New DOJ Notes Reveal FBI Panic After Trump Tweeted He Knew He Was Being Spied On
Newly released notes taken by high-level Department of Justice (DOJ) officials during a March 6, 2017, meeting with FBI leadership expose some of the lengths the FBI engaged in to cover up its spying on the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump.
The notes were released on May 8 by lawyers representing former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann as part of an effort to clear him on charges of having lied to the FBI. The notes, in reality, appear to do little to exonerate Sussmann but do provide quite a bit of information on the FBI.
The meeting at which the notes were taken took place just two days after Trump’s March 4, 2017, tweet in which he accused former President Barack Obama of having wiretapped Trump Tower. Trump’s tweet panicked FBI leadership, who were unsure exactly how much Trump knew about their efforts to tie him up with Russia collusion allegations.
What the notes reveal is that in response to the tweet, they tried to cover their tracks.
By March 2017, FBI leadership already knew with near-certainty that the Trump–Russia collusion claims were a hoax. They knew that Clinton’s campaign had a plan to vilify Trump by portraying him as a puppet of Putin. The FBI also knew that not a single claim in the so-called Steele dossier—which was the primary source of allegations of Trump–Russia collusion—had checked out.
In fact, at that point, the FBI had already spent three days interviewing Steele’s primary source, Igor Danchenko, who disavowed pretty much every claim in Steele’s dossier. The FBI also knew that the Alfa Bank story, which claimed that a Trump server was communicating with a Russian bank—information that had been brought to them by Sussmann—was bogus.
In short, the FBI knew that all the claims of Trump-Russia collusion had proven to be fake.
But things took a sudden and dramatic turn on March 4, 2017, when Trump said on Twitter that he knew that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower, a very public claim of spying that set off alarm bells with both FBI and DOJ leadership. Trump’s tweet so alarmed these DOJ and FBI officials that the topic dominated a meeting two days later that included FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and the acting U.S. attorney general, Dana Boente.
The problem for the FBI was this: They didn’t know how much Trump actually knew about their actions. Just a day earlier, on March 3, 2017, radio host Mark Levin had reported that the Obama administration had obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants that involved Trump and several of his campaign advisers. Levin also reported that Trump’s off-the-cuff joke in July 2016—“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”—had become the basis for the Russia collusion accusations.
But as we now know, the FISA warrants weren’t the only thing that the FBI leadership was involved with. The FBI was actively spying on the Trump campaign and the incoming Trump administration’s transition communications, a fact that also was revealed in the new notes. The FBI had not only spied on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, but also on another aide, George Papadopoulos, going so far as to lure him to London, where they tried to set him up in a clumsy but elaborate sting.
There were also the new fake accusations brought forward by Sussmann that Trump was tied to the use of a Russian Yota phone. And there was the matter of tech executive Rodney Joffe–a man with deep ties to the FBI–who had been using his access to non-public data to spy on Trump both at Trump Tower and at the White House.
In all likelihood, Trump probably only knew what Levin had reported the day before–that there was a FISA warrant on a campaign aide–but the FBI leadership didn’t know how much Trump knew and had to assume that he knew a lot more.
The discussion at the March 6 meeting was dominated by Trump’s tweet, with the FBI’s McCabe kicking things off by stating that the bureau was trying to determine what was behind Trump’s tweets.
Epoch Times Photo
Notes at the meeting were taken by three DOJ officials—Tashina Gauhar, Mary McCord, and Scott Schools. The notes were released because one of the notes appears to show that McCabe stated that Sussmann had represented clients when he took the Alfa Bank allegations to the FBI. Sussmann initially told the FBI that he didn’t represent anyone and was merely acting as a good samaritan. It’s that lie to the FBI by Sussmann that he has been charged with and Sussmann’s lawyers are hoping to sow doubt by introducing that single sentence that appears to say otherwise.
This claim by Sussmann’s lawyers, however, is, in essence, a side-show as the notes are double-hearsay evidence written six months after Sussmann told the FBI the exact opposite.
The real bombshells are in the many pages of notes that Sussmann doesn’t cite; those notes reveal the true extent of the FBI’s panic over Trump’s tweet. The first reaction from FBI leadership appears to have been to tell the acting attorney general, Boente, a sequence of lies about their investigation.
The notes reveal that the FBI repeatedly referred to Steele’s dossier as “Crown reporting,” suggesting the dossier represented some sort of official UK government intelligence, when it was mostly information made up by Steele and Danchenko–a fact the FBI already knew at the time.
The new notes also revealed that FBI agent Peter Strzok lied to his DOJ superiors about what triggered Alexander Downer, the Australian ambassador in London, to come forward to the FBI with information regarding his meeting with Papadopolous. It has always been the FBI’s official story that it was Downer who initiated the official Trump–Russia investigation, but that story is now undermined in the new notes, in which Strzok claims that it was Trump’s joke about Russia finding Clinton’s emails that had triggered Downer.
In truth, Downer had come forward before Trump had even made the joke.
The FBI also lied to the DOJ about the Carter Page FISA warrant, which they claimed was “fruitful,” when it actually had revealed nothing nefarious–something that the FBI was aware of by this time.
The FBI appears to have also tried to misrepresent and elevate the Alfa Bank allegations by claiming that the Trump Organization had sent a solicitation to Alfa Bank. Again, this was completely false. The FBI knew within days of Sussmann giving them the Alfa Bank data that it was useless and probably fake.
By Sept. 23, 2016, the FBI’s IT team had disproven the Alfa Bank allegations. But rather than admit that, the FBI actually tried to breathe new life into the Alfa allegations through its misrepresentations.
All of these exculpatory facts were not just hidden from interim DOJ officials at the March 6, 2017, meeting, FBI leadership twisted those facts to make them appear like there was a strong case against Trump when they knew there was no case at all.
But the March 6 meeting was only the beginning. Knowing that Trump might now be on to them, FBI leadership immediately increased their efforts to cover their own tracks by intensifying the focus on Trump.
On March 5, 2017, the day following Trump’s tweet, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper went on CNN and claimed that there was no “wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign.”
While Clapper took a defensive stance, the FBI soon went on offense and the bureau’s efforts began almost immediately.
On March 15, 2017, FBI Director James Comey suddenly decided to brief the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), about the Carter Page FISA application, which FBI leadership believed Trump had found out about. Comey would provide them with copies of the actual FISA warrant two days later. At this same time, Comey also began his briefing of the congressional Gang of Eight—the eight individuals within the U.S. Congress who are briefed on classified intelligence matters by the executive branch—regarding the Page FISA.
On March 20, 2017, Clapper suddenly changed his narrative, shifting from denying the existence of any spying to denying any abuse of the FISA process.
Also on March 20, Comey publicly testified to Congress, revealing for the first time the existence of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump and his campaign.
During his testimony, Comey inadvertently acknowledged that he had also intentionally withheld the required congressional Gang of Eight notification of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation. Under questioning, Comey stated that he did so because of “the sensitivity of the matter.”
The combined efforts of Obama intelligence officials and the FBI would soon culminate in the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, which essentially tied up Trump for the next three years. And in doing so, they ensured that little or no progress was made in bringing the actual perpetrators of the Russia hoax to justice.
Special Counsel John Durham Wins Key Motion in Case Against Former Clinton Lawyer
May 4, 2022
A federal judge on May 4 granted a motion from special counsel John Durham to review documents that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other parties had claimed were protected by privilege, which means the documents may ultimately be made available to the public.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, after a hearing in Washington, granted Durham’s motion to compel production of unredacted versions of said documents from the Perkins Coie, a law firm hired by the campaign ahead of the 2016 election; Rodney Joffe, a technology executive; and Fusion GPS, a firm that specializes in opposition research that the campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) used extensively to investigate then-candidate Donald Trump—Clinton’s rival for the presidency.
The parties had resisted producing some documents and handed over redacted versions of others because of shielding afforded by attorney-client privilege or another form of privilege that protects documents used in producing “work product”—claims Durham has disputed in part because Fusion primarily engaged in non-legal matters such as opposition research for the campaign, the DNC, and Perkins.
The documents include details on Fusion’s opposition research into Trump and the firm’s promotion of dubious stories regarding Trump to various media outlets, Durham has said. Among them are emails and attachments sent by or received by Fusion, Perkins, and Joffe.
Other communications between Fusion and Joffe appear related to the claim that the Trump Organization, Trump’s business, had a secret backchannel with a Russian bank.
Evidence purportedly substantiating that claim was brought by Michael Sussmann—at the time representing the campaign and Joffe—to the FBI, which could not substantiate the allegations. The CIA found the claims were not “technically plausible.”
The motion was brought in the case against Sussmann, who is set to go on trial later in May for allegedly lying to the FBI when he said he was not bringing the information on behalf of a client.
The documents in question may or may not ultimately be made available to the general public.
The motion asked Cooper, an Obama appointee, to agree to compel the parties to produce unredacted forms of the documents and then review the documents in private.
After conducting such a review, Durham requested the court to give prosecutors access to unredacted versions of any documents the judge determines aren’t shielded by privilege. Any such documents would likely be posted on the court docket, making them available for anybody to read.
10 Ways Information-Shapers Have Infiltrated Our Institutions
Sharyl Attkisson | May 4, 2022
Few matters are so important as the integrity of the information we receive and the recent degradation in its reliability.
The recent leak of a Supreme Court draft related to the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion case underscores how corrupted so many of our important institutions have become by those dedicated to shaping public opinion in a sometimes-dishonest way.
Nearly every facet of our American institutions has been infiltrated by activists, corporate and political propagandists, and even criminals.
Here are 10 key institutions that have been successfully infiltrated by information-shapers:
1. Corporations
High-profile corporations increasingly do business, or withhold business, on the basis of political considerations in an effort to sway public opinion.
Additionally, they take part in removing the ability of some people they disagree with to sell products, conduct bank transactions, or otherwise operate their businesses. One recent example is retailers, including Kohl’s and Bed, Bath & Beyond, banning popular “My Pillow” products from the company owned by conservative and ardent Trump supporter Mike Lindell.
2. Sports
Sports organizations have stepped into the political realm to try to force some views and censor or punish those who take opposing viewpoints. One recent example is Major League Baseball stripping the All-Star Game from Atlanta over a Georgia law designed to strengthen election integrity following a troubled and error-riddled 2020 election.
Sports institutions also are involved in trying to sway public discourse on the issue of males competing as females on girls’ and women’s teams, such as the swimmer born as Will Thomas who switched names to Lia Thomas and joined the women’s team at the University of Pennsylvania, setting numerous women’s records.
3. Big Tech
Big Tech’s well-known fake fact checks, censorship, and disinformation have manipulated the information landscape in a more dramatic and chilling way than most any other factor. The biggest example is Big Tech’s censorship of arguably the most important political figure of our time: Donald Trump.
Recent major examples of the sector fostering disinformation include amplifying claims that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation and censoring stories about it; repeatedly backing false information related to COVID-19, while censoring accurate information or legitimate scientific views; and falsely labeling the COVID-19 lab origin story as a conspiracy theory.
4. Public Health Agencies
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health agencies have increasingly departed from the realm of public interest and science in order to advance false narratives and disinformation. Recent examples include the head of CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, falsely claiming that people who are vaccinated don’t carry and can’t spread COVID-19; and the agency knowingly putting out disinformation that falsely claimed original studies showed the vaccine’s benefit for people who’d already had COVID-19.
Another example is National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials Drs. Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci privately working with the media to smear and discredit highly credentialed scientists who disagreed with the lockdown approach to COVID-19.
5. Congress
Members of Congress in both parties have gotten caught taking part in questionable information-shaping and manipulation, particularly when it comes to pharmaceutical-related material. One recent example is members of Congress unilaterally writing letters to or contacting Big Tech in order to get certain topics or scientific studies and discussions controversialized or banned.
Some of the members of Congress who are engaged in the efforts are the same ones responsible for their own high-profile disinformation campaigns. A recent example of that is Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who repeatedly pushed false and misleading information on the Trump–Russia narrative, lobbying Big Tech to censor certain information related to COVID-19.
6. The Executive Branch
Having lost the most powerful tool in its arsenal to shape information, the executive branch has now formed its own extra-Constitutional agency to serve that function: the Disinformation Governance Board. The named head of the board, Nina Jankowicz, has widely furthered disinformation in the past.
7. The Media
With blogs and quasi-news outlets such as Axios, Slate, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Vox, Salon, Talking Points Memo, and Rolling Stone joining more traditional partisan outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, Politico, MSNBC, NBC, The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times in dominating the information landscape—while their conservative equivalents are controversialized—the media has proven to rank close to Big Tech in terms of their influence in further misinformation.
8. Academia and Public Schools
America’s colleges and universities have taken increasingly heavy-handed roles in terms of squelching free speech and free thought (when it leans against progressive or radical views), in exchange for a managed environment where only carefully filtered views are allowed, and specific language, expressions, and behavior are mandated.
