Durham Closing in on Hillary

[Estonut]

Grand Jury Indicts D.C. Attorney with Making False Statements to the FBI in 2016 Regarding Alleged Communications Between Trump Organization and Russian Bank

The more they investigate "Russian collusion," the more they turn up on the Clinton campaign.

[jarnon]

The law moves slowly, but it's relentless.

Republicans should note that this investigation is continuing during the Biden administration, and not suggest that the Justice Department "move on" and overlook Trump-era wrongdoing.

[Bob78164]

Grand Jury Indicts D.C. Attorney with Making False Statements to the FBI in 2016 Regarding Alleged Communications Between Trump Organization and Russian Bank

The more they investigate "Russian collusion," the more they turn up on the Clinton campaign.

You do realize that this "news" is nearly five months old, don't you? --Bob

[BackInTex]

Grand Jury Indicts D.C. Attorney with Making False Statements to the FBI in 2016 Regarding Alleged Communications Between Trump Organization and Russian Bank

The more they investigate "Russian collusion," the more they turn up on the Clinton campaign.

You do realize that this "news" is nearly five months old, don't you? --Bob

Is it no longer relevant?

[silverscreenselect]

And, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story:

When a special counsel accused a prominent cybersecurity lawyer of lying to the F.B.I. during a September 2016 meeting about Donald J. Trump’s possible links to Russia, the indictment presented a lengthy narrative but the direct evidence appeared lean.

The indictment said the lawyer, Michael A. Sussmann, had made a false statement by telling an F.B.I. official that he was not representing a client in presenting the information. Mr. Sussmann, who has pleaded not guilty, has denied saying that. No one else was present and their conversation was not recorded, so the direct and clearly admissible evidence appeared to boil down to one witness.

This week, additional pieces of evidence emerged into public view that were not in the indictment — one of which appears to dovetail with the accusation against Mr. Sussmann by the special counsel, John H. Durham, who was appointed during the Trump administration, while several others appear to conflict with it. The material emerged in court filings and at a status conference before a judge on Wednesday.

In accusing Mr. Sussmann of telling the F.B.I. official — James A. Baker, then the bureau’s general counsel — that he had no clients, Mr. Durham claimed that Mr. Sussmann was actually representing both a technology executive and the Clinton campaign. Mr. Sussmann, via his lawyers, denied that he told Mr. Baker that he had no client, while maintaining he was there on behalf of only the executive, not the campaign.

But at the hearing on Wednesday, a lawyer for Mr. Sussmann, Sean Berkowitz, cited evidence turned over by the prosecutors last week that muddies that picture by suggesting he may instead have told them he had a client.

Emails by agency personnel ahead of the meeting, Mr. Berkowitz said, included statements like “Sussmann said he represents a client who does not want to be known” and “the plan should be to convince Sussmann that it is in his and his client’s interest to go to the F.B.I.” A draft version of the agency’s post-meeting memo also referred to Mr. Sussmann having a client, he said.

In 2019 and 2020 interviews, Mr. Baker recalled the interaction in two different ways that each clashed with the indictment’s version. In the first, he said Mr. Sussmann told him the cyberexperts who developed the Alfa Bank theory “were his clients.” In the second, he said Mr. Sussmann never said if he was representing anyone and Mr. Baker didn’t ask, but assumed he had no client.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/us/d ... ussia.html


So what you've got is a rather cherry-picked set of vague documentation supporting the unsubstantiated (no recording or second witness to verify) statement of one FBI agent as to what Sussman said. This statement also contradicts the agent's sworn statements on two other occasions.

And whether or not Sussman misrepresented his client has nothing whatsoever to do with the veracity of the information he passed along.

[flockofseagulls104]

This may be a little more recent:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... use-office

If true, this is pretty bad. Start defaming people and finding internet articles that dispute something in order to discredit it.
You better get going. You probably haven't heard this yet. Nobody on the media you listen to is reporting on this, apparently. Probably trying to figure out how to marginalize it before they report on it.

[jarnon]

According to the Durham document, Joffe began mining the White House's DNS traffic in 2016. Did he foresee Trump's victory (unlike every other Democrat) and hatch a plan to spy on the new administration? Also, when Sussmann met the FBI General Counsel on February 9, 2017, just 20 days after the inauguration, Joffe had already collected derogatory data, analyzed them, and passed them to Sussmann. These allegations will be hard to prove in court.

