Hillary Clinton denounced a “fake scandal” promoted by former President Donald Trump and Fox News following allegations from special counsel John Durham that a Democratic-allied tech executive worked with an indicted Clinton campaign lawyer to weave a phony Trump-Russia collusion story by gaining access to White House internet traffic.
“Trump & Fox are desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones. So it’s a day that ends in Y. The more his misdeeds are exposed, the more they lie,” Clinton tweeted as she linked to a left-wing media story. “For those interested in reality, here’s a good debunking of their latest nonsense.” The report by Vanity Fair was titled, “You’ll never believe it but Hillary Clinton did not, in fact, spy on Trump’s White House.”
Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election, sent the tweet one day after she ignored questions from a Daily Mail reporter who approached her in New York City and asked her to respond to “spying” allegations. Durham’s investigation and indictments appear to be affirming what has long been suspected: that many of the biggest claims of coordination between Trump’s team and Russia can be traced back to the Clinton campaign. They come as Trump himself is facing multiple controversies, including myriad investigations into his business empire and 2020 election activities, as well as the House inquiry into the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was indicted last year for allegedly concealing his clients, including Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, from the FBI when he pushed since-debunked claims of a secret backchannel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty. Durham revealed last week that he has evidence that Sussmann’s other client, known to be former Neustar executive Rodney Joffe, “exploited” domain name system internet traffic at Trump Tower, Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and “the Executive Office of the President of the United States.”
Durham said Friday that “Internet Company-1” accessed “dedicated servers for the [Executive Office of the President] as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP” and that Joffe and his associates “exploited” this arrangement by mining the traffic and other data to gather dirt on Trump.
Durham also said Sussmann told a U.S. government agency, widely believed to be the CIA, about the phony Russian bank connection in a February 2017 meeting.
In response to Durham’s filing on Friday, Sussmann’s lawyers accused Durham of “provocatively and misleadingly” describing the internet traffic potentially associated with Trump and insisted that Sussmann provided the agency believed to be the CIA with data from only before Trump took office.
SUSSMANN WANTS DURHAM FILING STRICKEN FROM RECORD
Lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who allegedly worked with Joffe, denied spying on Trump and said that “to our knowledge all of the data they used was nonprivate DNS data from before Trump took office.” A spokesperson for Joffe said he “legally provided access to DNS data obtained from a private client that separately was providing DNS services to the Executive Office of the President.”
But Durham’s Friday filing pointed to the 2021 indictment of Sussmann, charging that Joffe “exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data” and tasked researchers to mine internet data to establish “an inference” and “narrative” tying Trump to Russia. Durham said Joffe indicated he was doing this to please certain “VIPs” on the Clinton campaign.
The special counsel said Sussmann claimed to the CIA in 2017 that data he had access to “demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.” Durham emphasized that he found “no support for these allegations.”
Trump himself issued a statement that said Durham’s filing “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.”
British ex-spy Christopher Steele was hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired by Marc Elias, then a top Perkins Coie lawyer and general counsel of the Clinton campaign. Elias met with Steele during the 2016 contest and periodically briefed high levels of the campaign about Steele’s and Fusion’s findings. The Alfa Bank claims were pushed to the FBI and Steele by Sussmann and others.
The Durham indictment doesn’t name everyone, but the people described in it have been otherwise identified. The special counsel says Sussmann, Joffe, and Elias “coordinated and communicated about the Russian Bank-1 allegations.” The indictment also said Elias “exchanged emails with the Clinton Campaign’s campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy adviser concerning the Russian Bank-1 allegations.”
Clinton’s foreign policy adviser was Jake Sullivan, who is now Biden’s national security adviser, while her campaign manager was Robby Mook, and her communications director was Jennifer Palmieri. “Campaign Lawyer-1” was Elias. On Halloween 2016, Clinton tweeted, “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” And she shared a lengthy Sullivan statement.
“This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow,” Sullivan claimed, adding, “We can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in his December 2019 report that the FBI “concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links.” When asked about the Alfa Bank claims during House testimony in July 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller said, “My belief at this point is that it’s not true.” Mueller’s report “did not establish” any criminal collusion between Trump and Russia.
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Igor Danchenko, a U.S.-based and Russian-born analyst, was charged with making false statements to the FBI about his sources of information for Steele’s discredited dossier, including the role longtime Clinton ally Charles Dolan played in supplying at least the basis of certain claims. Danchenko pleaded not guilty.
John Ratcliffe, Trump’s director of national intelligence, declassified handwritten notes from former CIA Director John Brennan showing he briefed then-President Barack Obama in 2016 on an unverified Russian intelligence report that claimed Clinton planned in July 2016 on tying Trump to Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee to distract from her email scandal.
