Can Hillary Clinton Be Investigated Again
Special Counsel John Durham appears to take methodically built a case of historic consequence. It's just not the case he has brought against bigshot Autonomous Party lawyer Michael Sussmann.
Jury pick begins in Sussmann's trial on Monday, in Washington, DC. It will be the commencement trial to arise out of the Russiagate probe, which began over 3 years ago. That'southward when former Trump Attorney Full general Bill Barr assigned Durham, a longtime Justice Department prosecutor from Connecticut, to investigate how, in the center of a heated presidential campaign and based upon scant evidence, the FBI came to suspect ane of the candidates of existence a hugger-mugger amanuensis of the Kremlin — to the point of opening counterintelligence and criminal investigations targeting Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
According to court filings in the Sussmann example, Durham has fingered the Hillary Clinton campaign as the culprit. The problem is that Durham has non charged that fraudulent scheme. Nonetheless, he wants to offer evidence of the sweeping scheme in order to evidence a comparatively pocket-sized and narrow offense — namely, that Sussmann lied to the FBI at a single meeting, on September 19, 2016.
Durham theorizes that the Clinton campaign concocted a political smear that Trump was a Putin boob, then peddled the tale to a compliant media and to the FBI. This would enable Clinton to tout the "evidence" of decadent Trump-Russian federation ties equally and so serious that the Feds were investigating.
Durham contends that the Clinton entrada left about of the scandal-mongering to its lawyers. Thus did Sussmann become cardinal to the scheme, as did his law partner, Marc Elias. (Both attorneys have since left their white shoe international police house, Perkins-Coie.) The deployment of lawyers in their schemes and scandals is a time-tested Clinton modus operandi, enabling them to merits attorney-client privilege to cover their tracks when controversy erupts and investigators start snooping around — a frequent occurrence over the last 30 years.
Here, as we'll see, there is delicious irony in the attorney-client gambit. The Clinton campaign is now challenge privilege in a desperate effort to block Durham from examining its communications with Sussmann and others. Yet Sussmann is on trial for allegedly telling the FBI, falsely, that he was not representing the Clinton campaign when he urged the Bureau to investigate Trump — insisting that the Republican nominee had established a hole-and-corner back aqueduct for communications with Vladimir Putin, through servers at Alfa Bank, an important Russian financial institution.
In short, Durham portrays the Clinton campaign as guilty of perhaps the worst dingy trick in the history of American presidential elections: a conspiracy to defraud the government into probing her opponent, the better to slander Trump, in the electorate's center, every bit a nefarious threat to the U.s.a..
But, again, Durham has not charged anyone — not Hillary Clinton, her campaign, or any of its operatives — for such a sensational crime. This sets up the primal dynamic of the trial: How much of prove of the big, uncharged fraud scheme will the gauge, Obama-appointee Christopher Cooper, permit Durham to introduce as proof of why Sussmann allegedly lied to the FBI?
Durham describes the fraud scheme every bit the "joint venture" involving the Clinton campaign, its lawyers, a group of Internet researchers, and the so-chosen "information" firm Fusion GPS.
Prosecutors say the Clinton campaign acted through Elias, the notoriously plugged-in Democrat who served equally top counsel for the campaign and the DNC, and Sussmann, a erstwhile top Justice Department cyber-security lawyer, who represented the DNC when its servers were allegedly hacked by Russia.
Sussmann had an important tech client, Neustar, and thus represented one of its top executives, Rodney Joffe. A Clinton supporter who expected to state a top government cybersecurity gig if Hillary were elected, Joffe networked with a group of Net researchers at other tech companies and Georgia Tech University. Because of various contractual arrangements, including with the government, the researchers had privileged admission to Net data, including "Domain Name System" (DNS) records that essentially show when servers and email addresses contact each other.
In spring, 2016, one of the researchers, April Lorenzen, alerted Joffe that she interpreted DNS data to signal that Trump could be communicating with Putin's government — essentially, servers at Alfa Banking company were being pinged from a domain the Internet researchers associated with the Trump organization.
The prospect excited Joffe, who tasked the assortment of researchers to use their access, not for its intended concern and security purposes, but to do partisan "oppo" (opposition research), targeting communications patterns of Donald Trump and his associates. Joffe shared what he was doing with Sussmann and Elias, who are said to accept encouraged and consulted with him.
Of course, there was a lot more than to the Trump-Russian federation "bunco" farce. Sussmann's trial is where Durham would like to connect the dots.
Elias had retained Fusion GPS (the Clintons' become-to "oppo" guys) to search for dirt tying Trump to Russia. Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson thus recruited former British spy Christopher Steele, and together they crafted the "Steele dossier" — an embarrassingly slipshod compilation of rumor, innuendo, and flat-out fiction that Steele whipped into a set up of faux private "intelligence reports."