I noticed that the Examiner's spell checker changed "salvo" to "salve." I hadn't realized how similar those words are. Just like "bomb" and "balm."

The special counsel said Joffe “also enlisted the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university,” Georgia Tech, “who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract" — likely from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

On this Bored, those are fighting words!

[silverscreenselect]

If true, this is pretty bad. Start defaming people and finding internet articles that dispute something in order to discredit it.
You better get going. You probably haven't heard this yet.

This filing was just made Friday afternoon. As far as I can tell, Durham has made a lot of allegations, but the filing is short on documentation. Let's see how much documentation is ever presented in court. Durham waited five months after indicting Sussman before bringing up this information he must have had all along. He filed it with the court two days after the statute of limitations ran for charging Sussman or anyone else with conspiracy in connection with bringing the supposedly illegally obtained information to the CIA's attention. The motion asks the judge to investigate possible conflicts of interest between Sussman and his clients. This "evidence" will probably never see the light of day (or a courtroom) because the judge will deny the motion out of hand and will only exist in the minds of those like Flock who are desperately eager to dig up some dirt on Hillary.

[flockofseagulls104]

If true, this is pretty bad. Start defaming people and finding internet articles that dispute something in order to discredit it.
You better get going. You probably haven't heard this yet.

This filing was just made Friday afternoon. As far as I can tell, Durham has made a lot of allegations, but the filing is short on documentation. Let's see how much documentation is ever presented in court. Durham waited five months after indicting Sussman before bringing up this information he must have had all along. He filed it with the court two days after the statute of limitations ran for charging Sussman or anyone else with conspiracy in connection with bringing the supposedly illegally obtained information to the CIA's attention. The motion asks the judge to investigate possible conflicts of interest between Sussman and his clients. This "evidence" will probably never see the light of day (or a courtroom) because the judge will deny the motion out of hand and will only exist in the minds of those like Flock who are desperately eager to dig up some dirt on Hillary.

I'd appreciate you keeping my name out of your responses.

[tlynn78]

If true, this is pretty bad. Start defaming people and finding internet articles that dispute something in order to discredit it.
You better get going. You probably haven't heard this yet.

This filing was just made Friday afternoon. As far as I can tell, Durham has made a lot of allegations, but the filing is short on documentation. Let's see how much documentation is ever presented in court. Durham waited five months after indicting Sussman before bringing up this information he must have had all along. He filed it with the court two days after the statute of limitations ran for charging Sussman or anyone else with conspiracy in connection with bringing the supposedly illegally obtained information to the CIA's attention. The motion asks the judge to investigate possible conflicts of interest between Sussman and his clients. This "evidence" will probably never see the light of day (or a courtroom) because the judge will deny the motion out of hand and will only exist in the minds of those like Flock who are desperately eager to dig up some dirt on Hillary.

I'd appreciate you keeping my name out of your responses.

He can't - he's positively giddy he has you to poke at again. It's hilarious this post is only a few responses long. Imagine the hand wringing and pearl clutching if the subject line included a name other than Hillary...

[silverscreenselect]

I'd appreciate you keeping my name out of your responses.

If the shoe fits, wear it.

[silverscreenselect]

It's hilarious this post is only a few responses long. Imagine the hand wringing and pearl clutching if the subject line included a name other than Hillary...

You apparently confuse pointing out the weaknesses and flaws in this case with "hand wringing and pearl clutching."

[tlynn78]

It's hilarious this post is only a few responses long. Imagine the hand wringing and pearl clutching if the subject line included a name other than Hillary...

You apparently confuse pointing out the weaknesses and flaws in this case with "hand wringing and pearl clutching."

LOL! "If the shoe fits..."

[BackInTex]

This news isn't 5 months old.

Clinton campaign paid to 'infiltrate' Trump Tower, White House servers to link Trump to Russia: Durham

Lawyers for the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to "infiltrate" servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the White House, in order to establish an "inference" and "narrative" to bring to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia, a filing from Special Counsel John Durham says.

Durham filed a motion on Feb. 11 focused on potential conflicts of interest related to the representation of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who has been charged with making a false statement to a federal agent. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.