Many public school systems have grown stronger in efforts to install social engineering and political ideology in teachings and policies. Recent examples include policies involving the use of pronouns when referring to transgender students, and the instruction of critical race theory.
9. Dept. of Justice, FBI, and Other Intel Agencies
The very agencies that should remain furthest above the fray with clean hands have found themselves repeatedly muddied involving major investigations and their political influence efforts. One recent example is the criminal conviction of FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who falsified a document in order to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Though multiple people would have known about the crime—possibly participating, and staying silent—only Clinesmith was charged.
He was only charged with a relatively minor crime in relation to the significance, and avoided any prison time. Meanwhile, the agency hasn’t offered any apology or redress to Page. Other examples include the Department of Justice targeting school parents as possible terrorists, and lopsided prosecution efforts regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, compared to many more violent events and crimes.
Additionally, intel operators have taken major roles both in front of the camera and behind the scenes to try to shape public opinion using false information and propaganda. One recent example is the “more than 50 former intelligence officials” who “signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance” of an accurate New York Post story about the Hunter Biden laptop.
10. The Supreme Court
Whether it’s the leak to multiple press outlets about Justice Stephen Breyer’s impending retirement or the more problematic new leak of the Roe v. Wade abortion draft, information-shapers have infiltrated the highest court in the land.
Judge Orders Fusion GPS Tech Expert to Testify in Clinton Attorney’s Trial
May 3, 2022 Updated: May 3, 2022
A Fusion GPS employee with “unique insight” into how her company, the Clinton campaign, and its law firm orchestrated “opposition research” into the Trump campaign that spurred the debunked “Russiagate” investigation will testify in the government’s case against former Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann.United States District Judge Christopher Cooper Tuesday granted Special Counsel John Durham’s motion to compel Fusion GPS “tech maven” Laura Seago to testify when Sussmann’s trial begins May 16 in federal court in Washington, DC. Federal prosecutors, led by Durham, have charged Sussmann with one count of making a false statement.Durham maintains that in August 2016, Sussmann and Clinton campaign lead counsel Marc Elias met with Neustar executive Rodney Joffe—whose company was contracted to monitor DNS traffic for the Executive Office—and “encouraged” Joffe to concoct a “narrative” tying the Trump Organization to Alfa-Bank, the largest private bank in Russia.
New Emails Released by Durham Detail Extensive Collusion Between Media and Clinton Campaign | Truth Over News
Special counsel John Durham published 62 pages of emails that detail extensive—and early—contact between Clinton operatives Fusion GPS and prominent members of the corporate media.
What makes Durham’s disclosure so explosive isn’t that the media parroted Clinton campaign talking points; we already knew that pushing Clinton narratives into the public realm was the media’s main occupation during the 2016 presidential campaign. The real bombshell is that members of the corporate media were actively collaborating with Clinton operatives to create those narratives—including enthusiastically participating in a scheme to frame an innocent man.
These email exchanges disclosed by Durham involved The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Reuters, Slate Magazine, and Yahoo News.
When contacted for comment on these revelations, not a single reporter or news outlet implicated in the collusion with Fusion replied. Nor has there been any apology—or admission—of their collusion.
Clinton Campaign, DNC Misreported Opposition Research as Legal Services: FEC
By Zachary Stieber April 28, 2022
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) labeled payments that went to Fusion GPS for opposition research against her rival Donald Trump as going to legal services, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) determined.
A yearslong investigation into the matter, triggered by multiple complaints, led commission lawyers to conclude that payments reported as legal services actually went to Fusion to dig into Trump, documents released on April 28 show.
Invoices “demonstrate that Fusion was providing opposition research services related to Trump and Russia, and there is no evidence that Fusion provided services other than this opposition research,” the lawyers wrote in a brief.
The campaign, Hillary for America (HFA), and the DNC tapped the law firm Perkins Coie to assist them with legal matters ahead of the 2016 election. Perkins contracted Fusion, a firm founded by former Wall Street Journal reporters. Fusion later paid Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy who compiled the infamous Trump–Russia dossier.
The government investigation started in 2018 after the Coolidge Reagan Foundation and two other parties lodged separate complaints asserting the Democrat entities violated federal law that requires political committees to report disbursements over $200 per year.
“By intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Coie and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments, HFA and the DNC were able to avoid publicly reporting on their statutorily required FEC disclosure forms the fact that they were paying Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump with the intent of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the Coolidge complaint stated.
The new documents show the accused objecting to the accusations, alleging Fusion’s work was entirely in support of Perkins’ legal services for the campaign and the DNC.
“Fusion GPS was doing research but they were doing research for Perkins Coie at Perkins Coie’s direction to inform Perkins Coie’s legal advice that Perkins Coie then provided legal services to HFA and DNC,” Graham Wilson with Elias Law Group, representing the Democrat entities, told FEC commissioners at a probable cause hearing.
“There’s really no evidence in the record that Fusion GPS wasn’t in furtherance of Perkins Coie’s legal services,” he added later.
But a review of the arguments offered by the parties, and the documents they shared in response to subpoenas—including wire payments, copies of checks, and invoices—provided evidence that Fusion was performing opposition research, not helping with legal services.
“Comparing the invoices from Perkins Coie with those from Fusion make clear that Perkins Coie billed the DNC and HFA for 100% of the services rendered by Fusion to Perkins Coie, because the amounts and dates of the invoices match,” FEC lawyers said.
In their initial report, the counsel said that available information “suggests that HFA and the DNC did not properly disclose the purpose of the disbursements to Perkins Coie, for what appears to have been opposition research done by Fusion.” They also said there were signs that the entities were aware of Fusion’s work, including how Marc Elias, formerly of both Perkins and the Clinton campaign, received briefings from Fusion’s Glenn Simpson on the research and briefed Robby Mook, HFA’s campaign manager, on what he learned. Mook, meanwhile, provided the budget authorization to Perkins for research into Trump’s businesses. Simpson told congressional investigators that he believed Perkins engaged Fusion on behalf of other parties and knew Perkins represented the DNC.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC agreed to pay fines to settle the matter, but admitted no wrongdoing. The new documents provide more insight into the investigation that led to the settlements.
Dan Backer, who filed the complaint for Coolidge, told The Epoch Times recently that the case was “the first time that [Clinton] has actually been held accountable for misconduct … so I think it’s a great step for accountability.”
After the agreements were signed, commission lawyers recommended accepting them and closing the case. The FEC agreed. The commission also dismissed allegations against Steele, Elias, Perkins, and Fusion.
As far as the Steele dossier, commission lawyers said information they reviewed suggests Fusion did not provide a written copy to Elias or Perkins but did share oral reports to Elias, who “summarized some of that information for HFA and the DNC.” The dossier was not mentioned in the followup report.
Wilson told commissioners that there was no evidence in the record that the dossier was provided to Perkins, much less HFA or DNC.
Russia Hoax: Durham Staffer Accidentally Reveals Emails Showing Coordination Between Fusion GPS And Media
Another significant filing by John Durham’s special counsel team to the court was made Monday night. {READ HERE} Within the filing the staff accidentally did not seal the attachments which are emails between Fusion GPS and many major media outlets. Whoops.
Monday night, in a responsive filing connected to all of the privilege claims, John Durham deconstructed the nature of their defense. Techno-Fog has a good outline {SEE HERE} of the court documents. However, attached to the filing were exhibits supposed to be filed under seal that the Durham staff “accidentally” did not seal right away.
The exhibit consists of the emails between Fusion GPS and media as the opposition research team attempted to push the Trump-Russia collusion story into the media bloodstream -through their ideologically aligned allies- in 2016.
The emails show how extensive Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch pushed the Trump Russia story. The emails show the coordinated effort of Fusion GPS with multiple journalists, producers and media outlets. You can read the emails HERE.
I’m not going to publish the emails because the contacts, addresses, phone numbers etc. are not redacted; but you can clearly see the scale of who was involved.
The emails show journalists from Politico, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC all feeding from the same trough of manipulated information being fed from Fusion GPS. The journalists, producers and Fusion GPS all working in close coordination to push the false Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy.
The accidentally public emails highlight a soup-to-nuts ‘who’s-who‘ of political disinformation. {SEE HERE}
Additionally, the Durham filing itself {SEE HERE} gives us another granular look at how the prosecution is walking the tightrope of carefully balanced prosecution of leftist activists, lawfare people and political organizations outside government.
Within the filing the privilege claims are easily dispatched by prosecutor Andrew J. DeFilippis, Assistant Special Counsel to John Durham. One key paragraph is a little funny in that the prosecution uses the defense position against them. The prosecution states the “purported privilege holders who have intervened do so in a case in which the defendant has denied representing any client when he brought the Russian Bank-1 allegations to the FBI.”
The privilege controversy itself seemingly entraps Michael Sussmann. How can Sussmann claim attorney-client privilege when his defense is to say he wasn’t working on behalf of any client when he brought the information to the FBI? Whoopsie daisy.
All of that said, there’s another interesting aspect to this specific filing if you stand back away from the granular legal details and look at the arc of the prosecution within it. It appears to me that Michael Sussmann is not the REAL target of this prosecution, Marc Elias is.
It looks like John Durham is using the prosecution of Sussmann, and all the details within the case, to box in a very easy prosecution of Michael Sussmann’s boss, the infamous Democrat lawyer, Marc Elias. Read the filing and you see how Perkins Coie and Marc Elias are clearly and purposefully outlined as having the major role in the activity of Sussmann. All prosecutorial roads against Sussmann are leading to Elias.
That risk would certainly explain why Marc Elias left Perkins Coie immediately after the Alfa Bank lawsuit against Fusion GPS revealed the connective tissue, and then John Durham start focusing on Perkins Coie and Michael Sussmann.
Given the ideological and political nature of the DOJ under AG Merrick Garland and Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, it makes sense that John Durham would not and importantly, could not, go directly at Marc Elias.
Marc Elias is the biggest Lawfare fish in the world of Democrats. He is the primary legal mind and legal entity around the entire Democrat apparatus from elections to electoral maps. Elias is the leftists modern legal Moses.
If John Durham was viewed to be targeting Elias directly, his special counsel investigation would be shut down tomorrow, regardless of political backlash. Marc Elias is to outside government as Barack Obama is to inside government.
The DOJ would immediately stop Durham if he was obviously targeting Elias. Inside the firestorm that follows, the political media would rally the wagons around protecting Garland, Monaco and Biden ….and after a few days of republicans in the legislative branch gnashing their teeth on Hannity, Ingraham et al, the explosive decision would blow over. DC would make or create some massive shiny thing to cover the controversy.
Bottom Line: Marc Elias is protected by both wings of the professionally political UniParty.
That said, if in the prosecution of Michael Sussmann, it became obvious that Marc Elias was guilty of organizing a criminal conspiracy to defraud the Unites States government on behalf of the Clinton campaign, well, that would be incidental, and that’s how Durham could get to Elias.
Marc Elias is likely to be the biggest catchable fish in the carefully navigated prosecution of those outside government.
Clinton Operatives Submit Legal Filings to Prevent Durham From Obtaining Crucial Emails | Truth Over News
In a coordinated legal action between a number of Hillary Clinton operatives and associates, almost two dozen separate documents were simultaneously filed in special counsel John Durham’s case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.
This sudden panic of mass filings included responses from campaign chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook, Clinton lead campaign lawyer Marc Elias, Clinton campaign contractors Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign itself, and even the Democratic National Committee.
The trigger for this flurry of filings was a request by Durham to unseal a number of emails involving these same parties. The emails are currently being withheld on very questionable grounds of attorney-client privilege. Whatever resides within those emails, based on the coordinated filings, it appears that a large number of important people associated with the Clinton campaign are very concerned about that information becoming public.
John Ratcliffe: 'There's a difference' between helping Ukraine and doing this
Former director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe joins 'Sunday Morning Futures' to discuss the Biden administration's leniency on Russia and John Durham's Russian collusion investigation. #FoxNews
Ratcliffe predicts still-classified documents will blow Durham inquiry wide open
By Daniel Chaitin, Deputy News Editor | Washington Exaiminer | April 24, 2022:
A great deal more Russiagate intelligence remains shrouded from public view and will stun the nation, according to former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe.
The Trump-era spy chief expounded upon his expectation that there will be many more indictments in special counsel John Durham’s criminal inquiry into the origins and conduct of the Russia investigation.
“I expect there to be a lot more indictments to be forthcoming from John Durham besides the ones that have trickled out so far. And that’s based upon documents, some of which — many of which are not yet declassified,” Ratcliffe said during a recent episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman from Texas who oversaw the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies in the latter part of the Trump administration, announced in October 2020 that he had handed over nearly 1,000 pages of materials to the Justice Department to assist Durham, who is revealing more secrets as he takes people to court.
Durham has two active prosecutions, including a case against the main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier and a case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, whose trial is scheduled to begin next month. Durham has obtained only a single guilty plea, which came from former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to altering an email about a Trump campaign aide under government surveillance.