Steele'due south main source for the disinformation was his acquaintance Igor Danchenko — a quondam Brookings Plant scholar whom the FBI had previously investigated on suspicion that he was, yes, a Russian spy.
Interestingly, Danchenko is the defendant in the other simulated-statements example Durham expects to endeavour later this year. He is defendant of lying to the FBI about his sources of information for the dossier.
Durham wants to employ the dossier angle to show the sinister nature of the Clinton campaign scheme.
Late in the campaign, Sussmann met with Simpson and Steele. This put Steele onto the Alfa Bank tale. He wrote information technology upwards equally if it were explosive intelligence. It was incorporated into the dossier. Without verifying Steele's claims, which Danchenko would later concede were nonsense, the FBI swore to them in foreign intelligence surveillance applications, challenge the Trump campaign was in cahoots with Putin.
Consequently, the underground federal FISA court issued spy warrants. For nearly a twelvemonth, well into Trump's first yr in office, the Bureau monitored Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.
Durham says he will prove that the researchers realized that the Alfa Depository financial institution theory was a dry hole. Even so Joffe encouraged them, indicating that the back aqueduct story didn't need to be proven equally long every bit it appeared to be plausible plenty to suggest a possible Trump-Russia connection. With the lawyers coordinating, Fusion took the lead in peddling the Alfa Bank claims to the media. To draw the FBI in, Sussmann would be dispatched.
Now, let'south say yous wanted to report a crime to the FBI. You lot, mere mortal, would have to speak to the agent on duty. But that's not how it works in Washington — not if yous're a hotshot, politically-continued, quondam government official like Sussmann.
Naturally, he had the cellphone number for his quondam Justice Department colleague, Jim Baker, who was at present the Bureau's general counsel — its tiptop lawyer, and a cardinal adviser to FBI Manager Jim Comey and Deputy Director Andy McCabe. On Sunday night, September 18, Sussmann texted Baker, stating:
Jim — it's Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. Do yous have availability for a short meeting tomorrow? I'chiliad coming on my own — non on behalf of a customer or visitor — want to assist the Agency. Cheers. [Emphasis added.]
That is the alleged lie, which Sussmann is said to take repeated when the obliging Baker gave him a meeting at FBI headquarters the very next day. There, Sussmann presented him with data packages curated by Joffe, imploring the FBI to investigate the supposedly suspicious Trump-Russia connection.
Sussmann realized, Durham contends, that if he had told Bakery he was working for the Clinton campaign and Joffe, the Bureau would instantly have understood the partisan political nature of the gambit. Maybe he wouldn't have gotten in Baker'southward door, and certainly the FBI would accept evaluated the information very differently.
In essence, Sussmann traded on his credentials as a former national-security lawyer, merely patriotically trying to protect America. Convinced of Sussmann'southward good organized religion, the FBI opened an investigation of Trump'south supposed Alfa Depository financial institution pipeline to Putin.
With that accomplished, the campaign spun into loftier gear. Nigh a calendar week earlier the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and Jake Sullivan (a pinnacle campaign aide and at present President Biden'southward national security advisor) posted a serial of tweets, decrying Trump's supposedly corrupt ties to Putin, particularly their secret dorsum channel, and exultation that it was now incumbent on the regime to investigate.
Every bit it happens, the FBI did investigate. Agents learned that the domain Sussmann and the researchers had associated with Trump was not owned or operated past him or his real estate organization; it was run by a mass-marketer who had obvious reasons to be contacting international business organization travelers. In curt order, the Bureau ended there was no basis for further investigation.
Durham reports that the CIA went further when Sussmann tried to interest them in an updated information parcel in February 2017. The Agency rejected the data as non "technically plausible," unable to "withstand technical scrutiny," rife with "gaps," internally contradictory, and "user created and not machine/tool generated."
The problem for Durham is that, because he hasn't charged the big scheme, Judge Cooper is restricting what he tin tell the jury about information technology. The CIA'southward analysis is out of the case, every bit is proof that the data was grossly inaccurate — unless Sussmann makes the mistake of suggesting otherwise. The Clinton and Sullivan tweets are out — they happened weeks after Sussmann's FBI meeting. And while Cooper has but compelled Fusion GPS to mitt over some of its internal emails to prosecutors, the judge curiously ruled that Durham waited too long to seek them — they, too, are out of the example.
On the other manus, to the extent Sussmann directly participated in the scheme, the court is inclined to allow Durham prove it — the consultations with Joffe, Elias, and Fusion. Durham will employ police firm records to testify Sussmann billed his fourth dimension to the Clinton entrada, including when he visited the FBI and claimed he wasn't there on a client's behalf.
Durham will take plenty testify to prove the narrow criminal offense he'due south charged. The biggest claiming may be the jury in Trump-hostile Washington. Durham may be the government'southward lawyer, but this will not be a abode game for him.
Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor.
Source: https://nypost.com/2022/05/13/inside-the-trial-that-exposes-clintons-plot-to-slander-trump/
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