In the New York Times, Charlie Savage reports on the latest Fox News hysteria over John Durham's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Based on a court filing on Friday, conservatives ran wild with claims about alleged spying on the Trump White House. But there's a problem:
Upon close inspection, these narratives are often based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation. They also tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time — raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims. Yet Trump allies portray the news media as engaged in a cover-up if they don’t.
This is all part of the Michael Sussmann case. Sussmann had presented the FBI with information tying Donald Trump to a Russian bank, and Durham's original indictment alleged that Sussmann told the FBI he wasn't acting on behalf of anyone else. He was just being a good citizen. In a new court filing, Durham outlines some of what he says he knows about what Sussmann did:¹
The Indictment alleges that Sussmann lied in that meeting....In fact, Sussmann had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including (i) Rodney Joffe, a technology executive at a U.S.-based Internet company called Neustar, and (ii) the Clinton Campaign.
Sussmann’s billing records reflect that Sussmann repeatedly billed the Clinton Campaign for his work on the Alfa Bank allegations....The Indictment also alleges that, beginning in approximately July 2016, Joffe had worked with Sussmann, Fusion GPS, numerous cyber researchers, and employees at multiple Internet companies to assemble the purported data and white papers.
In connection with these efforts, Joffe exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data. Joffe also enlisted the assistance of researchers at Georgia Tech who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract. Joffe tasked these researchers to mine Internet data to establish “an inference” and “narrative” tying then-candidate Trump to Russia. In doing so, Joffe indicated that he was seeking to please certain “VIPs,” referring to individuals at Perkins Coie and the Clinton Campaign.
The Government’s evidence at trial will also establish that among the Internet data Joffe and his associates exploited was domain name system (“DNS”) Internet traffic pertaining to (i) Spectrum Health, (ii) Trump Tower, (iii) Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and (iv) the Executive Office of the President of the United States (“EOP”). (Joffe's employer, Neustar, had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP. Joffe and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.)
There's additional stuff about concerns that there was an awful lot of traffic from Russian-made YotaPhones around both the White House and Trump Tower, but let's skip that for now since it's just more of the same. The peculiar thing about all this is that it's completely gratuitous. It demonstrates that Sussmann worked with Joffe, but Sussmann has never denied it. His defense is that he was up front about that with the FBI and never lied to them. So why bother presenting any of this stuff?
What's more, it's not clear if anything in this narrative was illegal. The Georgia Tech folks were using public DNS data to help a military research organization analyze a 2015 Russian malware attack on the White House’s network, and nobody suggests they were acting illegally. Durham does suggest that Joffe obtained the White House DNS logs surreptitiously, which would be illegal, but Joffe claims it was an open part of the malware investigation. And all of this took place during the Obama presidency anyway, so nothing from any DNS searches of the White House could have anything to do with Trump. And Joffe has never been charged with anything.
Finally, there's this: the court filing has to do with Durham's effort to force Sussmann to get a new attorney because his current one has a supposed conflict of interest. That has only the very thinnest, multi-step connection to Joffe. So the entire melodramatic narrative about Joffe is completely superfluous. There's really no reason to include it except as a way of throwing vague, Hillary-related chum to the right-wing conspiracy theorists even though Durham never claims that either Hillary or her campaign had anything to do with Joffe.
¹I have replaced all references to "Tech-Executive-1," "Law Firm-1," etc., with actual names since we know who all these people are.
I just assumed that in addition to DNS logs, Durham was presented DHCP logs showing IP addresses linked to IMEI/MAC addresses, which is how they would have been able to point to Russian Yota phone(s). With that assumption, I can't understand why Durham's filing referred to the abundance of Yota phones rather than specifically discount/rebut the IP addresses tied to Trump Tower and the Trump White House to a specific Yota phone.
If you were trying to shut down the conspiracy suspicion, this is what you would do. Instead, he obfuscated things.
I think his entire filing was a red herring. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Clearly Fox News will try and spin this up as Watergate 2.0: why limit yourself to facts? In contrast, as a Democrat, I have to accept that some of the Rachel Maddow ‘Trump is a Russian plant’ line of argument, now that it sees the light of day, was clearly misleading and a political hit job. My read on the new Durham ‘revolutions’ is the Hillary world, similar to basically any politician, wanted opposition research. The question did the Hillary camp cross any legal lines during this process….