“The coordinated effort here that took place in 2016 was wide and broad. I think it involved folks in the Clinton campaign, in the Democratic national party, elected officials, media officials, folks that coordinated — intelligence community officials, and on down the line,” Ratcliffe said. “I’m not saying that every single one of those folks have criminal liability or exposure. I’m just saying this was a very coordinated effort and the more and more the public finds out about the things that I’ve seen that remain classified, they’ll be more and more appalled by those efforts in 2016
John Durham Issues Trial Subpoenas to Members of Clinton Campaign, DNC
By Katabella Roberts April 25, 2022
Special counsel John Durham has issued trial subpoenas for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Fusion GPS, and Perkins Coie as he continues to prosecute his findings as special counsel, from which he charged cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, who in 2016 represented the Clinton campaign, with lying to the FBI.
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the DNC, Washington-based private intelligence firm Fusion GPS, and law firm Perkins Coie, Sussmann’s former employer, meanwhile, are trying to fend off Durham’s efforts to compel them to hand over previously withheld documents.
The campaign and Sussmann’s lawyers argue that attorney-client privilege should allow them to keep the records concealed.
Durham, who was tasked around March-May 2019 with reviewing the origins of the 2016-2017 FBI investigation of the now disproven Trump–Russia collusion narrative, says his investigation has led him to believe that the Clinton-allied groups played a coordinating role in pushing the false claims.
In May 2017, special counsel and former FBI head Robert Mueller ultimately found no Trump-Russia collusion to sway the 2016 election.
Earlier this month, Durham said that Fusion GPS “was not primarily providing or supporting expertise relating to legal advice; instead, it appears that the investigative firm’s primary, if not sole, function was to generate opposition research materials that the firm then shared widely.”
On April 23, Durham said of the groups, “meeting to agree on the express goal of a joint venture is precisely what happened here, on more than one occasion.”
Read More
Kash Patel: Clinton Campaign Affiliates Are Trying to Bury Michael Sussmann | Kash’s Corner
The special counsel said that “Tech Executive-1” Rodney Joffe, “Originator-1” April Lorenzen of the information services firm Zetalytics, and other researchers started to discuss “searching for and collecting derogatory internet data about the online activities of Donald Trump and his associates” in June 2016.
Lorenzen “assembled and shared initial purported data” with Joffe, “who, in turn, shared the data” with Sussmann, Durham added.
“The joint venture continued and crystallized early in August 2016,” when Sussmann, Joffe, and “agents of the Clinton Campaign” met, Durham said, while citing an Aug. 12, 2016, meeting where Sussmann, Joffe, Marc Elias (former Perkins Coie partner), and the co-founder of Fusion gathered in Elias’s office to discuss “the same Russian Bank-1 allegations that the defendant would later bring to the FBI.”
“The parties agreed to conduct work in the hope that it would benefit the Clinton Campaign, namely, gathering and disseminating purportedly derogatory data regarding Trump and his associates’ internet activities,” Durham wrote.
“The evidence will show that as a result of these conversations and during this same time period, Tech Executive-1 did exactly that: he tasked employees from multiple Internet companies and a university working under a pending national security contract to mine and gather vast amounts of internet metadata in order to support an ‘inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying the candidate [Trump] to Russia.”
Durham went on to add that Joffe continued the “joint venture” via an Aug. 17, 2016, call with Sussmann and Elias, an Aug. 19, 2016, meeting with Sussmann and Elias, and a Sept. 8, 2016, call and meeting with Sussmann.
All of these, Durham said, citing calendars he has viewed, were billed to the Clinton Campaign by the defendant.
Durham further stated that Joffe also requested the CEO of an internet company to mine and analyze huge amounts of internet traffic for derogatory information regarding Trump and his associate’s online communications and internet connections.
Joffe also sent the CEO of the internet company a list containing private information, such as email addresses, IP addresses, and physical addresses of multiple Trump associates, many of whom were being researched by Fusion, Durham said.
Joffe had made clear his desire to ensure that Perkins and the Clinton campaign would be “happy” with the information he had discovered, Durham added.
Sussman was indicted in September 2021 for lying to the FBI when he claimed he had information about an alleged secret communication channel between Trump and a Russian bank; claims which ultimately proved to be false.
Sussman allegedly told then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in October 2016, while making the claims of alleged communications, that he was not representing any client, while he, in fact, was billing the time to the Clinton campaign.
Following the subpoenas, lawyers for Sussman moved to prevent materials being admitted in the case with their argument that they are protected by attorney-client privilege. They’ve called Durham’s subpoenas “astonishing and legally inappropriate.”
“The Special Counsel continues to overreach: he seeks to admit evidence that the law squarely forbids, he seeks to prove unduly prejudicial allegations he has not charged, and he seeks to prove conduct that is utterly irrelevant to the one discrete crime he has charged,” the lawyers said.
Durham disputes that.
He maintains that “the goal of the joint venture could not have been more clear: it was to gather and disseminate derogatory non-public information regarding the internet activities of a political candidate and his associates,” he wrote in a April 23 court filing.
Cases handled by special counsel John Durham have produced a flurry of notable discoveries that shed more light on the sprawling yearslong investigation. Durham so far has three indictments and one guilty plea under his belt, with some indications that there may be more in the pipeline.
Durham was tasked around March-May 2019 with reviewing the 2016-2017 FBI investigation of alleged nefarious ties between candidate and later President Donald Trump and Russia. In October 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham a special counsel. In February 2021, Durham resigned his position as a federal prosecutor after 35 years with the Department of Justice (DOJ), where he handled some of the most prominent investigations of FBI misconduct. At age 72, his current job may just be the last chapter and culmination of his career.
The investigation has led Durham into some of the deep recesses of the D.C. political machine. As the current record indicates, multiple federal agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, were sicced on Trump and his associates by operatives tied to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the presidential campaign of former State Secretary Hillary Clinton. The FBI launched a sprawling investigation into Trump’s campaign with some of the FBI officials most deeply involved in the probe privately expressing strong animus against Trump and preference for Clinton.
A stream of leaks from the federal bureaucracy facilitated an avalanche of misinformation that to this day has many Americans convinced that Trump was secretly in cahoots with Moscow. The pale of the media frenzy as well as the FBI probe—which was taken over in May 2017 by a special counsel, former FBI head Robert Mueller—hamstrung Trump’s foreign policy toward Russia. The repercussions are still felt today, some experts have argued.
Mueller ultimately concluded that no Trump-Russia collusion to sway the 2016 election could be established. Durham is looking at both the origin of the Russia probe as well as how it was conducted before Mueller took over.
In stark contrast to the Mueller probe, there’s been a dearth of leaks from Durham’s team.
As far as the reports go, Durham has enlisted assistance of the governments of the United Kingdom, Italy, and Australia. He’s interviewed dozens of individuals, including former CIA Director John Brennan, and subpoenaed thousands of documents.
His first indictment, in August 2020, targeted former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith for altering a CIA email to say that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page was “not a source,” when in fact he was providing information to the agency. The message was then used as a part of an application to extend surveillance of Page. FBI Director Christopher Wray later admitted that the surveillance was illegal.
Clinesmith pleaded guilty and in January 2021 received a year of probation and 400 hours of community service. Prosecutors demanded six months in jail. His license to practice law in D.C. was reinstated after less than a year.
In September 2021, Durham indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who in 2016 represented the Clinton campaign, for lying to the FBI. Sussmann approached then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in October 2016 with information about a supposed secret communications channel between Trump and a Russian bank, which, it turned out, was false. Sussmann allegedly told Barker he wasn’t there representing any client, when in fact he was billing the time to the Clinton campaign. Sussmann’s lawyers attacked the indictment for relying on a single witness, Baker, but then Durham revealed an email from Sussmann to Baker explicitly saying Sussmann was reaching out not representing any client.
In November 2021, Durham indicted Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst formerly with the Brookings Institution, for lying to the FBI. Danchenko was paid to collect dirt on Trump by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was in turn hired (through intermediaries) to collect dirt on Trump by the Clinton campaign.
As it turned out, much of the resulting “Steele dossier” was fabricated. Danchenko told the FBI some of the information came from Belarus-born real estate agent Sergei Millian, which was false, Durham’s indictment said. In fact, Millian never spoke with Danchenko.
A significant portion of what Danchenko collected appears to have been provided to him by longtime Clinton operative Charles Dolan, who himself has deep ties to Russia. The information, laced with fabrications, was then folded by Steele into his dossier. Dolan admitted to the FBI that he provided (and fabricated) some of the information.
Recent filings in the Sussmann case revealed that the lawyer, formerly with the DOJ, peddled to the CIA data that showed supposedly suspicious existence of a Russian-made phone in Trump’s vicinity. The CIA assessed the data was “user-created,” possibly fabricated, and contradicted itself, according to Durham’s team.
Earlier this week, Sussmann, the Clinton campaign, the DNC, Sussmann’s former employer and law firm Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS (retained by Perkins Coie to research Trump), and several Clinton operatives asked the court to prevent revelation of certain emails and documents that they say are protected by attorney-client privilege. They largely argue that Perkins Coie was hired by the Clinton campaign to provide legal services and the research on Trump was done to support those services and is thus covered by the privilege. The Durham team disputes that.
The trial is scheduled for mid-May.
The Durham team in recent court documents hinted at an assertion that there was a conspiracy between the various operatives tied to the Clinton campaign. Criminal conspiracy is a federal crime, but it needs to be tied to an underlying crime. Two or more people have to agree to break a federal law and then take at least one “overt act”—even if innocuous on its own—to carry out the plan. Durham has so far brought no conspiracy charges.
John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence under Trump, said last year he believes “there will be many indictments based on the intelligence that I gave to John Durham and that I have seen.”
All three current cases of Durham’s have highlighted the tight-knit nature of the federal judicial and law enforcement community in the D.C. area.
The judge in the Clinesmith case, James Boasberg, sits on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approved spying on Page based primarily on the Steele dossier and partly on the false information provided by Clinesmith.
The judge in the Danchenko case, Anthony Trenga, presided over the Mueller-brought case against former business partner of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump. Trenga threw out the conviction in that case for a lack of evidence.
The judge in the Sussmann case, Christopher Reid Cooper, used to be a colleague of Sussmann’s at the DOJ. His wife, Amy Jeffress, is a lawyer for Lisa Page, formerly a high-level FBI attorney who’s now suing the DOJ. Page was deeply embedded in the Russia investigation. She was also a mistress of Peter Strzok, former head of FBI counterintelligence operations and a point man in the Russia probe. Cooper and Jeffress also have close ties to the Democratic Party. Cooper served on the 2008 transition team of President Barack Obama, Jeffress spent 20 years at the DOJ and was a national security counselor for Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, and their wedding was officiated by Merrick Garland, the current Attorney General.
Breaking Down the Flurry of Legal Filings by Clinton Campaign Associates in Durham’s Prosecution of Michael Sussmann
In a coordinated legal action between a number of Hillary Clinton operatives and associates, almost two dozen separate documents were simultaneously filed on April 19 in special counsel John Durham’s case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.
This sudden flurry of mass filings included responses from former Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook, Clinton campaign lead lawyer Marc Elias, contractors Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign itself, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The trigger for the flurry of filings was a request by Durham to unseal a number of emails involving the parties. The emails are currently being withheld on very questionable grounds of attorney–client privilege. Based on the coordinated filings, it appears that a large number of important people associated with the Clinton campaign are very concerned about the information in those emails becoming public.
Based on available metadata, it appears as if most of the individuals involved in Clinton’s scheme to vilify Trump with claims of Russia collusion were all communicating with each other as that scheme unfolded in real time.
The first person who filed in response to Durham’s request was Rodney Joffe, the tech executive who produced data that purportedly tied Trump to Russia. Joffe had been promised a top government job in case of a Hillary Clinton election victory.
Joffe claimed in his filing that his communications should be treated as privileged because they were part of his attorney-client relationship with Sussmann. Joffe was indeed a client of Sussmann’s starting in 2015. But, in an unexpected and perhaps unintentional comment, Joffe also disclosed that he had hired Sussmann specifically to advise him how to share sensitive information concerning Trump with government agencies—without revealing his identity and thereby exposing himself to potential liability.
In effect, Joffe publicly admitted that he hired Sussmann to take information about Trump to the FBI. The problem for Sussmann is that he’s been charged with lying about exactly that point. Sussmann claimed–in an email to then FBI General Counsel James Baker–that he wasn’t taking the information to the FBI on behalf of any client but instead was merely acting as a good Samaritan.
If Joffe throwing Sussmann under the proverbial bus wasn’t bad enough, the next filing was even worse for Sussmann. It came from Clinton campaign operatives Fusion GPS who also want their emails to be withheld from Durham.
In order to obtain the benefit of attorney–client privilege, Fusion now claims to have assisted Sussmann and his law firm with legal matters.
That claim is demonstrably false as Fusion’s main role—acknowledged by Fusion’s owners Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch in their book—was to conduct opposition research on Trump and seed those stories with the media.
