From Bloomberg: "Russian Hackers Said to Seek Hush Money From Liberal Groups"

In one case, a non-profit group and a prominent liberal donor discussed how to use grant money to cover some costs for anti-Trump protesters. The identities were not disclosed, and it’s unclear if the protesters were paid.

At least some groups have paid the ransoms even though there is little guarantee the documents won’t be made public anyway. Demands have ranged from about $30,000 to $150,000, payable in untraceable bitcoins, according to one of the people familiar with the probe.

And:

The Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank with strong links to both the Clinton and Obama administrations, and Arabella Advisors, which guides liberal donors who want to invest in progressive causes, have been asked to pay ransoms, according to people familiar with the probes.

The Center for American Progress declined a pre-publication request for comment. "CAP has no evidence we have been hacked, no knowledge of it and no reason to believe it to be true. CAP has never been subject to ransom,” Allison Preiss, a spokeswoman for the center, said in a statement Monday morning.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-06/russian-hackers-said-to-seek-hush-money-from-liberal-u-s-groups

The direct link to pizzagate here is through the claims that Russian hackers are doing this, and that one liberal group which was reportedly subject to a blackmail attempt is The Center for American Progress, which was founded by John Podesta, and still has very close ties to him.

This story seems to raise all sort of possible implications for the pizzagate scandal - like could there be blackmail over child sex abuse going on - and strangely the mainstream media is hardly covering it.