*** eye roll ***
I don’t think the conclusion you’re drawing is valid. I’ve been following this situation since 2016 and it’s clear that experts are still unclear about the purpose of the extensive traffic between the Trump servers and the bank’s servers.
We also know that the concerns about this traffic originally were developed by independent experts and not the Clinton campaign. And, as the NYT articles make clear, the reason why the FBI abandoned the investigation of this traffic is that it had no ability to get the underlying information from within the Trump organization but we also know that the Russian intelligence obtained lots of information over the course of the campaign—so the idea that Trump was sending and receiving data on the election is hardly far fetched.
So, the traffic was real, the concerns are real, and the investigation into why those servers were communicating was abandoned because of the FBI’s unwillingness to properly investigate Trump’s connection to a hostile foreign power.
Mueller found numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign. However, the Mueller investigation found no collusion with Russia.
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2019/03/mueller-concludes-investigation/
https://time.com/5610317/mueller-report-myths-breakdown/
Yeah, you sure sound like a Democrat. Like that staunch Democrat, Bill Barr, who told the world how the Mueller investigation exonerated Trump even though it didn't.
However, the Mueller investigation found no collusion with Russia.
Oh, really? To debunk that, let's go no further that the Time story at your link. It says the exact opposite of what your claim.
Myth: Mueller found “no collusion.”
Response: Mueller spent almost 200 pages describing “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” ... While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”
Pardon the typos.
+1
But it’s also apparently the case that Mueller didn’t investigate the existence of such a conspiracy (or even whether Trump was a Russian spy) because he seems to have felt that doing so would be inappropriate or unseemly. As a practical matter, from at least the late 1980’s until the election Trump’s contacts with Russia were run through a variety of oligarchs and organized crime figures. While those contacts probably involved money laundering and not activities directly undertaken on Russia’s behalf, it’s also well established that those oligarchs and criminals with whom Trump was dealing themselves had strong ties to Russian intelligence and the Putin regime.
All of which is a long way of saying that the reason Mueller didn’t find collusion in the way you’ve using the term is that he never looked for it.
Great point! Why WERE those evil Democrats so interested in Trump's constant communications with the Russian government and endless shilling for the various interests of Russian billionaires? The Democrats are SO evil to be interested in Trump selling out America.
LOL
The appeasement prone Democrat Party overcorrected from their early 21st century support for Saddam Hussein & Osama bin Laden, not realizing the foreign relations landscape had changed.
Losers always fighting the last war.
" . . . I have to accept . . . "
You? Who are you?
Also *** eye roll ***
I have no idea what words Rachel Maddow used to describe Trump (you apparently care more about her than almost everyone else here), but the word most people used is asset. If you don't know what that is you can look it up. Trump was clearly a Russian asset and that, apparently, is something you don't care about.
You could examine an endless number of things the Trump campaigns did that are much more questionable than anything Hillary did, but you don't seem to care about that either. I mean, besides the stuff that people have already been convicted of.
Gilgit - Your contention that " Trump was clearly a Russian asset" is disproven by the Mueller report.
I think Trump is many evil things, however, where is your evidence to contradict the Mueller report?
HAHAHAHAHAHA! That made me laugh. You clearly don't know what is in the Mueller report or what a Russian asset is. Perhaps you don't know that being a Russian asset is not illegal.
Hey, I could use some more laughs. Maybe you could declare that the Mueller report cleared Trump of obstruction of justice, too.
There’s been an immense amount of info out there about Trump and Russian intelligence for decades. If he hadn’t been “elected” as president, it’s abundantly clear that Trump could never have obtained a security clearance to work in the White House as a janitor.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/07/trump-putin-russia-collusion.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/an-ex-kgb-agent-says-trump-was-a-russian-asset-since-1987-does-it-matter/ar-BB1dRfCZ
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book
Tell Zell Miller I say "hi."
I am glad he's in the ground so he can't further embarrass himself by endorsing Herschel Walker over Raphael Gamaliel Warnock.
According to Hannity, it's "far worse than Watergate."