To make matters even worse, Simpson and Fritsch admitted that in writing in their 2019 book “Crime in Progress.” It appears as if Fusion’s lawyers didn’t read their client’s book ahead of their filing. This blunder won’t have gone unnoticed by Durham’s team.
The next filing came from Perkins Coie, the legal firm for which Clinton campaign lawyers Sussmann and Elias worked in 2016. Perkins didn’t want to disclose any of its emails either, but the excuse was a lot simpler. The firm noted that Elias had left the company last year and had taken all of the related files with him.
A separate submission came from Elias himself. Elias, a well-known Democratic Party lawyer, made an argument that essentially mirrored that of Fusion, namely that Fusion was providing Perkins Coie with input that was related to legal advice, and any communications were therefore covered by privilege. Elias failed to address the basic fact that Fusion had been hired to collect and disseminate opposition research to the media. Elias similarly didn’t address that Sussmann himself had disseminated Fusion’s stories to the media, as well as to the FBI, thereby piercing any pretense of attorney–client privilege.
But the most interesting filing came from Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. Like everyone else, Mook’s main objective was to claim that everything that had been done took place within a legal advice relationship. But unlike the others, Mook didn’t actually claim that everything was above board. Instead, he repeatedly asserted that he thought everything was done above board.
[.....]
But the flurry of filings wasn’t the only major development in the Durham investigation. In a subsequent hearing on Wednesday, a Durham prosecutor told Obama appointee Judge Christopher Cooper that the project to link Trump and Russia through DNS data had actually originated with Joffe. The prosecution stated that Joffe’s plan was carried out through the help of Clinton campaign agents. Durham’s team also revealed that there were meetings between Elias, Sussmann and Joffe during which Joffe was allegedly encouraged to create “imprints” that would tie Trump to Russia through data.
It’s not yet known exactly how Durham’s office came to know about the meeting between Elias, Joffe, and Sussmann, but if such a meeting actually did take place, it would completely destroy any pretense that the relationship between these parties had anything to with providing legal services. This discovery also could land Elias and Joffe in significant legal trouble for lying in their filings to the court.
Durham Filing Reveals CIA Knew in Early 2017 That Data Tying Trump to Russia Was Fake
As the trial of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann approaches, special counsel John Durham and Sussmann’s lawyers are arguing over what evidence can be admitted. As part of those arguments, Durham filed a “routine” response late on April 15, detailing why the evidence he’s seeking to admit is both relevant and admissible.
These back-and-forth filings are common in the weeks leading up to federal trials, but the disclosures made by Durham are anything but routine.
The most striking of these disclosures concerns data trails that Sussmann and his cohorts, including “Tech Executive-1” Rodney Joffe, had supposedly uncovered between Trump and the Russian Alfa Bank. It was widely claimed that these data trails established a direct communications channel between Trump and the Russian government.
Sussmann took the data to the FBI in September 2016 hoping to trigger an investigation into Trump and his campaign. The existence of an FBI investigation would then be used by the Clinton campaign as a media kill shot against Trump in the final weeks of the 2016 election.
The scheme didn’t work as planned, and Trump went on to win the election. But this setback didn’t put the brakes on an operation that had now turned into an effort to hobble Trump’s presidency. In February 2017, after Trump was inaugurated, Sussmann took the same data trails to the CIA.
CIA Knew Early on That Sussmann Data Fabricated
Durham has now disclosed that the CIA immediately knew that both data trails were fake, finding that they were not “technically plausible,” that they didn’t “withstand technical scrutiny,” that they “contained gaps,” that they conflicted with themselves, and that they were “user-created” and not machine- or tool-generated.
The data provided by Sussmann consisted of alleged internet lookups between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank as well as alleged use of a Russian-made YotaPhone in Trump’s vicinity at Trump Tower, near a Trump interview in Michigan, and near the White House after he was elected president.
[......]
We also knew that those two prongs converged in late July 2016—directly in front of the FBI’s opening of its investigation into the Trump campaign—when Steele and Sussmann met in Washington along with a host of other Clinton campaign operatives.
Until now, Durham hadn’t connected the two prongs of Clinton’s plan, choosing instead to focus on Sussmann’s alleged crime of lying to the FBI.
That has now changed. Durham has told the court that Sussmann and Steele were two parts of the same joint venture, a move that inches us closer to possible conspiracy charges being brought by Durham against participants in the scheme. Connecting Sussmann directly to the Clinton campaign’s broader efforts to vilify Trump also establishes a motive for Sussmann’s actions.
Specifically, Durham states that Sussmann “represented and worked for the Clinton Campaign in connection with its broader opposition research efforts,” and that through his coordination with Steele, Fusion GPS, and Joffe, Sussmann took steps to integrate the Alfa Bank allegations into those opposition research efforts.
Durham also is now focusing on the fact that Sussmann personally told Steele about the Alfa Bank data trail at their July 2016 meeting. And as we already know, Steele was then tasked with writing a dossier report on the Alfa allegations.
Durham also notes that Steele’s report on the Alfa Bank allegations was completed only a few days before Sussmann brought the allegations to the FBI. Even more astonishingly, Durham points out that the FBI was given Steele’s dossier by Fusion GPS on the very same day that Sussmann took the Alfa allegations to the FBI.
And finally, Durham has announced that there are at least two individuals who have apparently flipped and have been offered immunity.
2 Individuals Offered Immunity by Durham
Notably, the first of these individuals—who has not been named by Durham—is an employee at Fusion GPS, the firm of Clinton campaign contractors who coordinated the efforts to jointly push Steele’s and Sussmann’s allegations into the media. It’s not known what the Fusion employee has told Durham, but given the overarching question facing the jury—whether Sussmann went to the FBI to push a false narrative or was merely acting as a good Samaritan—it’s entirely possible that the Fusion GPS employee will testify that Sussmann’s efforts were part of a broader scheme to falsely vilify Trump.
The second person that’s been offered immunity is David Dagon, an IT operative from Georgia Tech. Dagon was part of a small group of IT specialists tasked by Joffe to find data that linked Trump to Russia. Durham previously revealed that this group of IT operatives knew they couldn’t manufacture any claims that “would fly public scrutiny.” These same operatives also admitted in private that “the only thing that drove them to do what they were doing was that they ‘just do not like Trump.'”
Durham has now told the court that he gave Dagon immunity as the other IT operatives in the Joffe’s group had invoked their right against self-incrimination. Giving Dagon immunity was the only way Durham could obtain “otherwise-unavailable facts” underlying the Clinton campaign’s scheme to vilify Trump.
That both Dagon and a Fusion GPS employee are now cooperating with Durham is significant—not only in the Sussmann case, but for all the Clinton campaign operatives who were involved in the scheme.
It’s now left to Sussmann’s lawyers to persuade the trial judge—Obama-appointee Christopher Cooper—to throw out all this new evidence as well as Durham’s proposed witnesses. They may try to argue that the conspiracy, even if it existed, is not relevant to what Sussmann has been charged with—namely, lying to the FBI. Durham has already indicated that if this were to happen, he would object on the grounds that the existence of a conspiracy is compelling evidence of Sussmann’s motive when he lied to the FBI.
Ultimately, the judge will decide what evidence will and will not be allowed.
The bigger question that looms is whether Durham will charge anyone with conspiracy. He clearly has plenty of evidence, but for reasons not fully understood, he has not used that evidence to date. It may be that he faces significant internal pressure from DOJ officials. It may also be that he’s trying to extend the legal clock until after the midterms, knowing that prosecuting the Clinton campaign will require political cover.
Or it may simply be that Durham is waiting for more evidence that would allow him to charge top campaign officials. This argument is backed by the fact that the two people who received immunity are too far down the food chain to have known anything about the extent of involvement from top Clinton campaign officials.
Durham provided to the Court two sets of notes related to Sussman’s representations to the CIA. The first was from Sussman’s January 31, 2017 contacts with a CIA employee where Sussman discussed wanting to provide to the CIA data on “the presence and activity of a unique Russian made phone around President Trump.” It was said that this secret activity started in April 2016 and continued after Trump’s “move to the White House.”
Sussman alleged the Russian phone (YotaPhone) was always close to Trump (“only around the President’s Movements”), surfacing at his Trump Tower Network in April 2016 and being used through Wi-Fi at Trump’s Grand Central West apartment. The phone even “appeared with Trump in Michigan” when he was interviewing a Cabinet Secretary.
At a minimum, this confirms what we reported nearly two months ago: that the Trump transition data was passed to the CIA. Yet it’s also more than that. The CIA was provided with data all the way back from April 2016.
Why does April 2016 matter? Because Russia was alleged to have hacked “the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and DNC networks in April 2016.” Recall that “Crowdstrike was contacted on April 30, 2016 to respond to a suspected breach” of the DNC.
The CIA Notes Part 2: Sussmann’s February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA
That January 31, 2017 conference was used to schedule the February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA. At that meeting, Sussman repeated his allegations that a “Russian-made Yota-phone” had been seen at Trump properties and had traveled with Trump to Michigan. He further alleged that “In December 2016, the Yota-phone was seen connecting to WIFI from the Executive Office of the President (the White House).”
A brief but necessary aside: The Washington Post alleged us to have fanned “the flames” on the Sussman/Joffe spying operation, taking us to task for stating (correctly): “They spied on Trump.” I hope the Washington Post is reading this, because the CIA notes confirm what we reported and what we told them via e-mail. Techno 1, WaPo 0.
Back to the Durham Filing – and the CIA’s analysis of the Sussman/Joffe data.
The CIA reviewed the Trump/YotaPhone data (and the Alfa Bank data) in early 2017. The fact that the CIA accepted this data on President Trump is its own scandal. In any event, the CIA’s findings are significant, as they concluded that the data was not “technically plausible” and was “user created and not machine/tool generated.”
(I’ve been asked about the last part of that paragraph, which says the “Special Counsel’s Office has not reached a definitive conclusion in this regard.” The term “definitive conclusion” stands out, making me suspect he has “initial” conclusions on the data. Durham’s filings in this case suggest he agrees with the CIA.)
Anyway, what a finding by the CIA. Of course, this only leads to more questions:
Which “user” created the data?
Does it go back to the Joffe conspiracy?
And who else is part of that conspiracy?
For that last question, consider this revelation from a previous Durham filing:
As to those questions of a conspiracy, Durham’s granting of immunity provides some insight. As we suspected back on April 5, “Researcher-2” (identified as David Dagon) has been given immunity. The reason? So that Durham can “uncover otherwise-unavailable facts” relating to the Alfa Bank project.
Dagon being granted immunity is certainly important, as Durham states that Rodney Joffe – who led the Alfa Bank hoax effort – remains a “subject” of the investigation. While Sussman and others argue that it’s impossible to prosecute Joffe because of the 5-year statute of limitations, Durham disagrees, stating: “defense counsel is not – and could not be – aware of all the evidence that the Government has collected and continues to collect, or the possible violations of law it is investigating.”
Durham will also be granting immunity at trial “for an individual who was employed at” Fusion GPS. I initially suspected this was Christopher Steele but was steered in the right direction after some smart folks noted the person was “employed” at Fusion GPS (as opposed to Steele, who was “retained” by Fusion GPS). This person might be Laura Seago.
This former Fusion GPS employee will likely testify to “limited information pertaining to” Christopher Steele. As Durham puts it: this will include whether Sussman was acting on behalf of the Clinton Campaign when he relayed the Alfa Bank allegations.
Finally, I leave you with some questions to consider. Start asking why Sussman and Joffe were so desperate to provide the FBI and CIA with dirt purportedly linking Trump and Russia. Sussman himself provided false statements to federal officials, and it’s becoming more and more likely that someone potentially fabricated this evidence. Sussman and Joffe risked charges - and thus jeopardized their lucrative careers - to tie Trump to Russia.
Considering the personal costs to both men, are we to believe that this was only about politics?
New DOJ Notes Reveal FBI Panic After Trump Tweeted He Knew He Was Being Spied On
Newly released notes taken by high-level Department of Justice (DOJ) officials during a March 6, 2017, meeting with FBI leadership expose some of the lengths the FBI engaged in to cover up its spying on the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump.
The notes were released on May 8 by lawyers representing former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann as part of an effort to clear him on charges of having lied to the FBI. The notes, in reality, appear to do little to exonerate Sussmann but do provide quite a bit of information on the FBI.
The meeting at which the notes were taken took place just two days after Trump’s March 4, 2017, tweet in which he accused former President Barack Obama of having wiretapped Trump Tower. Trump’s tweet panicked FBI leadership, who were unsure exactly how much Trump knew about their efforts to tie him up with Russia collusion allegations.
What the notes reveal is that in response to the tweet, they tried to cover their tracks.
By March 2017, FBI leadership already knew with near-certainty that the Trump–Russia collusion claims were a hoax. They knew that Clinton’s campaign had a plan to vilify Trump by portraying him as a puppet of Putin. The FBI also knew that not a single claim in the so-called Steele dossier—which was the primary source of allegations of Trump–Russia collusion—had checked out.