3 days old if you don't have a calendar handy.

Your girl's dirty whether you admit it or not.

[flockofseagulls104]

If true, this is pretty bad. Start defaming people and finding internet articles that dispute something in order to discredit it.
You better get going. You probably haven't heard this yet.

This filing was just made Friday afternoon. As far as I can tell, Durham has made a lot of allegations, but the filing is short on documentation. Let's see how much documentation is ever presented in court. Durham waited five months after indicting Sussman before bringing up this information he must have had all along. He filed it with the court two days after the statute of limitations ran for charging Sussman or anyone else with conspiracy in connection with bringing the supposedly illegally obtained information to the CIA's attention. The motion asks the judge to investigate possible conflicts of interest between Sussman and his clients. This "evidence" will probably never see the light of day (or a courtroom) because the judge will deny the motion out of hand and will only exist in the minds of those like Flock who are desperately eager to dig up some dirt on Hillary.

Just for the record, I posted this as an on-topic addition to this thread. While I made reference to the Perspectives threads and the methods of response I expected to see, I made no value judgement on the content of the post, whether it was true of false. Mainly because I DON'T KNOW. Others here may claim they know exactly it's truthfulness and what is going to happen as a result, but I do not claim such prescient knowledge. If I venture an opinion, it is only that, my opinion.

[Bob Juch]

This news isn't 5 months old.

Clinton campaign paid to 'infiltrate' Trump Tower, White House servers to link Trump to Russia: Durham

Lawyers for the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to "infiltrate" servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the White House, in order to establish an "inference" and "narrative" to bring to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia, a filing from Special Counsel John Durham says.

Durham filed a motion on Feb. 11 focused on potential conflicts of interest related to the representation of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who has been charged with making a false statement to a federal agent. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.

3 days old if you don't have a calendar handy.

Your girl's dirty whether you admit it or not.

Seeing how Fox "News" has admitted they're not really a news organization, I don't believe a thing they say.

[silverscreenselect]

Your girl's dirty whether you admit it or not.

Two predictions I'm willing to take to the bank:

1) Sussman will not be convicted in his upcoming case, if it ever goes to court.

2) No one, not Sussman, Hillary, or anyone else will be charged in connection with any of the "new documentation" Durham introduced last week.

[BackInTex]

This news isn't 5 months old.

Clinton campaign paid to 'infiltrate' Trump Tower, White House servers to link Trump to Russia: Durham

Lawyers for the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to "infiltrate" servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the White House, in order to establish an "inference" and "narrative" to bring to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia, a filing from Special Counsel John Durham says.

Durham filed a motion on Feb. 11 focused on potential conflicts of interest related to the representation of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who has been charged with making a false statement to a federal agent. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.

3 days old if you don't have a calendar handy.

Your girl's dirty whether you admit it or not.

Seeing how Fox "News" has admitted they're not really a news organization, I don't believe a thing they say.

And where did they do that?

[Estonut]

Grand Jury Indicts D.C. Attorney with Making False Statements to the FBI in 2016 Regarding Alleged Communications Between Trump Organization and Russian Bank

The more they investigate "Russian collusion," the more they turn up on the Clinton campaign.

You do realize that this "news" is nearly five months old, don't you?

In my effort to find a news source that the usual shills could not pooh-pooh as biased, my "1 week" search brought up this page. I didn't notice the date.

You do realize there was new news about this case over the weekend, don't you?

[Estonut]

Your girl's dirty whether you admit it or not.

Two predictions I'm willing to take to the bank:

1) Sussman will not be convicted in his upcoming case, if it ever goes to court.

2) No one, not Sussman, Hillary, or anyone else will be charged in connection with any of the "new documentation" Durham introduced last week.

You're willing to take these to the bank?

Wanna bet $1000 on each of your assertions?

[silverscreenselect]

You do realize there was new news about this case over the weekend, don't you?

Everything that Durham brought up is now past the statute of limitations. His original case against Sussman, which was filed just before the statute would have expired consisted of a statement by the FBI agent as to what Sussman said. That statement wasn't recorded and no one else was present. The earliest available notes about the statement contradict what the agent said contradict his statement (although the "final" version of those notes does support his statement). Two subsequent sworn statements by the agent contradict his original statement as well. Any competent defense lawyer will have a field day impeaching his testimony if this ever goes to court.