"According to Hannity . . . "
BWAHAHAHAHAHAhahahaha!!
The only response to propaganda is to assess its effectiveness as propaganda. What Hannity is is obvious, and not worth comment. How effective his propaganda is, is the only thing worth noting. Is it good propaganda, or is it bad propaganda?
If what you say is true, then this sentence:
is clearly defamatory, and Joffe should sue. Or does "gathering derogatory information" fit under the umbrella of "conducting a security investigation"?
That's any information that makes a Republican look bad is obviously treason against nature.
Moreover, any "information gathered" regarding Trump is bound to be "derogatory." If not downright "deplorable."
If I understand Durham’s filings correctly, all of this White House data was either public information or was gathered during the Obama administration.
In any event, after the most recent debasement of the DOJ’s already substantially debased reputation, one use ask why Garland has basically equipped Fox News with an unlimited investigative budget, an army of FBI agents and lawyers, and its own federal grand jury? I would like to say that I’m astonished that Garland hasn’t seized the opportunity to toss Durham out on his ass in disgrace but, honestly, I’m really not even a tiny bit surprised.
Court filings are absolutely privileged. You can sue for abuse of process if the filing justifies it, but you can't sue for defamation with respect to anything filed in court.
That’s true. There are outer boundaries but I’m not sure what they are. One question (which actually applies to a lot of west Durham’s filed with the court) is whether the defamatory statements are sufficiently related to the charged crime. If not, the litigation privilege doesn’t apply.
Another question (for which I don’t know the answer) is whether the privilege would apply if the court grants the motion to strike and the defamatory statements were part of what’s stricken by the court.
But, reading between the lines, the defense is obviously laying the groundwork for big time sanctions if Durham keeps including gratuitous Fox News commentary. And my guess is the sanction they want and might have a shot at is having the charges dismissed. Durham better be careful to color strictly inside the lines from now on.
I still can't believe that they didn't replace Durham on day 1. All the people involved lived through Ken Starr's investigation. They had to know that we would get crap after crap releases that never add up to anything. I suspect that many top Democrats are just dumb.
I suspect they decided to give Durham enough rope to hang himself. So far, so good.
I'll agree that Durham does look like a fool, but most Americans don't follow politics/news. When their Trumpy friends say that a special council is investigating the Democrats for spying on Trump, the average person has no way of knowing this is all crap. I assume Durham will keep his investigation going through November and possibly through 2024. The Dems need to fight in the places where it counts and they just don't.
He'll keep this going until he dies, because everywhere you look you find evidence of the existence of other people, Deep State tentacles snaking between them.
I think you’re absolutely right. Everyone’s been giving the Republicans enough rope to hang themselves but realistically it’s impossible for normal people to keep track of the lying and cheating so all that you end up with is Democratic sponsored Republican propaganda.
There was this filing, admitting that the Special Counsel already had evidence it had accused the IG of withholding … https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638.34.0_1.pdf
To err is human, but Durham is not living up to his reputation; I’m willing to think this was a lapse of memory, but to file before thorough checking is carelessness.
This is easily the third or fourth time that Durham’s “inadvertently” loaded up a document filed with the court with Fox News talking points. At this point, he’s really no longer entitled to the benefit of the doubt. As Auric Goldfinger so cogently observed: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." [from the original Ian Fleming novel Goldfinger]
It's true. Trump showed that you can fire anyone you want if you are president. At worst it's a 2 or 3 day story. An investigation that continues forever is an endless story.
Except if Garland fired Durham even the mainstream media would howl about it for weeks. Because, you know, they have expectations for Democrats.
So they’d howl for weeks instead of days. That’s surely better than equipping the GOP and Fox New with limitless investigatory power and the imprimatur of the Justice Department behind every smear.
I also remember Janet Reno trying to wind down the Whitewater investigation after Robert Fiske* came up empty on the GQP's second bite at that apple.
*A registered GQPer, as was the original Whitewater investigator.
The most interesting thing about this filing is that it came out just before Mazar’s, the accounting firm for the Trump Organization, severed the relationship, and cautioned lenders and investors that none of the last ten years’ (!) financial statements should be relied upon. Maybe Durham can claim he didn’t anticipate the rightwing media blowing this filing out of proportion, but if I were AG Garland I would definitely want an explanation of the coincidence.