In fact, at that point, the FBI had already spent three days interviewing Steele’s primary source, Igor Danchenko, who disavowed pretty much every claim in Steele’s dossier. The FBI also knew that the Alfa Bank story, which claimed that a Trump server was communicating with a Russian bank—information that had been brought to them by Sussmann—was bogus.
In short, the FBI knew that all the claims of Trump-Russia collusion had proven to be fake.
But things took a sudden and dramatic turn on March 4, 2017, when Trump said on Twitter that he knew that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower, a very public claim of spying that set off alarm bells with both FBI and DOJ leadership. Trump’s tweet so alarmed these DOJ and FBI officials that the topic dominated a meeting two days later that included FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and the acting U.S. attorney general, Dana Boente.
The problem for the FBI was this: They didn’t know how much Trump actually knew about their actions. Just a day earlier, on March 3, 2017, radio host Mark Levin had reported that the Obama administration had obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants that involved Trump and several of his campaign advisers. Levin also reported that Trump’s off-the-cuff joke in July 2016—“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”—had become the basis for the Russia collusion accusations.
But as we now know, the FISA warrants weren’t the only thing that the FBI leadership was involved with. The FBI was actively spying on the Trump campaign and the incoming Trump administration’s transition communications, a fact that also was revealed in the new notes. The FBI had not only spied on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, but also on another aide, George Papadopoulos, going so far as to lure him to London, where they tried to set him up in a clumsy but elaborate sting.
There were also the new fake accusations brought forward by Sussmann that Trump was tied to the use of a Russian Yota phone. And there was the matter of tech executive Rodney Joffe–a man with deep ties to the FBI–who had been using his access to non-public data to spy on Trump both at Trump Tower and at the White House.
In all likelihood, Trump probably only knew what Levin had reported the day before–that there was a FISA warrant on a campaign aide–but the FBI leadership didn’t know how much Trump knew and had to assume that he knew a lot more.
The discussion at the March 6 meeting was dominated by Trump’s tweet, with the FBI’s McCabe kicking things off by stating that the bureau was trying to determine what was behind Trump’s tweets.
Epoch Times Photo
Notes at the meeting were taken by three DOJ officials—Tashina Gauhar, Mary McCord, and Scott Schools. The notes were released because one of the notes appears to show that McCabe stated that Sussmann had represented clients when he took the Alfa Bank allegations to the FBI. Sussmann initially told the FBI that he didn’t represent anyone and was merely acting as a good samaritan. It’s that lie to the FBI by Sussmann that he has been charged with and Sussmann’s lawyers are hoping to sow doubt by introducing that single sentence that appears to say otherwise.
This claim by Sussmann’s lawyers, however, is, in essence, a side-show as the notes are double-hearsay evidence written six months after Sussmann told the FBI the exact opposite.
The real bombshells are in the many pages of notes that Sussmann doesn’t cite; those notes reveal the true extent of the FBI’s panic over Trump’s tweet. The first reaction from FBI leadership appears to have been to tell the acting attorney general, Boente, a sequence of lies about their investigation.
The notes reveal that the FBI repeatedly referred to Steele’s dossier as “Crown reporting,” suggesting the dossier represented some sort of official UK government intelligence, when it was mostly information made up by Steele and Danchenko–a fact the FBI already knew at the time.
The new notes also revealed that FBI agent Peter Strzok lied to his DOJ superiors about what triggered Alexander Downer, the Australian ambassador in London, to come forward to the FBI with information regarding his meeting with Papadopolous. It has always been the FBI’s official story that it was Downer who initiated the official Trump–Russia investigation, but that story is now undermined in the new notes, in which Strzok claims that it was Trump’s joke about Russia finding Clinton’s emails that had triggered Downer.
In truth, Downer had come forward before Trump had even made the joke.
The FBI also lied to the DOJ about the Carter Page FISA warrant, which they claimed was “fruitful,” when it actually had revealed nothing nefarious–something that the FBI was aware of by this time.
tb continued...
The FBI appears to have also tried to misrepresent and elevate the Alfa Bank allegations by claiming that the Trump Organization had sent a solicitation to Alfa Bank. Again, this was completely false. The FBI knew within days of Sussmann giving them the Alfa Bank data that it was useless and probably fake.
By Sept. 23, 2016, the FBI’s IT team had disproven the Alfa Bank allegations. But rather than admit that, the FBI actually tried to breathe new life into the Alfa allegations through its misrepresentations.
All of these exculpatory facts were not just hidden from interim DOJ officials at the March 6, 2017, meeting, FBI leadership twisted those facts to make them appear like there was a strong case against Trump when they knew there was no case at all.
But the March 6 meeting was only the beginning. Knowing that Trump might now be on to them, FBI leadership immediately increased their efforts to cover their own tracks by intensifying the focus on Trump.
On March 5, 2017, the day following Trump’s tweet, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper went on CNN and claimed that there was no “wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign.”
While Clapper took a defensive stance, the FBI soon went on offense and the bureau’s efforts began almost immediately.
On March 15, 2017, FBI Director James Comey suddenly decided to brief the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), about the Carter Page FISA application, which FBI leadership believed Trump had found out about. Comey would provide them with copies of the actual FISA warrant two days later. At this same time, Comey also began his briefing of the congressional Gang of Eight—the eight individuals within the U.S. Congress who are briefed on classified intelligence matters by the executive branch—regarding the Page FISA.
On March 20, 2017, Clapper suddenly changed his narrative, shifting from denying the existence of any spying to denying any abuse of the FISA process.
Also on March 20, Comey publicly testified to Congress, revealing for the first time the existence of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump and his campaign.
During his testimony, Comey inadvertently acknowledged that he had also intentionally withheld the required congressional Gang of Eight notification of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation. Under questioning, Comey stated that he did so because of “the sensitivity of the matter.”
The combined efforts of Obama intelligence officials and the FBI would soon culminate in the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, which essentially tied up Trump for the next three years. And in doing so, they ensured that little or no progress was made in bringing the actual perpetrators of the Russia hoax to justice.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-doj-notes-reveal-fbi-panic-after-trump-tweeted-he-knew-he-was-being-spied-on_4455950.html
Special Counsel John Durham Wins Key Motion in Case Against Former Clinton Lawyer
May 4, 2022
A federal judge on May 4 granted a motion from special counsel John Durham to review documents that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other parties had claimed were protected by privilege, which means the documents may ultimately be made available to the public.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, after a hearing in Washington, granted Durham’s motion to compel production of unredacted versions of said documents from the Perkins Coie, a law firm hired by the campaign ahead of the 2016 election; Rodney Joffe, a technology executive; and Fusion GPS, a firm that specializes in opposition research that the campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) used extensively to investigate then-candidate Donald Trump—Clinton’s rival for the presidency.
The parties had resisted producing some documents and handed over redacted versions of others because of shielding afforded by attorney-client privilege or another form of privilege that protects documents used in producing “work product”—claims Durham has disputed in part because Fusion primarily engaged in non-legal matters such as opposition research for the campaign, the DNC, and Perkins.
The documents include details on Fusion’s opposition research into Trump and the firm’s promotion of dubious stories regarding Trump to various media outlets, Durham has said. Among them are emails and attachments sent by or received by Fusion, Perkins, and Joffe.
Other communications between Fusion and Joffe appear related to the claim that the Trump Organization, Trump’s business, had a secret backchannel with a Russian bank.
Evidence purportedly substantiating that claim was brought by Michael Sussmann—at the time representing the campaign and Joffe—to the FBI, which could not substantiate the allegations. The CIA found the claims were not “technically plausible.”
The motion was brought in the case against Sussmann, who is set to go on trial later in May for allegedly lying to the FBI when he said he was not bringing the information on behalf of a client.
The documents in question may or may not ultimately be made available to the general public.
The motion asked Cooper, an Obama appointee, to agree to compel the parties to produce unredacted forms of the documents and then review the documents in private.
After conducting such a review, Durham requested the court to give prosecutors access to unredacted versions of any documents the judge determines aren’t shielded by privilege. Any such documents would likely be posted on the court docket, making them available for anybody to read.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/special-counsel-john-durham-wins-key-motion-in-case-against-former-clinton-lawyer_4446031.htm
\\][//
10 Ways Information-Shapers Have Infiltrated Our Institutions
Sharyl Attkisson | May 4, 2022
Few matters are so important as the integrity of the information we receive and the recent degradation in its reliability.
The recent leak of a Supreme Court draft related to the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion case underscores how corrupted so many of our important institutions have become by those dedicated to shaping public opinion in a sometimes-dishonest way.
Nearly every facet of our American institutions has been infiltrated by activists, corporate and political propagandists, and even criminals.
Here are 10 key institutions that have been successfully infiltrated by information-shapers:
1. Corporations
High-profile corporations increasingly do business, or withhold business, on the basis of political considerations in an effort to sway public opinion.
Additionally, they take part in removing the ability of some people they disagree with to sell products, conduct bank transactions, or otherwise operate their businesses. One recent example is retailers, including Kohl’s and Bed, Bath & Beyond, banning popular “My Pillow” products from the company owned by conservative and ardent Trump supporter Mike Lindell.
2. Sports
Sports organizations have stepped into the political realm to try to force some views and censor or punish those who take opposing viewpoints. One recent example is Major League Baseball stripping the All-Star Game from Atlanta over a Georgia law designed to strengthen election integrity following a troubled and error-riddled 2020 election.
Sports institutions also are involved in trying to sway public discourse on the issue of males competing as females on girls’ and women’s teams, such as the swimmer born as Will Thomas who switched names to Lia Thomas and joined the women’s team at the University of Pennsylvania, setting numerous women’s records.
3. Big Tech
Big Tech’s well-known fake fact checks, censorship, and disinformation have manipulated the information landscape in a more dramatic and chilling way than most any other factor. The biggest example is Big Tech’s censorship of arguably the most important political figure of our time: Donald Trump.
Recent major examples of the sector fostering disinformation include amplifying claims that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation and censoring stories about it; repeatedly backing false information related to COVID-19, while censoring accurate information or legitimate scientific views; and falsely labeling the COVID-19 lab origin story as a conspiracy theory.
4. Public Health Agencies
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health agencies have increasingly departed from the realm of public interest and science in order to advance false narratives and disinformation. Recent examples include the head of CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, falsely claiming that people who are vaccinated don’t carry and can’t spread COVID-19; and the agency knowingly putting out disinformation that falsely claimed original studies showed the vaccine’s benefit for people who’d already had COVID-19.
Another example is National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials Drs. Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci privately working with the media to smear and discredit highly credentialed scientists who disagreed with the lockdown approach to COVID-19.
5. Congress
Members of Congress in both parties have gotten caught taking part in questionable information-shaping and manipulation, particularly when it comes to pharmaceutical-related material. One recent example is members of Congress unilaterally writing letters to or contacting Big Tech in order to get certain topics or scientific studies and discussions controversialized or banned.
Some of the members of Congress who are engaged in the efforts are the same ones responsible for their own high-profile disinformation campaigns. A recent example of that is Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who repeatedly pushed false and misleading information on the Trump–Russia narrative, lobbying Big Tech to censor certain information related to COVID-19.
6. The Executive Branch
Having lost the most powerful tool in its arsenal to shape information, the executive branch has now formed its own extra-Constitutional agency to serve that function: the Disinformation Governance Board. The named head of the board, Nina Jankowicz, has widely furthered disinformation in the past.
7. The Media
With blogs and quasi-news outlets such as Axios, Slate, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Vox, Salon, Talking Points Memo, and Rolling Stone joining more traditional partisan outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, Politico, MSNBC, NBC, The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times in dominating the information landscape—while their conservative equivalents are controversialized—the media has proven to rank close to Big Tech in terms of their influence in further misinformation.
8. Academia and Public Schools
America’s colleges and universities have taken increasingly heavy-handed roles in terms of squelching free speech and free thought (when it leans against progressive or radical views), in exchange for a managed environment where only carefully filtered views are allowed, and specific language, expressions, and behavior are mandated.
Many public school systems have grown stronger in efforts to install social engineering and political ideology in teachings and policies. Recent examples include policies involving the use of pronouns when referring to transgender students, and the instruction of critical race theory.
9. Dept. of Justice, FBI, and Other Intel Agencies
The very agencies that should remain furthest above the fray with clean hands have found themselves repeatedly muddied involving major investigations and their political influence efforts. One recent example is the criminal conviction of FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who falsified a document in order to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Though multiple people would have known about the crime—possibly participating, and staying silent—only Clinesmith was charged.
He was only charged with a relatively minor crime in relation to the significance, and avoided any prison time. Meanwhile, the agency hasn’t offered any apology or redress to Page. Other examples include the Department of Justice targeting school parents as possible terrorists, and lopsided prosecution efforts regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, compared to many more violent events and crimes.
