Where does John Durham go from here?
Michael Sussmann has been indicted for lying to the FBI general counsel James Baker during a September 2016 meeting where he provided to Baker materials and information purported to link the Trump Organization with Russian entity Alfa Bank. In order to bolster the credibility of his claims, Sussmann told Baker he was acting on his own and not for any clients.
This was a lie – Sussmann was acting on behalf of a tech executive and the Hillary Clinton campaign. According to Special Counsel John Durham, Sussmann would repeat this lie on February 9, 2017 to two employees of another government agency (“Agency-2” in the indictment; possibly CIA).
The more interesting parts of the Sussmann indictment have to do with the orchestrated effort by Sussmann, the Clinton Campaign, a tech executive (identified as Rodney Joffe), their team of partisan researchers, and Fusion GPS to smear the Trump Organization – and thus candidate Trump – as having a “purported secret channel of communications” with Alfa Bank (a Russian bank). The highlights include:
E-mails among the Tech Executive and the researchers stating how “it would be possible to “fill out a sales form on two websites, faking the other company’s email address in each form,’ and thereby cause them ‘to appear to communicate with each other in DNS.’”
Internal doubts about the Trump Organization/Alfa Bank allegations: “we cannot technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny.”
Concerns over disclosing how they came to their conclusions: “Do you realize that we will have to expose every trick in our bag to even make a very weak association?”
Importantly, there is a discussion of how they hid their doubts about their own work in order to present a more damning narrative for FBI review. Durham points to their internal e-mails stating: the Alfa Bank allegations were a “red herring” that should be “ignored”; that the allegations would “not fly in eyes of public scrutiny.” That describes a conspiracy.
On another point, significant groundwork had to be laid to prepare the Sussmann indictment. This would include, at a minimum:
E-mails records from the Tech Executive, the research group, and Sussmann.
Perkins Coie billing records.
Perkins Coie records (notes, etc.) relating to calls and meetings relating to Alfa Bank.
Grand jury testimony and corresponding subpoenas for evidence.
I add that the indictment’s description of the Alfa Bank conspiracy puts into context October 2020 reporting from The New Yorker, which said “Durham’s agents have summoned some of the same computer scientists to testify before a grand jury.” More interesting is this discussion that Durham’s team was:
“exploring a potential criminal charge – presumably against Max and Tea Leaves [those involved in the Alfa Bank hoax] – for giving false information to the government.”
The “false information” would be the Alfa Bank research - falsified by those tasked to create the Trump/Alfa Bank connections. At a minimum, there are false statement or potential obstruction charges (18 USC 1503) for the Alfa Bank conspirators. Their collective actions put them at risk for conspiracy charges as well. And as we have noted, there is also the potential for charges relating to the misappropriation/misuse of classified or proprietary government data.
As to the conspiracy, we believe there is much Durham didn’t say. There were working drafts of the Alfa Bank documents sent among Fusion GPS employees and outside contractor Edward Baumgartner.Let us also look to other potential criminal charges: FBI employees, Fusion GPS (Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson), and Igor Danchenko.
The Sussmann indictment doesn’t mean Durham is finished. There is still Durham’s focus “on the activities of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation within the FBI.” This would include Durham’s review of the FBI’s disclosures (more accurately, “lies”) to the FISA court in support the Carter Page warrants. Just imagine the internal discussions of the FBI personnel who prepared the FISA warrants with false information or information that had “no supporting documentation.”
With that in mind, recall this report from The Wall Street Journal on August 13, 2021, which states Durham was:
“Presenting evidence to a grand jury and preparing a lengthy report expected to be completed in the coming months, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Examining potential criminal charges against several lower-level FBI employees, and people who aren’t in government, according to people familiar with the matter.”
There is also Durham’s focus on the dossier and the inception of Crossfire Hurricane. The New York Times’ Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman (who broke the Sussmann story) reported in April 2021 that:
Mr. Durham has keyed in on the F.B.I.’s handling of a notorious dossier of political opposition research both before and after the bureau started using it to obtain court permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016 and 2017.
In that same April 2021 article, the New York Times said Durham was focusing on Igor Danchenko, who served as Christopher Steele’s “primary subsource.” At a minimum, this means inquiry into Danchenko’s lies to the FBI about his contacts with Russian intel.
This was a lie – Sussmann was acting on behalf of a tech executive and the Hillary Clinton campaign. According to Special Counsel John Durham, Sussmann would repeat this lie on February 9, 2017 to two employees of another government agency (“Agency-2” in the indictment; possibly CIA).
