanting to talk to her about her conversation with Flynn. Somehow, she says, they knew who she was and how to reach her in England despite her status as a private citizen.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post even wanted to fly to London to meet with her. And, she says, they were asking her not only what she discussed with Flynn that night but whether or not the allegations that she went home with the General were true. She says she threatened them with legal recourse if they were to print the lie that she had left with the General, so the latter allegation was mostly just hinted at in publications and around Cambridge.

“But why would David Ignatius want to fly all the way from America to talk to me about a dinner I barely remembered?,” Lokhova told RedState.

After doing her own research she discovered that Ignatius had been using Halper — the colleague Lokhova now believes was paid to set up Flynn — as a source. She also discovered that other reporters asking her questions and/or reporting on the story, such as Carole Lee of The Wall Street Journal and Adam Goldman of The New York Times, may have been very friendly with Obama administration officials (former acting head of FBI Andrew McCabe in the case of Goldman and Obama himself in the case of Lee).

“They took my life away from me,” Lokhova says. “I was someone who was an academic, a mom, a member of a community, an author, and they reduced me to a whore sent by Russian security services to seduce generals. It’s preposterous.”

Lokhova says she began receiving death threats and lost precious time with her then-newborn child while she negotiated how to battle the smear campaign she said had been born from planted — and untrue — stories provided by Halper to friendly press outlets she now regards as a “propaganda arm” of the effort to stop Trump from winning the election; and later, carrying out his plan to drain the swamp.

So Lokhova placed her trust in the American legal system and did what people do when they’ve been libeled: she filed a lawsuit.

Putting my faith in the US justice system. pic.twitter.com/4O0JtDWh62

— Svetlana (@RealSLokhova) October 25, 2019

In May, Lokhova filed a libel suit seeking $25 million in damages from Halper as well as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC and intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance.

She says her suit — which at present  has been held up by a Clinton-appointed judge who believes Lokhova has an “uphill battle” to prove her suit has merit — is the first time anyone has really forced some of the “shadowy” figures involved in the beginnings of the Russia collusion hoax out into the open.

“It has forced them to come to court and explain themselves,” she says.

For his part, Halper has requested the judge dismiss the suit saying that the language is personal and the filing is crass, that he has government immunity from being named in a lawsuit, and that Lokhova is simply seeking to enrich herself using a GoFundMe account (which she acknowledges she has, but says she is simply trying to recoup the cost of fighting for her reputation. She also mentions that Andrew McCabe set up a similar account and wonders why it wasn’t derided as hers has been).

Halper responded in August that Lokhova’s accusations were “spurious,” saying she was trying to use the court to grift people through an online crowdfunding effort. He noted the articles cited in her complaint did not allege a Flynn affair or that she was a Russian spy or traitor. He referred to her accusations about a coup against Trump as “implausible conspiracy theories.” He called the lawsuit against him “meritless and profane” and “bad faith litigation,” so he asked the court to dismiss the case and to impose sanctions against Lokhova as punishment.

Though Halper denied colluding with the FBI to overthrow Trump, he neither confirmed nor denied being a bureau informant. He argued in his motion to dismiss the case that if he was a paid informant for the government or was working as a government contractor, he was immune from a lawsuit like hers.

Lokhova counters Halper by admitting she does harbor dislike for him. But, she asks, who wouldn’t if they were in her position?

“Of course I hate the guy,” she says. “My baby’s first toys were bloody handcuffs because we had to get security when we were faced with death threats. But I want Americans to hate him, too, for what he tried to do to affect the election and for the fact that he is responsible for destroying General Flynn.”

As to her reason for including the press in her libel suit, Lokhova says they were part of the effort from the beginning, with reporters “justifying the FBI reports, and the FBI justifying the press reports.”

“During Watergate, the role of the press was to unmask coordination between security services and the administration,” she says. “Since then, the security services have learned that they needed to control the press, to make friends with the very people who could expose them.”

Lokhova awaits a ruling by the judge in her case as to whether it will be allowed to proceed. But talking with her for more than a few minutes offers proof that she has come too far in this quest to stop, even if a Virginia judge decides she has no basis for a lawsuit.

“He stole my name,” she says of Halper. And she wants it back.