Additionally, intel operators have taken major roles both in front of the camera and behind the scenes to try to shape public opinion using false information and propaganda. One recent example is the “more than 50 former intelligence officials” who “signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance” of an accurate New York Post story about the Hunter Biden laptop.
10. The Supreme Court
Whether it’s the leak to multiple press outlets about Justice Stephen Breyer’s impending retirement or the more problematic new leak of the Roe v. Wade abortion draft, information-shapers have infiltrated the highest court in the land.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/10-ways-information-shapers-have-infiltrated-our-institutions_4444496.html
\\][//
Judge Orders Fusion GPS Tech Expert to Testify in Clinton Attorney’s Trial
May 3, 2022 Updated: May 3, 2022
A Fusion GPS employee with “unique insight” into how her company, the Clinton campaign, and its law firm orchestrated “opposition research” into the Trump campaign that spurred the debunked “Russiagate” investigation will testify in the government’s case against former Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann.United States District Judge Christopher Cooper Tuesday granted Special Counsel John Durham’s motion to compel Fusion GPS “tech maven” Laura Seago to testify when Sussmann’s trial begins May 16 in federal court in Washington, DC. Federal prosecutors, led by Durham, have charged Sussmann with one count of making a false statement.Durham maintains that in August 2016, Sussmann and Clinton campaign lead counsel Marc Elias met with Neustar executive Rodney Joffe—whose company was contracted to monitor DNS traffic for the Executive Office—and “encouraged” Joffe to concoct a “narrative” tying the Trump Organization to Alfa-Bank, the largest private bank in Russia.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-orders-fusion-gps-tech-expert-to-testify-in-clinton-attorneys-trial_4444327.html
New Emails Released by Durham Detail Extensive Collusion Between Media and Clinton Campaign | Truth Over News
Special counsel John Durham published 62 pages of emails that detail extensive—and early—contact between Clinton operatives Fusion GPS and prominent members of the corporate media.
What makes Durham’s disclosure so explosive isn’t that the media parroted Clinton campaign talking points; we already knew that pushing Clinton narratives into the public realm was the media’s main occupation during the 2016 presidential campaign. The real bombshell is that members of the corporate media were actively collaborating with Clinton operatives to create those narratives—including enthusiastically participating in a scheme to frame an innocent man.
These email exchanges disclosed by Durham involved The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Reuters, Slate Magazine, and Yahoo News.
When contacted for comment on these revelations, not a single reporter or news outlet implicated in the collusion with Fusion replied. Nor has there been any apology—or admission—of their collusion.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-emails-released-by-durham-detail-extensive-collusion-between-media-and-clinton-campaign-truth-over-news_4443577.html
\\][//
Clinton Campaign, DNC Misreported Opposition Research as Legal Services: FEC
By Zachary Stieber April 28, 2022
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) labeled payments that went to Fusion GPS for opposition research against her rival Donald Trump as going to legal services, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) determined.
A yearslong investigation into the matter, triggered by multiple complaints, led commission lawyers to conclude that payments reported as legal services actually went to Fusion to dig into Trump, documents released on April 28 show.
Invoices “demonstrate that Fusion was providing opposition research services related to Trump and Russia, and there is no evidence that Fusion provided services other than this opposition research,” the lawyers wrote in a brief.
The campaign, Hillary for America (HFA), and the DNC tapped the law firm Perkins Coie to assist them with legal matters ahead of the 2016 election. Perkins contracted Fusion, a firm founded by former Wall Street Journal reporters. Fusion later paid Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy who compiled the infamous Trump–Russia dossier.
The government investigation started in 2018 after the Coolidge Reagan Foundation and two other parties lodged separate complaints asserting the Democrat entities violated federal law that requires political committees to report disbursements over $200 per year.
“By intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Coie and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments, HFA and the DNC were able to avoid publicly reporting on their statutorily required FEC disclosure forms the fact that they were paying Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump with the intent of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the Coolidge complaint stated.
The new documents show the accused objecting to the accusations, alleging Fusion’s work was entirely in support of Perkins’ legal services for the campaign and the DNC.
“Fusion GPS was doing research but they were doing research for Perkins Coie at Perkins Coie’s direction to inform Perkins Coie’s legal advice that Perkins Coie then provided legal services to HFA and DNC,” Graham Wilson with Elias Law Group, representing the Democrat entities, told FEC commissioners at a probable cause hearing.
“There’s really no evidence in the record that Fusion GPS wasn’t in furtherance of Perkins Coie’s legal services,” he added later.
But a review of the arguments offered by the parties, and the documents they shared in response to subpoenas—including wire payments, copies of checks, and invoices—provided evidence that Fusion was performing opposition research, not helping with legal services.
“Comparing the invoices from Perkins Coie with those from Fusion make clear that Perkins Coie billed the DNC and HFA for 100% of the services rendered by Fusion to Perkins Coie, because the amounts and dates of the invoices match,” FEC lawyers said.
In their initial report, the counsel said that available information “suggests that HFA and the DNC did not properly disclose the purpose of the disbursements to Perkins Coie, for what appears to have been opposition research done by Fusion.” They also said there were signs that the entities were aware of Fusion’s work, including how Marc Elias, formerly of both Perkins and the Clinton campaign, received briefings from Fusion’s Glenn Simpson on the research and briefed Robby Mook, HFA’s campaign manager, on what he learned. Mook, meanwhile, provided the budget authorization to Perkins for research into Trump’s businesses. Simpson told congressional investigators that he believed Perkins engaged Fusion on behalf of other parties and knew Perkins represented the DNC.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC agreed to pay fines to settle the matter, but admitted no wrongdoing. The new documents provide more insight into the investigation that led to the settlements.
Dan Backer, who filed the complaint for Coolidge, told The Epoch Times recently that the case was “the first time that [Clinton] has actually been held accountable for misconduct … so I think it’s a great step for accountability.”
After the agreements were signed, commission lawyers recommended accepting them and closing the case. The FEC agreed. The commission also dismissed allegations against Steele, Elias, Perkins, and Fusion.
As far as the Steele dossier, commission lawyers said information they reviewed suggests Fusion did not provide a written copy to Elias or Perkins but did share oral reports to Elias, who “summarized some of that information for HFA and the DNC.” The dossier was not mentioned in the followup report.
Wilson told commissioners that there was no evidence in the record that the dossier was provided to Perkins, much less HFA or DNC.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/clinton-campaign-dnc-misreported-opposition-research-as-legal-services-fec_4434080.html
\\][//
Russia Hoax: Durham Staffer Accidentally Reveals Emails Showing Coordination Between Fusion GPS And Media
Another significant filing by John Durham’s special counsel team to the court was made Monday night. {READ HERE} Within the filing the staff accidentally did not seal the attachments which are emails between Fusion GPS and many major media outlets. Whoops.
Monday night, in a responsive filing connected to all of the privilege claims, John Durham deconstructed the nature of their defense. Techno-Fog has a good outline {SEE HERE} of the court documents. However, attached to the filing were exhibits supposed to be filed under seal that the Durham staff “accidentally” did not seal right away.
The exhibit consists of the emails between Fusion GPS and media as the opposition research team attempted to push the Trump-Russia collusion story into the media bloodstream -through their ideologically aligned allies- in 2016.
The emails show how extensive Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch pushed the Trump Russia story. The emails show the coordinated effort of Fusion GPS with multiple journalists, producers and media outlets. You can read the emails HERE.
I’m not going to publish the emails because the contacts, addresses, phone numbers etc. are not redacted; but you can clearly see the scale of who was involved.
The emails show journalists from Politico, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC all feeding from the same trough of manipulated information being fed from Fusion GPS. The journalists, producers and Fusion GPS all working in close coordination to push the false Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy.
The accidentally public emails highlight a soup-to-nuts ‘who’s-who‘ of political disinformation. {SEE HERE}
Additionally, the Durham filing itself {SEE HERE} gives us another granular look at how the prosecution is walking the tightrope of carefully balanced prosecution of leftist activists, lawfare people and political organizations outside government.
Within the filing the privilege claims are easily dispatched by prosecutor Andrew J. DeFilippis, Assistant Special Counsel to John Durham. One key paragraph is a little funny in that the prosecution uses the defense position against them. The prosecution states the “purported privilege holders who have intervened do so in a case in which the defendant has denied representing any client when he brought the Russian Bank-1 allegations to the FBI.”
The privilege controversy itself seemingly entraps Michael Sussmann. How can Sussmann claim attorney-client privilege when his defense is to say he wasn’t working on behalf of any client when he brought the information to the FBI? Whoopsie daisy.
All of that said, there’s another interesting aspect to this specific filing if you stand back away from the granular legal details and look at the arc of the prosecution within it. It appears to me that Michael Sussmann is not the REAL target of this prosecution, Marc Elias is.
It looks like John Durham is using the prosecution of Sussmann, and all the details within the case, to box in a very easy prosecution of Michael Sussmann’s boss, the infamous Democrat lawyer, Marc Elias. Read the filing and you see how Perkins Coie and Marc Elias are clearly and purposefully outlined as having the major role in the activity of Sussmann. All prosecutorial roads against Sussmann are leading to Elias.
That risk would certainly explain why Marc Elias left Perkins Coie immediately after the Alfa Bank lawsuit against Fusion GPS revealed the connective tissue, and then John Durham start focusing on Perkins Coie and Michael Sussmann.
Given the ideological and political nature of the DOJ under AG Merrick Garland and Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, it makes sense that John Durham would not and importantly, could not, go directly at Marc Elias.
Marc Elias is the biggest Lawfare fish in the world of Democrats. He is the primary legal mind and legal entity around the entire Democrat apparatus from elections to electoral maps. Elias is the leftists modern legal Moses.
If John Durham was viewed to be targeting Elias directly, his special counsel investigation would be shut down tomorrow, regardless of political backlash. Marc Elias is to outside government as Barack Obama is to inside government.
The DOJ would immediately stop Durham if he was obviously targeting Elias. Inside the firestorm that follows, the political media would rally the wagons around protecting Garland, Monaco and Biden ….and after a few days of republicans in the legislative branch gnashing their teeth on Hannity, Ingraham et al, the explosive decision would blow over. DC would make or create some massive shiny thing to cover the controversy.
Bottom Line: Marc Elias is protected by both wings of the professionally political UniParty.
That said, if in the prosecution of Michael Sussmann, it became obvious that Marc Elias was guilty of organizing a criminal conspiracy to defraud the Unites States government on behalf of the Clinton campaign, well, that would be incidental, and that’s how Durham could get to Elias.
Marc Elias is likely to be the biggest catchable fish in the carefully navigated prosecution of those outside government.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/russia-hoax-durham-staffer-accidentally-exposes-emails-revealing-coordination-between
\\][//
Clinton Operatives Submit Legal Filings to Prevent Durham From Obtaining Crucial Emails | Truth Over News
In a coordinated legal action between a number of Hillary Clinton operatives and associates, almost two dozen separate documents were simultaneously filed in special counsel John Durham’s case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.
This sudden panic of mass filings included responses from campaign chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook, Clinton lead campaign lawyer Marc Elias, Clinton campaign contractors Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign itself, and even the Democratic National Committee.
The trigger for this flurry of filings was a request by Durham to unseal a number of emails involving these same parties. The emails are currently being withheld on very questionable grounds of attorney-client privilege. Whatever resides within those emails, based on the coordinated filings, it appears that a large number of important people associated with the Clinton campaign are very concerned about that information becoming public.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/clinton-operatives-submit-legal-filings-to-prevent-durham-from-obtaining-crucial-emails-truth-over-news_4428983.html
\\][//
https://youtu.be/MYXjDghIq88?t=10 --NEW! Hunter Biden Laptop Content IMPLICATES Adam Schiff, Watch Jim Jordan EXPOSE It All In Congress
\\][//
https://youtu.be/fQNqKAF9pLE?t=4 --
John Ratcliffe: 'There's a difference' between helping Ukraine and doing this
Former director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe joins 'Sunday Morning Futures' to discuss the Biden administration's leniency on Russia and John Durham's Russian collusion investigation. #FoxNews
\\][//
Ratcliffe predicts still-classified documents will blow Durham inquiry wide open
By Daniel Chaitin, Deputy News Editor | Washington Exaiminer | April 24, 2022:
A great deal more Russiagate intelligence remains shrouded from public view and will stun the nation, according to former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe.
The Trump-era spy chief expounded upon his expectation that there will be many more indictments in special counsel John Durham’s criminal inquiry into the origins and conduct of the Russia investigation.
“I expect there to be a lot more indictments to be forthcoming from John Durham besides the ones that have trickled out so far. And that’s based upon documents, some of which — many of which are not yet declassified,” Ratcliffe said during a recent episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman from Texas who oversaw the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies in the latter part of the Trump administration, announced in October 2020 that he had handed over nearly 1,000 pages of materials to the Justice Department to assist Durham, who is revealing more secrets as he takes people to court.
Durham has two active prosecutions, including a case against the main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier and a case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, whose trial is scheduled to begin next month. Durham has obtained only a single guilty plea, which came from former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to altering an email about a Trump campaign aide under government surveillance.