The more interesting parts of the Sussmann indictment have to do with the orchestrated effort by Sussmann, the Clinton Campaign, a tech executive (identified as Rodney Joffe), their team of partisan researchers, and Fusion GPS to smear the Trump Organization – and thus candidate Trump – as having a “purported secret channel of communications” with Alfa Bank (a Russian bank). The highlights include:
E-mails among the Tech Executive and the researchers stating how “it would be possible to “fill out a sales form on two websites, faking the other company’s email address in each form,’ and thereby cause them ‘to appear to communicate with each other in DNS.’”
Internal doubts about the Trump Organization/Alfa Bank allegations: “we cannot technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny.”
Concerns over disclosing how they came to their conclusions: “Do you realize that we will have to expose every trick in our bag to even make a very weak association?”
Importantly, there is a discussion of how they hid their doubts about their own work in order to present a more damning narrative for FBI review. Durham points to their internal e-mails stating: the Alfa Bank allegations were a “red herring” that should be “ignored”; that the allegations would “not fly in eyes of public scrutiny.” That describes a conspiracy.
On another point, significant groundwork had to be laid to prepare the Sussmann indictment. This would include, at a minimum:
E-mails records from the Tech Executive, the research group, and Sussmann.
Perkins Coie billing records.
Perkins Coie records (notes, etc.) relating to calls and meetings relating to Alfa Bank.
Grand jury testimony and corresponding subpoenas for evidence.
I add that the indictment’s description of the Alfa Bank conspiracy puts into context October 2020 reporting from The New Yorker, which said “Durham’s agents have summoned some of the same computer scientists to testify before a grand jury.” More interesting is this discussion that Durham’s team was:
“exploring a potential criminal charge – presumably against Max and Tea Leaves [those involved in the Alfa Bank hoax] – for giving false information to the government.”
The “false information” would be the Alfa Bank research - falsified by those tasked to create the Trump/Alfa Bank connections. At a minimum, there are false statement or potential obstruction charges (18 USC 1503) for the Alfa Bank conspirators. Their collective actions put them at risk for conspiracy charges as well. And as we have noted, there is also the potential for charges relating to the misappropriation/misuse of classified or proprietary government data.
As to the conspiracy, we believe there is much Durham didn’t say. There were working drafts of the Alfa Bank documents sent among Fusion GPS employees and outside contractor Edward Baumgartner.Let us also look to other potential criminal charges: FBI employees, Fusion GPS (Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson), and Igor Danchenko.
The Sussmann indictment doesn’t mean Durham is finished. There is still Durham’s focus “on the activities of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation within the FBI.” This would include Durham’s review of the FBI’s disclosures (more accurately, “lies”) to the FISA court in support the Carter Page warrants. Just imagine the internal discussions of the FBI personnel who prepared the FISA warrants with false information or information that had “no supporting documentation.”
With that in mind, recall this report from The Wall Street Journal on August 13, 2021, which states Durham was:
“Presenting evidence to a grand jury and preparing a lengthy report expected to be completed in the coming months, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“Examining potential criminal charges against several lower-level FBI employees, and people who aren’t in government, according to people familiar with the matter.”
There is also Durham’s focus on the dossier and the inception of Crossfire Hurricane. The New York Times’ Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman (who broke the Sussmann story) reported in April 2021 that:
Mr. Durham has keyed in on the F.B.I.’s handling of a notorious dossier of political opposition research both before and after the bureau started using it to obtain court permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016 and 2017.
In that same April 2021 article, the New York Times said Durham was focusing on Igor Danchenko, who served as Christopher Steele’s “primary subsource.” At a minimum, this means inquiry into Danchenko’s lies to the FBI about his contacts with Russian intel.
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6 1/2 years here and you have created 4 posts.
“We the people are fat and lazy and have done nothing” good self description.
Recall, Hillary Clinton was the first to promote the bogus Russian Alfa Bank story with just days to go until the 2016 election.
On October 31st Hillary tweeted, “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia.” and she linked to a far-left Slate article claiming computer scientists discovered Trump’s secret server to be communicating with a Putin-tied bank called Alfa Bank. Excerpt from the Slate article:
“I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way,” he wrote in his notes. He couldn’t quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue.”
prove me wrong
no one will be happier than me to BE WRONG
but history is on my side
the Oath Keepers are asleep
the US Military is asleep
We the People are fat and lazy and have done nothing
But there were a few people in the fedgov who had ethics in that era.
I have little expectation that what we have seen so far will have satisfying results, i.e., justice and punishment for traitors.
So the question remains, where does the investigation go?
all of it
nothing will happen to anyone responsible for these crimes
Anyway, if Durham can nail some small fish maybe they will bait the bigger ones. It's nice to see Durham isn't entirely dragging his feet, but then the opposition has to be enormous especially now that the Neo Communists seem to have the upper hand in DC at this point.
Thanks for posting this. The comments at the end of the article are worth reading, too.