I'm not going to place any bets that I'll never collect. I will issue a public apology to you, Flock, BiT, and the other Bored righties if I'm wrong and anything else I can do here that you want to think of.

[tlynn78]

Your girl's dirty whether you admit it or not.

Two predictions I'm willing to take to the bank:

1) Sussman will not be convicted in his upcoming case, if it ever goes to court.

2) No one, not Sussman, Hillary, or anyone else will be charged in connection with any of the "new documentation" Durham introduced last week.

You're willing to take these to the bank?

Wanna bet $1000 on each of your assertions?

Esto, you'll need to offer coupons, at least.

[Bob78164]

This may be a little more recent:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... use-office

If true, this is pretty bad. Start defaming people and finding internet articles that dispute something in order to discredit it.
You better get going. You probably haven't heard this yet. Nobody on the media you listen to is reporting on this, apparently. Probably trying to figure out how to marginalize it before they report on it.

Wrong again. The media is in fact reporting on this, and the story (again) is that the usual right-wing propaganda outlets got it wrong again. --Bob

[BackInTex]

This may be a little more recent:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... use-office

If true, this is pretty bad. Start defaming people and finding internet articles that dispute something in order to discredit it.
You better get going. You probably haven't heard this yet. Nobody on the media you listen to is reporting on this, apparently. Probably trying to figure out how to marginalize it before they report on it.

Wrong again. The media is in fact reporting on this, and the story (again) is that the usual right-wing propaganda outlets got it wrong again. --Bob

These are the same media that reported the Russian collusion stuff? O.K. You believe your sources, we'll believe ours.

[jarnon]

This may be a little more recent:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... use-office

If true, this is pretty bad. Start defaming people and finding internet articles that dispute something in order to discredit it.
You better get going. You probably haven't heard this yet. Nobody on the media you listen to is reporting on this, apparently. Probably trying to figure out how to marginalize it before they report on it.

Wrong again. The media is in fact reporting on this, and the story (again) is that the usual right-wing propaganda outlets got it wrong again. --Bob

I pried back the firewall to get the text of the Times article:

News Analysis
Court Filing Started a Furor in Right-Wing Outlets, but Their Narrative Is Off Track
The latest alarmist claims about spying on Trump appeared to be flawed, but the explanation is byzantine — underlining the challenge for journalists in deciding what merits coverage.

By Charlie Savage
Feb. 14, 2022
WASHINGTON — When John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel investigating the inquiry into Russia’s 2016 election interference, filed a pretrial motion on Friday night, he slipped in a few extra sentences that set off a furor among right-wing outlets about purported spying on former President Donald J. Trump.

But the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news — the latest example of the challenge created by a barrage of similar conspiracy theories from Mr. Trump and his allies.

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.
The latest example began with the motion Mr. Durham filed in a case he has brought against Michael A. Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer with links to the Democratic Party. The prosecutor has accused Mr. Sussmann of lying during a September 2016 meeting with an F.B.I. official about Mr. Trump’s possible links to Russia.

The filing was ostensibly about potential conflicts of interest. But it also recounted a meeting at which Mr. Sussmann had presented other suspicions to the government. In February 2017, Mr. Sussmann told the C.I.A. about odd internet data suggesting that someone using a Russian-made smartphone may have been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.

Mr. Sussmann had obtained that information from a client, a technology executive named Rodney Joffe. Another paragraph in the court filing said that Mr. Joffe’s company, Neustar, had helped maintain internet-related servers for the White House, and that he and his associates “exploited this arrangement” by mining certain records to gather derogatory information about Mr. Trump.

Citing this filing, Fox News inaccurately declared that Mr. Durham had said he had evidence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid a technology company to “infiltrate” a White House server. The Washington Examiner claimed that this all meant there had been spying on Mr. Trump’s White House office. And when mainstream publications held back, Mr. Trump and his allies began shaming the news media.

“The press refuses to even mention the major crime that took place,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Monday. “This in itself is a scandal, the fact that a story so big, so powerful and so important for the future of our nation is getting zero coverage from LameStream, is being talked about all over the world.”