“The coordinated effort here that took place in 2016 was wide and broad. I think it involved folks in the Clinton campaign, in the Democratic national party, elected officials, media officials, folks that coordinated — intelligence community officials, and on down the line,” Ratcliffe said. “I’m not saying that every single one of those folks have criminal liability or exposure. I’m just saying this was a very coordinated effort and the more and more the public finds out about the things that I’ve seen that remain classified, they’ll be more and more appalled by those efforts in 2016
https://gellerreport.com/2022/04/former-director-of-national-intelligence-ratcliffe-predicts-still-classified-documents-will-blow-durham-inquiry-wide-open.html/
\\][//
John Durham Issues Trial Subpoenas to Members of Clinton Campaign, DNC
By Katabella Roberts April 25, 2022
Special counsel John Durham has issued trial subpoenas for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Fusion GPS, and Perkins Coie as he continues to prosecute his findings as special counsel, from which he charged cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, who in 2016 represented the Clinton campaign, with lying to the FBI.
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the DNC, Washington-based private intelligence firm Fusion GPS, and law firm Perkins Coie, Sussmann’s former employer, meanwhile, are trying to fend off Durham’s efforts to compel them to hand over previously withheld documents.
The campaign and Sussmann’s lawyers argue that attorney-client privilege should allow them to keep the records concealed.
Durham, who was tasked around March-May 2019 with reviewing the origins of the 2016-2017 FBI investigation of the now disproven Trump–Russia collusion narrative, says his investigation has led him to believe that the Clinton-allied groups played a coordinating role in pushing the false claims.
In May 2017, special counsel and former FBI head Robert Mueller ultimately found no Trump-Russia collusion to sway the 2016 election.
Earlier this month, Durham said that Fusion GPS “was not primarily providing or supporting expertise relating to legal advice; instead, it appears that the investigative firm’s primary, if not sole, function was to generate opposition research materials that the firm then shared widely.”
On April 23, Durham said of the groups, “meeting to agree on the express goal of a joint venture is precisely what happened here, on more than one occasion.”
Read More
Kash Patel: Clinton Campaign Affiliates Are Trying to Bury Michael Sussmann | Kash’s Corner
The special counsel said that “Tech Executive-1” Rodney Joffe, “Originator-1” April Lorenzen of the information services firm Zetalytics, and other researchers started to discuss “searching for and collecting derogatory internet data about the online activities of Donald Trump and his associates” in June 2016.
Lorenzen “assembled and shared initial purported data” with Joffe, “who, in turn, shared the data” with Sussmann, Durham added.
“The joint venture continued and crystallized early in August 2016,” when Sussmann, Joffe, and “agents of the Clinton Campaign” met, Durham said, while citing an Aug. 12, 2016, meeting where Sussmann, Joffe, Marc Elias (former Perkins Coie partner), and the co-founder of Fusion gathered in Elias’s office to discuss “the same Russian Bank-1 allegations that the defendant would later bring to the FBI.”
“The parties agreed to conduct work in the hope that it would benefit the Clinton Campaign, namely, gathering and disseminating purportedly derogatory data regarding Trump and his associates’ internet activities,” Durham wrote.
“The evidence will show that as a result of these conversations and during this same time period, Tech Executive-1 did exactly that: he tasked employees from multiple Internet companies and a university working under a pending national security contract to mine and gather vast amounts of internet metadata in order to support an ‘inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying the candidate [Trump] to Russia.”
Durham went on to add that Joffe continued the “joint venture” via an Aug. 17, 2016, call with Sussmann and Elias, an Aug. 19, 2016, meeting with Sussmann and Elias, and a Sept. 8, 2016, call and meeting with Sussmann.
All of these, Durham said, citing calendars he has viewed, were billed to the Clinton Campaign by the defendant.
Durham further stated that Joffe also requested the CEO of an internet company to mine and analyze huge amounts of internet traffic for derogatory information regarding Trump and his associate’s online communications and internet connections.
Joffe also sent the CEO of the internet company a list containing private information, such as email addresses, IP addresses, and physical addresses of multiple Trump associates, many of whom were being researched by Fusion, Durham said.
Joffe had made clear his desire to ensure that Perkins and the Clinton campaign would be “happy” with the information he had discovered, Durham added.
Sussman was indicted in September 2021 for lying to the FBI when he claimed he had information about an alleged secret communication channel between Trump and a Russian bank; claims which ultimately proved to be false.
Sussman allegedly told then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in October 2016, while making the claims of alleged communications, that he was not representing any client, while he, in fact, was billing the time to the Clinton campaign.
Following the subpoenas, lawyers for Sussman moved to prevent materials being admitted in the case with their argument that they are protected by attorney-client privilege. They’ve called Durham’s subpoenas “astonishing and legally inappropriate.”
“The Special Counsel continues to overreach: he seeks to admit evidence that the law squarely forbids, he seeks to prove unduly prejudicial allegations he has not charged, and he seeks to prove conduct that is utterly irrelevant to the one discrete crime he has charged,” the lawyers said.
Durham disputes that.
He maintains that “the goal of the joint venture could not have been more clear: it was to gather and disseminate derogatory non-public information regarding the internet activities of a political candidate and his associates,” he wrote in a April 23 court filing.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/john-durham-issues-trial-subpoenas-to-members-of-clinton-campaign-dnc_4424881.html
Where Things Stand With John Durham’s Probe
By Petr Svab April 22, 2022
Cases handled by special counsel John Durham have produced a flurry of notable discoveries that shed more light on the sprawling yearslong investigation. Durham so far has three indictments and one guilty plea under his belt, with some indications that there may be more in the pipeline.
Durham was tasked around March-May 2019 with reviewing the 2016-2017 FBI investigation of alleged nefarious ties between candidate and later President Donald Trump and Russia. In October 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham a special counsel. In February 2021, Durham resigned his position as a federal prosecutor after 35 years with the Department of Justice (DOJ), where he handled some of the most prominent investigations of FBI misconduct. At age 72, his current job may just be the last chapter and culmination of his career.
The investigation has led Durham into some of the deep recesses of the D.C. political machine. As the current record indicates, multiple federal agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, were sicced on Trump and his associates by operatives tied to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the presidential campaign of former State Secretary Hillary Clinton. The FBI launched a sprawling investigation into Trump’s campaign with some of the FBI officials most deeply involved in the probe privately expressing strong animus against Trump and preference for Clinton.
A stream of leaks from the federal bureaucracy facilitated an avalanche of misinformation that to this day has many Americans convinced that Trump was secretly in cahoots with Moscow. The pale of the media frenzy as well as the FBI probe—which was taken over in May 2017 by a special counsel, former FBI head Robert Mueller—hamstrung Trump’s foreign policy toward Russia. The repercussions are still felt today, some experts have argued.
Mueller ultimately concluded that no Trump-Russia collusion to sway the 2016 election could be established. Durham is looking at both the origin of the Russia probe as well as how it was conducted before Mueller took over.
In stark contrast to the Mueller probe, there’s been a dearth of leaks from Durham’s team.
As far as the reports go, Durham has enlisted assistance of the governments of the United Kingdom, Italy, and Australia. He’s interviewed dozens of individuals, including former CIA Director John Brennan, and subpoenaed thousands of documents.
His first indictment, in August 2020, targeted former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith for altering a CIA email to say that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page was “not a source,” when in fact he was providing information to the agency. The message was then used as a part of an application to extend surveillance of Page. FBI Director Christopher Wray later admitted that the surveillance was illegal.
Clinesmith pleaded guilty and in January 2021 received a year of probation and 400 hours of community service. Prosecutors demanded six months in jail. His license to practice law in D.C. was reinstated after less than a year.
In September 2021, Durham indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who in 2016 represented the Clinton campaign, for lying to the FBI. Sussmann approached then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in October 2016 with information about a supposed secret communications channel between Trump and a Russian bank, which, it turned out, was false. Sussmann allegedly told Barker he wasn’t there representing any client, when in fact he was billing the time to the Clinton campaign. Sussmann’s lawyers attacked the indictment for relying on a single witness, Baker, but then Durham revealed an email from Sussmann to Baker explicitly saying Sussmann was reaching out not representing any client.
In November 2021, Durham indicted Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst formerly with the Brookings Institution, for lying to the FBI. Danchenko was paid to collect dirt on Trump by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was in turn hired (through intermediaries) to collect dirt on Trump by the Clinton campaign.
As it turned out, much of the resulting “Steele dossier” was fabricated. Danchenko told the FBI some of the information came from Belarus-born real estate agent Sergei Millian, which was false, Durham’s indictment said. In fact, Millian never spoke with Danchenko.
A significant portion of what Danchenko collected appears to have been provided to him by longtime Clinton operative Charles Dolan, who himself has deep ties to Russia. The information, laced with fabrications, was then folded by Steele into his dossier. Dolan admitted to the FBI that he provided (and fabricated) some of the information.
Recent filings in the Sussmann case revealed that the lawyer, formerly with the DOJ, peddled to the CIA data that showed supposedly suspicious existence of a Russian-made phone in Trump’s vicinity. The CIA assessed the data was “user-created,” possibly fabricated, and contradicted itself, according to Durham’s team.
Earlier this week, Sussmann, the Clinton campaign, the DNC, Sussmann’s former employer and law firm Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS (retained by Perkins Coie to research Trump), and several Clinton operatives asked the court to prevent revelation of certain emails and documents that they say are protected by attorney-client privilege. They largely argue that Perkins Coie was hired by the Clinton campaign to provide legal services and the research on Trump was done to support those services and is thus covered by the privilege. The Durham team disputes that.
The trial is scheduled for mid-May.
The Durham team in recent court documents hinted at an assertion that there was a conspiracy between the various operatives tied to the Clinton campaign. Criminal conspiracy is a federal crime, but it needs to be tied to an underlying crime. Two or more people have to agree to break a federal law and then take at least one “overt act”—even if innocuous on its own—to carry out the plan. Durham has so far brought no conspiracy charges.
John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence under Trump, said last year he believes “there will be many indictments based on the intelligence that I gave to John Durham and that I have seen.”
All three current cases of Durham’s have highlighted the tight-knit nature of the federal judicial and law enforcement community in the D.C. area.
The judge in the Clinesmith case, James Boasberg, sits on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approved spying on Page based primarily on the Steele dossier and partly on the false information provided by Clinesmith.
The judge in the Danchenko case, Anthony Trenga, presided over the Mueller-brought case against former business partner of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump. Trenga threw out the conviction in that case for a lack of evidence.
The judge in the Sussmann case, Christopher Reid Cooper, used to be a colleague of Sussmann’s at the DOJ. His wife, Amy Jeffress, is a lawyer for Lisa Page, formerly a high-level FBI attorney who’s now suing the DOJ. Page was deeply embedded in the Russia investigation. She was also a mistress of Peter Strzok, former head of FBI counterintelligence operations and a point man in the Russia probe. Cooper and Jeffress also have close ties to the Democratic Party. Cooper served on the 2008 transition team of President Barack Obama, Jeffress spent 20 years at the DOJ and was a national security counselor for Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, and their wedding was officiated by Merrick Garland, the current Attorney General.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/durham-probe-where-does-it-stand_4421703.html
\\][//
https://youtu.be/tlJFlqsJfBY?t=3
This is a historical scandal: Fmr. federal prosecutor on new Durham filings
\\][//
Breaking Down the Flurry of Legal Filings by Clinton Campaign Associates in Durham’s Prosecution of Michael Sussmann
In a coordinated legal action between a number of Hillary Clinton operatives and associates, almost two dozen separate documents were simultaneously filed on April 19 in special counsel John Durham’s case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.
This sudden flurry of mass filings included responses from former Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook, Clinton campaign lead lawyer Marc Elias, contractors Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign itself, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The trigger for the flurry of filings was a request by Durham to unseal a number of emails involving the parties. The emails are currently being withheld on very questionable grounds of attorney–client privilege. Based on the coordinated filings, it appears that a large number of important people associated with the Clinton campaign are very concerned about the information in those emails becoming public.
Based on available metadata, it appears as if most of the individuals involved in Clinton’s scheme to vilify Trump with claims of Russia collusion were all communicating with each other as that scheme unfolded in real time.
The first person who filed in response to Durham’s request was Rodney Joffe, the tech executive who produced data that purportedly tied Trump to Russia. Joffe had been promised a top government job in case of a Hillary Clinton election victory.
Joffe claimed in his filing that his communications should be treated as privileged because they were part of his attorney-client relationship with Sussmann. Joffe was indeed a client of Sussmann’s starting in 2015. But, in an unexpected and perhaps unintentional comment, Joffe also disclosed that he had hired Sussmann specifically to advise him how to share sensitive information concerning Trump with government agencies—without revealing his identity and thereby exposing himself to potential liability.
