CLEVELAND, OH – United States Department of Justice Special Counsel John Henry Durham’s 27-page indictment of attorney Michael Sussmann contains too many facts that makes the former Hillary Clinton campaign consultant look like a criminal. So in his 6-page response to a conflict of intereset motion Durham filed after his 27-page indictment, Sussmann asks for the facts which make him look guilty to be removed.
Sussmann is accused of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents he delivered “white papers” in 2016 that contained fake electronic data which had been manufactured to show a connection between candidate Donald James Trump, Alfa Bank and Russia. He doesn’t deny the charges.
According to Sussmann, all he did was lie to special agents of the FBI. In Sussmann’s “defensive” mind the facts he failed to disclose to FBI special agents are irrelevant since neither he nor anyone else, yet, has been criminally charged for violating the federal laws associated with them. He doesn’t like how a pissed off and lied on Trump has been using Durham and FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigations to vindicate himself. Sussmann’s attorney wrote the following:
“Mr. Trump seized upon the Special Counsel’s filing, stating that it “provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia.” He went on to call this a scandal “far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate,” said that “[i]n a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death,” and demanded “reparations.”
Durham’s 27-page indictment of Sussmann represents a snapshot of events that occurred between 2016 and 2017. Barack Hussein Obama was serving as President of the United States of America. Loretta Lynch had replaced Eric Himler Holder in 2015 as the United States Attorney General. James Comey served as director of the FBI. John Brennan served as Obama’s director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Sussmann’s response to Durham’s motion points fingers directly at the Obama administration’s officials as the recipients of the false Trump-Russia campaign information before his election as president. Horowitz’s “Hurricane Crossfire” investigation identified 17 “errors” that Obama administrators Lynch, Comey and FBI agents working against Trump made when they failed to first validate Sussmann’s lying data. Sussmann leaves readers with the thought that Obama officials were in on the scam. Read.
For example, although the Special Counsel implies that in Mr. Sussmannn’s February 9, 2017
meeting, he provided Agency-2 with EOP data from after Mr. Trump took office, the Special Counsel is well aware that the data provided to Agency-2 pertained only to the period of time before Mr. Trump took office, when Barack Obama was President.Further—and contrary to the Special Counsel’s alleged theory that Mr. Sussmannn was acting in concert with the Clinton Campaign—the Motion conveniently overlooks the fact that Mr. Sussmannn’s meeting with Agency-2 happened well after the 2016 presidential election, at a time when the Clinton Campaign had effectively ceased to exist. Unsurprisingly, the Motion also omits any mention of the fact that Mr. Sussmannn never billed the Clinton Campaign for the work associated with the February 9, 2017 meeting, nor could he have (because there was no Clinton Campaign). See Dkt. No. 35 at 3-4. And the Special Counsel persists in alleging that Mr. Sussmannn billed the Clinton Campaign for his meeting with the FBI in September 2016, when that is false as well.
All of the named elected and appointed public officials were in charge when Sussmann met with the FBI’s general counsel on September 19, 2016 and supplied Comey’s FBI team with false information about Trump’s data. The relationship between Trump and the Alfa Bank of Russia did not exist as Sussmann abused the federal “Misprison of felony” statute found at Title 18, Section 4 of the United States Code to promote his lies.
“Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
The Durham indictment of Sussmann explains that the FBI’s special counsel, James Andrew Baker, thought the Clinton campaign attorney was discharging a duty to report his knowledge of a felony offense. What Sussmann’s indictment does is show him auditioning for a spot on “The World’s Dumbest Criminals.” The Perkins Coie law firm attorney was delivering evidence to the FBI of the crimes he and his research team had been engaged in on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
According to FBI Inspector General Horowitz’s 478-page “Crossfire Hurricane” report released in 2019, the information Sussmann gave them in September 2016 had been discredited by February 2017. Crossfire Hurricane was launched in June 2016 based on information supplied to them by a “Friendly Foreign Government” that eventually was sourced to ex-British MI6 agent Christopher Steele and GPS Fusion.
The internet hosting company that registered the Trump campaign’s Domain Naming Service (DNS) had given Sussmann’s researchers access to its clients data and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. According to Durham’s indictment of Sussmann, the researchers worked for a university that was contracted to conduct data research with the federal government. It’s how the criminal co-conspirators had access to the DNS provider’s privacy-protected data. Federal laws that instructed FBI agents to qualify the fake information Sussmann delivered to them and the media, and instructed the hosting company to protect Trump’s privacy, were ignored.
The Clinton team had already hired Steele to create a dossier that described Trump, through attorney Michael Cohen, as having an interest in the Russian Federation’s sale of $11.4 billion in Rosneft oil shares. The late Marc Rich’s “Glencore” was handling the Rosneft transaction. Rich, a citizen of Belgium, donated $700,000 to William Jefferson Clinton’s presidential campaign and then fled the United States after being indicted for tax evasion, racketeering and violating sanctions against Iran. Clinton pardoned Rich his last day in office in 2001.
Among the false information in Steele’s dossier were allegations that Trump had spent hotel time with two pissing Russian hookers in Moscow. The ex-British intelligence agent’s false information about Trump had made its way to late United States Senator John McCain who delivered it to Lynch, Comey and the FBI for investigation. Like a sucker McCain – who did not like Trump – had been used.
In August 2016 Sussmann and his research team were working on the Clinton campaign’s next tranche of fake information they were manufacturing to tie Trump to Russia in a September 2016 leak to the media as well as FBI and CIA officials. Sussmann had given the fake Alfa Bank information to Steele who supplied it to Mother Jones magazine.
Before his September 19, 2016 meeting with the FBI’s general counsel, Sussmann received an August 22, 2o16 email from a team member the indictment identifies as “Researcher 1.” This person raised the red flag about the credibility of the information Sussmann was plotting to deliver to reporters and the FBI. The researcher cast doubts about the wisdom and believability of their planned actions. The researcher thought their scheme would be easy to detect.
“Let’s for a moment think of the best case scenario, where we are able to show (somehow) that DNS communication exists between Trump and Russia. How do we plan to defend against the criticism that this is not spoofed traffic we are observing? There is no answer to that. Let’s assume again that they are not smart enough to refute our “best case” scenario. You do realize that we will have to expose every trick we have in our bag to even make a very weak association? Let’s all reflect upon that for a moment. Sorry folks, but unless we get combine netflow and DNS traffic collected at critical points between suspect organizations, we cannot technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny. The only thing that drives us at this point is that we just do not like Trump. This will not fly in the eyes of public scrutiny. Folks, I am afraid we have tunnel vision. Time to regroup?
The wording of Durham’s indictment of the scumbag Clinton campaign attorney should, indeed, make Sussmann squirm. Durham has proof that Sussmann knew he was setting up “Trump hating” FBI and CIA agents under Comey and Brennan.
Sussmann has partially pointed fingers away from Clinton to Obama, Lynch, Comey and Brennan. What Durham’s indictment of Sussmann has done is give the appearance that the Obama administration was “in” on the Clinton campaign’s Trump email altering scheme. There’s a story floating around Washington, D.C. that Lynch was soft-pedaling the Clinton email investigation.
What Durham’s indictment brings back up are Lynch and her 20 minute June 27, 2016 Phoenix, Arizona airplane conversation with former President William Jefferson Clinton three months before Sussmann’s September 19th meeting with the FBI agents she oversaw. At that time it wasn’t on anyone’s mind to ask Lynch if Clinton had discussed the fake information his wife’s campaign was building with Steele and Sussmannn … that would eventually be delivered to FBI agents under her oversight.