There were many problems with all this. For one, much of this was not new: The New York Times had reported in October what Mr. Sussmann had told the C.I.A. about data suggesting that Russian-made smartphones, called YotaPhones, had been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.

The conservative media also skewed what the filing said. For example, Mr. Durham’s filing never used the word “infiltrate.” And it never claimed that Mr. Joffe’s company was being paid by the Clinton campaign.

Most important, contrary to the reporting, the filing never said the White House data that came under scrutiny was from the Trump era. According to lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped develop the Yota analysis, the data — so-called DNS logs, which are records of when computers or smartphones have prepared to communicate with servers over the internet — came from Barack Obama’s presidency.

“What Trump and some news outlets are saying is wrong,” said Jody Westby and Mark Rasch, both lawyers for Mr. Dagon. “The cybersecurity researchers were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign, and to our knowledge all of the data they used was nonprivate DNS data from before Trump took office.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Mr. Joffe said that “contrary to the allegations in this recent filing,” he was apolitical, did not work for any political party, and had lawful access under a contract to work with others to analyze DNS data — including from the White House — for the purpose of hunting for security breaches or threats.

After Russians hacked networks for the White House and Democrats in 2015 and 2016, it went on, the cybersecurity researchers were “deeply concerned” to find data suggesting Russian-made YotaPhones were in proximity to the Trump campaign and the White House, so “prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the C.I.A.”

A spokesman for Mr. Durham declined to comment.

Mr. Durham was assigned by the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, to scour the Russia investigation for wrongdoing in May 2019 as Mr. Trump escalated his claims that he was the victim of a “deep state” conspiracy. But after nearly three years, he has not developed any cases against high-level government officials.

Instead, Mr. Durham has developed two cases against people associated with outside efforts to understand Russia’s election interference that put forward unproven, and sometimes thin or subsequently disproved, suspicions about purported links to Mr. Trump or his campaign.

Both cases are narrow — accusations of making false statements. One of those cases is against Mr. Sussmann, whom Mr. Durham has accused of lying during a September 2016 meeting with an F.B.I. official about Mr. Trump’s possible links to Russia.

(Mr. Durham says Mr. Sussmann falsely said he had no clients, but was there on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and Mr. Joffe. Mr. Sussman denies ever saying that, while maintaining he was only there on behalf of Mr. Joffe — not the campaign.)

Both Mr. Sussmann’s September 2016 meeting with the F.B.I. and the February 2017 meeting with the C.I.A. centered upon suspicions developed by cybersecurity researchers who specialize in sifting DNS data in search of hacking, botnets and other threats.

A military research organization had asked Georgia Tech researchers to help scrutinize a 2015 Russian malware attack on the White House’s network. After it emerged that Russia had hacked Democrats, they began hunting for signs of other Russian activity targeting people or organizations related to the election, using data provided by Neustar.

Mr. Sussmann’s meeting with the F.B.I. involved odd data the researchers said might indicate communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked institution. The F.B.I. dismissed suspicions of a secret communications channel as unfounded. In the indictment of Mr. Sussmann, Mr. Durham insinuated that the researchers did not believe what they were saying. But lawyers for the researchers said that was false and that their clients believed their analysis.

The meeting with the C.I.A. involved odd data the researchers said indicated there had been communications with Yota servers in Russia coming from networks serving the White House; Trump Tower; Mr. Trump’s Central Park West apartment building; and Spectrum Health, a Michigan hospital company that also played a role in the Alfa Bank matter. The researchers also collaborated on that issue, according to Ms. Westby and Mr. Rasch, and Mr. Dagon had prepared a “white paper” explaining the analysis, which Mr. Sussmann later took to the C.I.A.

Mr. Durham’s filing also cast doubt on the researchers’ suggestion that interactions between devices in the United States and Yota servers were inherently suspicious, saying that there were more than three million such DNS logs from 2014 to 2017 — and that such logs from the White House dated back at least that long.

But Ms. Westby and Mr. Rasch reiterated that YotaPhones are extremely rare in the United States and portrayed three million DNS logs over three years as “paltry and small relative to the billions and billions” of logs associated with common devices like iPhones.

“Yota lookups are extremely concerning if they emanate from sensitive networks that require protection, such as government networks or people running for federal office,” they said.