In effect, Joffe publicly admitted that he hired Sussmann to take information about Trump to the FBI. The problem for Sussmann is that he’s been charged with lying about exactly that point. Sussmann claimed–in an email to then FBI General Counsel James Baker–that he wasn’t taking the information to the FBI on behalf of any client but instead was merely acting as a good Samaritan.
If Joffe throwing Sussmann under the proverbial bus wasn’t bad enough, the next filing was even worse for Sussmann. It came from Clinton campaign operatives Fusion GPS who also want their emails to be withheld from Durham.
In order to obtain the benefit of attorney–client privilege, Fusion now claims to have assisted Sussmann and his law firm with legal matters.
That claim is demonstrably false as Fusion’s main role—acknowledged by Fusion’s owners Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch in their book—was to conduct opposition research on Trump and seed those stories with the media.
To make matters even worse, Simpson and Fritsch admitted that in writing in their 2019 book “Crime in Progress.” It appears as if Fusion’s lawyers didn’t read their client’s book ahead of their filing. This blunder won’t have gone unnoticed by Durham’s team.
The next filing came from Perkins Coie, the legal firm for which Clinton campaign lawyers Sussmann and Elias worked in 2016. Perkins didn’t want to disclose any of its emails either, but the excuse was a lot simpler. The firm noted that Elias had left the company last year and had taken all of the related files with him.
A separate submission came from Elias himself. Elias, a well-known Democratic Party lawyer, made an argument that essentially mirrored that of Fusion, namely that Fusion was providing Perkins Coie with input that was related to legal advice, and any communications were therefore covered by privilege. Elias failed to address the basic fact that Fusion had been hired to collect and disseminate opposition research to the media. Elias similarly didn’t address that Sussmann himself had disseminated Fusion’s stories to the media, as well as to the FBI, thereby piercing any pretense of attorney–client privilege.
But the most interesting filing came from Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. Like everyone else, Mook’s main objective was to claim that everything that had been done took place within a legal advice relationship. But unlike the others, Mook didn’t actually claim that everything was above board. Instead, he repeatedly asserted that he thought everything was done above board.
[.....]
But the flurry of filings wasn’t the only major development in the Durham investigation. In a subsequent hearing on Wednesday, a Durham prosecutor told Obama appointee Judge Christopher Cooper that the project to link Trump and Russia through DNS data had actually originated with Joffe. The prosecution stated that Joffe’s plan was carried out through the help of Clinton campaign agents. Durham’s team also revealed that there were meetings between Elias, Sussmann and Joffe during which Joffe was allegedly encouraged to create “imprints” that would tie Trump to Russia through data.
It’s not yet known exactly how Durham’s office came to know about the meeting between Elias, Joffe, and Sussmann, but if such a meeting actually did take place, it would completely destroy any pretense that the relationship between these parties had anything to with providing legal services. This discovery also could land Elias and Joffe in significant legal trouble for lying in their filings to the court.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/breaking-down-the-flurry-of-legal-filings-by-clinton-campaign-associates-in-durhams-prosecution-of-michael-sussmann_4417313.html?
\\][//
Durham Filing Reveals CIA Knew in Early 2017 That Data Tying Trump to Russia Was Fake
As the trial of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann approaches, special counsel John Durham and Sussmann’s lawyers are arguing over what evidence can be admitted. As part of those arguments, Durham filed a “routine” response late on April 15, detailing why the evidence he’s seeking to admit is both relevant and admissible.
These back-and-forth filings are common in the weeks leading up to federal trials, but the disclosures made by Durham are anything but routine.
The most striking of these disclosures concerns data trails that Sussmann and his cohorts, including “Tech Executive-1” Rodney Joffe, had supposedly uncovered between Trump and the Russian Alfa Bank. It was widely claimed that these data trails established a direct communications channel between Trump and the Russian government.
Sussmann took the data to the FBI in September 2016 hoping to trigger an investigation into Trump and his campaign. The existence of an FBI investigation would then be used by the Clinton campaign as a media kill shot against Trump in the final weeks of the 2016 election.
The scheme didn’t work as planned, and Trump went on to win the election. But this setback didn’t put the brakes on an operation that had now turned into an effort to hobble Trump’s presidency. In February 2017, after Trump was inaugurated, Sussmann took the same data trails to the CIA.
CIA Knew Early on That Sussmann Data Fabricated
Durham has now disclosed that the CIA immediately knew that both data trails were fake, finding that they were not “technically plausible,” that they didn’t “withstand technical scrutiny,” that they “contained gaps,” that they conflicted with themselves, and that they were “user-created” and not machine- or tool-generated.
The data provided by Sussmann consisted of alleged internet lookups between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank as well as alleged use of a Russian-made YotaPhone in Trump’s vicinity at Trump Tower, near a Trump interview in Michigan, and near the White House after he was elected president.
[......]
We also knew that those two prongs converged in late July 2016—directly in front of the FBI’s opening of its investigation into the Trump campaign—when Steele and Sussmann met in Washington along with a host of other Clinton campaign operatives.
Until now, Durham hadn’t connected the two prongs of Clinton’s plan, choosing instead to focus on Sussmann’s alleged crime of lying to the FBI.
That has now changed. Durham has told the court that Sussmann and Steele were two parts of the same joint venture, a move that inches us closer to possible conspiracy charges being brought by Durham against participants in the scheme. Connecting Sussmann directly to the Clinton campaign’s broader efforts to vilify Trump also establishes a motive for Sussmann’s actions.
Specifically, Durham states that Sussmann “represented and worked for the Clinton Campaign in connection with its broader opposition research efforts,” and that through his coordination with Steele, Fusion GPS, and Joffe, Sussmann took steps to integrate the Alfa Bank allegations into those opposition research efforts.
Durham also is now focusing on the fact that Sussmann personally told Steele about the Alfa Bank data trail at their July 2016 meeting. And as we already know, Steele was then tasked with writing a dossier report on the Alfa allegations.
Durham also notes that Steele’s report on the Alfa Bank allegations was completed only a few days before Sussmann brought the allegations to the FBI. Even more astonishingly, Durham points out that the FBI was given Steele’s dossier by Fusion GPS on the very same day that Sussmann took the Alfa allegations to the FBI.
And finally, Durham has announced that there are at least two individuals who have apparently flipped and have been offered immunity.
2 Individuals Offered Immunity by Durham
Notably, the first of these individuals—who has not been named by Durham—is an employee at Fusion GPS, the firm of Clinton campaign contractors who coordinated the efforts to jointly push Steele’s and Sussmann’s allegations into the media. It’s not known what the Fusion employee has told Durham, but given the overarching question facing the jury—whether Sussmann went to the FBI to push a false narrative or was merely acting as a good Samaritan—it’s entirely possible that the Fusion GPS employee will testify that Sussmann’s efforts were part of a broader scheme to falsely vilify Trump.
The second person that’s been offered immunity is David Dagon, an IT operative from Georgia Tech. Dagon was part of a small group of IT specialists tasked by Joffe to find data that linked Trump to Russia. Durham previously revealed that this group of IT operatives knew they couldn’t manufacture any claims that “would fly public scrutiny.” These same operatives also admitted in private that “the only thing that drove them to do what they were doing was that they ‘just do not like Trump.'”
Durham has now told the court that he gave Dagon immunity as the other IT operatives in the Joffe’s group had invoked their right against self-incrimination. Giving Dagon immunity was the only way Durham could obtain “otherwise-unavailable facts” underlying the Clinton campaign’s scheme to vilify Trump.
That both Dagon and a Fusion GPS employee are now cooperating with Durham is significant—not only in the Sussmann case, but for all the Clinton campaign operatives who were involved in the scheme.
It’s now left to Sussmann’s lawyers to persuade the trial judge—Obama-appointee Christopher Cooper—to throw out all this new evidence as well as Durham’s proposed witnesses. They may try to argue that the conspiracy, even if it existed, is not relevant to what Sussmann has been charged with—namely, lying to the FBI. Durham has already indicated that if this were to happen, he would object on the grounds that the existence of a conspiracy is compelling evidence of Sussmann’s motive when he lied to the FBI.
Ultimately, the judge will decide what evidence will and will not be allowed.
The bigger question that looms is whether Durham will charge anyone with conspiracy. He clearly has plenty of evidence, but for reasons not fully understood, he has not used that evidence to date. It may be that he faces significant internal pressure from DOJ officials. It may also be that he’s trying to extend the legal clock until after the midterms, knowing that prosecuting the Clinton campaign will require political cover.
Or it may simply be that Durham is waiting for more evidence that would allow him to charge top campaign officials. This argument is backed by the fact that the two people who received immunity are too far down the food chain to have known anything about the extent of involvement from top Clinton campaign officials.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/durham-filing-reveals-cia-knew-in-early-2017-that-data-tying-trump-to-russia-was-fake_4413428.html
\\][//
The CIA Notes Part 1: January 31, 2017.
Durham provided to the Court two sets of notes related to Sussman’s representations to the CIA. The first was from Sussman’s January 31, 2017 contacts with a CIA employee where Sussman discussed wanting to provide to the CIA data on “the presence and activity of a unique Russian made phone around President Trump.” It was said that this secret activity started in April 2016 and continued after Trump’s “move to the White House.”
Sussman alleged the Russian phone (YotaPhone) was always close to Trump (“only around the President’s Movements”), surfacing at his Trump Tower Network in April 2016 and being used through Wi-Fi at Trump’s Grand Central West apartment. The phone even “appeared with Trump in Michigan” when he was interviewing a Cabinet Secretary.
At a minimum, this confirms what we reported nearly two months ago: that the Trump transition data was passed to the CIA. Yet it’s also more than that. The CIA was provided with data all the way back from April 2016.
Why does April 2016 matter? Because Russia was alleged to have hacked “the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and DNC networks in April 2016.” Recall that “Crowdstrike was contacted on April 30, 2016 to respond to a suspected breach” of the DNC.
The CIA Notes Part 2: Sussmann’s February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA
That January 31, 2017 conference was used to schedule the February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA. At that meeting, Sussman repeated his allegations that a “Russian-made Yota-phone” had been seen at Trump properties and had traveled with Trump to Michigan. He further alleged that “In December 2016, the Yota-phone was seen connecting to WIFI from the Executive Office of the President (the White House).”
A brief but necessary aside: The Washington Post alleged us to have fanned “the flames” on the Sussman/Joffe spying operation, taking us to task for stating (correctly): “They spied on Trump.” I hope the Washington Post is reading this, because the CIA notes confirm what we reported and what we told them via e-mail. Techno 1, WaPo 0.
Back to the Durham Filing – and the CIA’s analysis of the Sussman/Joffe data.
The CIA reviewed the Trump/YotaPhone data (and the Alfa Bank data) in early 2017. The fact that the CIA accepted this data on President Trump is its own scandal. In any event, the CIA’s findings are significant, as they concluded that the data was not “technically plausible” and was “user created and not machine/tool generated.”
(I’ve been asked about the last part of that paragraph, which says the “Special Counsel’s Office has not reached a definitive conclusion in this regard.” The term “definitive conclusion” stands out, making me suspect he has “initial” conclusions on the data. Durham’s filings in this case suggest he agrees with the CIA.)
Anyway, what a finding by the CIA. Of course, this only leads to more questions:
Which “user” created the data?
Does it go back to the Joffe conspiracy?
And who else is part of that conspiracy?
For that last question, consider this revelation from a previous Durham filing:
As to those questions of a conspiracy, Durham’s granting of immunity provides some insight. As we suspected back on April 5, “Researcher-2” (identified as David Dagon) has been given immunity. The reason? So that Durham can “uncover otherwise-unavailable facts” relating to the Alfa Bank project.
Dagon being granted immunity is certainly important, as Durham states that Rodney Joffe – who led the Alfa Bank hoax effort – remains a “subject” of the investigation. While Sussman and others argue that it’s impossible to prosecute Joffe because of the 5-year statute of limitations, Durham disagrees, stating: “defense counsel is not – and could not be – aware of all the evidence that the Government has collected and continues to collect, or the possible violations of law it is investigating.”
Durham will also be granting immunity at trial “for an individual who was employed at” Fusion GPS. I initially suspected this was Christopher Steele but was steered in the right direction after some smart folks noted the person was “employed” at Fusion GPS (as opposed to Steele, who was “retained” by Fusion GPS). This person might be Laura Seago.
This former Fusion GPS employee will likely testify to “limited information pertaining to” Christopher Steele. As Durham puts it: this will include whether Sussman was acting on behalf of the Clinton Campaign when he relayed the Alfa Bank allegations.
Finally, I leave you with some questions to consider. Start asking why Sussman and Joffe were so desperate to provide the FBI and CIA with dirt purportedly linking Trump and Russia. Sussman himself provided false statements to federal officials, and it’s becoming more and more likely that someone potentially fabricated this evidence. Sussman and Joffe risked charges - and thus jeopardized their lucrative careers - to tie Trump to Russia.
Considering the personal costs to both men, are we to believe that this was only about politics?
Or maybe this all leads back to the DNC hack…
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/cia-bombshell-sussman-data-was-user-created
\\][//