The White House sidestepped questions on Monday about special counsel John Durham’s finding of possible snooping into data at former President Donald Trump’s White House office.
Durham alleged in a court filing that a technology executive “exploited” access to White House data in an effort to dig up Russia-related dirt on Trump.
The White House repeatedly referred questions about this to the Justice Department, declining to discuss the matter. “That’s something I can’t speak to from this podium, so I refer you to the Department of Justice,” principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in response to a reporter’s question.
A reporter asked whether the alleged practices would concern President Joe Biden and then followed up by asking whether these activities would constitute “spying.”
“Again, I can’t speak to that report,” Jean-Pierre replied. “I refer you to the Department of Justice.”
The White House spokeswoman would not answer a general question about monitoring internet traffic, again referring the matter to the Justice Department.
The monitoring in question was intended to discover any Trump ties to a Russian bank.
Durham said Friday that left-wing lawyer Michael Sussmann “provided an updated set of allegations, including the Russian Bank-1 data and additional allegations relating to Trump,” to another U.S. government agency he called “Agency-2,” which is reportedly the CIA. Durham said these updated allegations relied in part on “the purported DNS traffic that Tech Executive-1 and others had assembled pertaining to Trump Tower, Donald Trump’s New York City apartment building, the EOP, and the aforementioned healthcare provider.”
“EOP” stands for “executive office of the president.”
“They didn’t just spy on Donald Trump’s campaign,” Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, tweeted in response. “They spied on Donald Trump as sitting President of the United States. It was all even worse than we thought.”
In a statement, Trump said, “It shows how totally corrupt and shameless the media is.”
He added: “Can you imagine if the roles were reversed and the Republicans, in particular President Donald Trump, got caught illegally spying into the Office of the President? All hell would break loose and the electric chair would immediately come out of retirement. The good news is, everybody is talking about not only this atrocity against our Nation, but that the press refuses to even mention the major crime that took place.”
Sussmann was indicted last year for allegedly concealing his clients, including Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, from the FBI when he volunteered since-debunked information about a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. He pleaded not guilty and denied the allegations.
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Durham has been investigating the FBI’s Trump-Russia inquiry since his appointment by former Attorney General William Barr in 2019.