Mazar’s letter to Trump dated 2/9/22. Durham’s sham Conflict of Interest filing containing extraneous BS filed 2/11/22. Garland definitely needs to question this.
It's not like he had these motions ready, just is case...or did he???
At least he's racking up attorney's fees for Sussman--if you can't convict--bankrupt the "suspect"? Poison the jury pool? The judge should take a hard look at this filing.
I doubt that the AG has any control over this latest perversion of "Independent Prosecutor" Leon Jaworski. The Repugnants just get crazier and crazier in their Faux News echo-chamber.
Like an intentional Wikileaks newsdump after the Access Hollywood tape dropped.
Durham asserts Sussman told the FBI he was working in his own initiative.
Sussman says he was telling the FBI who his clients were.
Sounds like we need the FBI to tell us who is correct.
I seem to recall that it has already been revealed that the FBI agent in question told more than one version of the story. It might have been the internal watchdog (I forget what they are called) who interviewed him and I think he said at the time he didn't recall if Sussman said he was working for someone else.
I actually try and avoid news about Durham, but he gets mentioned by various people so I heard about that. You can look up the details yourself, but it is enough to safely say no jury will ever convict him and it makes Durham look like a fool.
One of the versions was that FBI general counsel Baker never asked Sussmann about clients. Did he think Sussmann or his law firm had the technical expertise to access, intercept and filter DNS lookup requests?
OK, thanks. I haven't followed this closely because the whole investigation sounds so fake.
In any case, that still makes me think that if you took this before a jury it would have no chance of success.
The alleged lie occurred in a meeting between Sussmann and FBI general counsel James A. Baker; no one else was present. Baker has been interviewed by the DOJ’s IG and Durham’s team; but it seems his accounts of the meeting are not consistent: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/us/politics/michael-sussmann-john-durham.html
This article appeared in early December, and contains much of the information that created such a stir when the filing was made Friday, though not in detail. Curious …
Excuse me, they're indicting someone based on somebody else's sole testimony? Grant, that person is going to command some sort of extra powerful juju before a court -- "The General Counsel of the FBI!!!!". But it's still ONE PERSON who might be a fallible witness, yes?
Now if it was recorded, Sussman has a problem, but his legal team will DESTROY the Government in a trial if they continue this KGB prosecution. If the selected judge has any sense of irony at all he or she will toy with the prosecutors for several days before tossing the entire sordid mess onto the trash heap of failed persecutions. [Note: NOT "PROsecutions"]
Not only wasn’t recorded, Baker didn’t take contemporaneous notes. Following the meeting with Sussmann, he recalled the conversation to his deputy Bill Priestap, who did jot notes, the only near-contemporaneous record, but regarded as hearsay by Lawfare: https://www.lawfareblog.com/special-counsels-weird-prosecution-michael-sussmann
Shoutout to Marcy Wheeler for a near real time take down of this. Here's a link to this morning's MSNBC interview with her on the topic
https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/tech-exec-was-trying-to-keep-obama-safe-from-hackers-says-journalist-133212741524
Marcy (aka @emptywheel) is definitely the go-to person on all of this.
Ukraine live stream,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_JRSioZZyQ
if you can take the suspense.
Sussman billed the Clinton Campaign for work on the Alfa Bank allegations. If that involved Joffe's access to non-public and proprietary Internet data, then Trump may have a case.
The data may be of little or no value. Fox et al have clearly overhyped the story. But I don't think we can dismiss this until more is known.
It all depends on the nature of the non-public and proprietary Internet data that may have been used. What is it?
I don’t know. Insofar as I’m aware, all of this data was developed by independent experts who were not working for the Clinton campaign. And almost all of this information and the experts conclusions were published in various places, including Slate.
DNS (Domain-Name-Server) lookup requests, reportedly. That is analogous to getting data from the phone company listing the numbers for calls made and received by a particular phone - it doesn’t provide any information about what was said, or even who was actually on the line. Similarly, the filing made no claim that any of the parties had access to the content of the IP packets, only the sources and destinations. See the comment by D_Ohrk earlier for a little more detail.