This Week at Twitter

IF IT WERE STILL A PUBLICLY-TRADED COMPANY, undoubtedly, Twitter shares would be plummeting like Tesla’s, given the companies share the same overly-burdened C.E.O., Elon Musk. Among his burdens at Twitter this week was, on Monday, when the company’s Trust and Safety Council of 100 or so outside advisors was dissolved. Ostensibly, this group was formed, in 2016, to address so-called hate speech, self-harm cases, child exploitation, and other controversial or illegal matters on the social media platform. Instead, it appears it, and its head, Yoel Roth, was up to much more than just that, as was James Baker, now fired, who seemed to infiltrate the company, also in 2016. (See  generally, The Twitter Files.) And in any event, “hate speech” and “mis- and disinformation” that is so scorned really is in the eyes of the beholder, and subject to partisan politics.

On Tuesday, it was reported that Twitter hadn’t increased its reporting of child abuse materials on the platform, in spite of Musk’s promise to make a top priority. Perhaps there just isn’t more of it. Or perhaps the decrease corresponds proportionately with the decrease in people using the platform. Who knows. There are certainly plenty of Musk detractors since his foolish purchase and the subsequent disclosures he’s made about the company. 

The week also saw the suspension by Musk of over two dozen prominent journalists , including reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN. In part, Musk was unhappy about accounts that tracked the location of his private plane, not unreasonable given the fact he has received what he believes to be threats for his physical safety. (He also suspended the account of competitor, Mastodon, for the same thing.) (Meanwhile, Musk has also reinstated a number of accounts, including President Trump’s and My Pillow C.E.O., Mike Lindell’s, based on polling.) So much for being the “free speech absolutist” he claims to be, but it really is a private enterprise now, not even publicly traded on any stock exchange. And it’s obviously far less a de facto agent of the government than it was under Jack Dorsey. So while a work in progress, it is clearly an improvement. 

Major advertisers have been reluctant to renew advertising commitments under Musk. This has meant Musk has sold more Tesla shares despite having said he wouldn’t. He has also tried to monetize the verified user program with limited success. Musk is clearly finding the process challenging, but maybe he’ll succeed.

Blue Deep State. Blue FBI. Blue Jury. Blue Verdict. Notice a Pattern?

AS TEMPTING AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN to do a daily digest of the happenings in the Michael Sussmann trial, it’s really better to just look at the big picture in context. It is, after all, merely an alleged process crime of lying to the F.B.I., and the jury began its deliberations on this one count on Friday where an acquittal is likely. The ten-day trial was held at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, with a predominately Democrat jury pool. Being Memorial Day weekend, we won’t expect a verdict until next week.

Special Counsel John Durham wrapped his case against the Hillary Clinton campaign attorney from Perkins Coie, who told then-F.B.I. General Counsel James Baker that he wasn’t working on behalf of any client, when he brought forth since debunked allegations about clandestine communications channels between the Trump Organization and the Russian Alfa Bank in September of 2016, only weeks before the presidential election. Durham believes he has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Sussmann in fact was working for clients: the Clinton campaign and tech firm exec Rodney Joffe. If Durham succeeds, Sussmann faces up to five years’ imprisonment. 

To prove his case, Durham must show Sussmann made a statement or representation; that said statement or representation was false; that said statement or representation was material; that it was knowing and willful conduct; and that the matter was within the jurisdiction of the U.S. government. 

Evidence included F.B.I. testimony, billing records, expense reports, emails, and texts. F.B.I. testimony indicated the investigators into the Trump-Russia-collusion hoax, as it became known, would never have taken Sussmann’s suspicious DNS data, white papers, and flash drives purporting to connect Trump to the Kremlin as seriously had they known the truth. Still, executives on the 7th floor of F.B.I. headquarters were highly partisan, in favor of Hillary and toxically anti-Trump.

The defense argued, somewhat remarkably, that because there was skepticism about Sussmann’s statements, he couldn’t be found guilty. In other words, he didn’t lie because no one believed his lie. Margot Cleveland’s excellent account is here.

Cf. The Vastly Different Cases of Two Michaels – Flynn and Sussmann – Both Accused of Lying to the FBI, here.

Sussmann’s “Immaterial” Oversight To Be Scrutinized in May.

MICHAEL SUSSMANN’S MOTION TO DISMISS was predictably denied by the court on Wednesday. His trial is set to begin on May 16th.

The disgraced Washington attorney and former federal prosecutor had been indicted by a grand jury last fall for making a false statement to the F.B.I. five years earlier. The indictment arose from the U.S. Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the now-fully-debunked Trump-Russia-collusion hoax that plagued the 45th president for quite literally years. More specifically, Sussmann told the F.B.I. he was not working on behalf of any clients when in actuality, he was working for Trump rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Rodney Joffe, a “U.S. technology industry executive.”

In a pro forma move, Sussmann filed a Motion to Dismiss in February (read it here), arguing his misrepresentation was not “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent.” That it was material seems obvious on the face of it, but U.S. District Court Christopher Cooper ceded, “While Sussman is correct that certain statements might be so peripheral or unimportant to a relevant agency decision or function to be immaterial…as a matter of law, the Court is unable to make that determination as to this alleged statement before hearing the government’s evidence.” 

That Sussmann provided F.B.I. General Counsel James Baker “white papers” immediately before the 2016 election purporting to show secret communications between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank without disclosing his own connection to the opposing Clinton Campaign would hardly seem to be an “immaterial” oversight to anyone with a modicum of belief in fundamental fairness, and it would seem a certainty the good judge will ultimately agree.

Durham’s investigation continues to proceed apace. Sussmann is only the third defendant in his probe. Former F.B.I. attorney Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to 12 months probation after his guilty plea in Aug. of 2020 for fabricating evidence to obtain a FISA warrant on Trump advisor, Carter Page. Clinesmith was reinstated to the D.C. Bar in Dec. of 2021. And in November, Igor Danchenko was arrested. He has been the primary sub-source for the fully discredited Steele ‘dossier” which was the basis for accusing the 45th president of being a Kremlin agent and prompting his impeachment, and delaying the advancement of his policies. 

There Should Be Sufficient Evidence to Indict Hillary Now…

FOX NEWS AND THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER broke a story late Friday about Special Counsel John Durham’s ongoing investigation into the origins of the now fully debunked Trump-Russia-collusion hoax that was perpetrated on the American public for years, and which debilitated the 45th president for his entire four year term. Specifically, a court pleading filed by Durham on Friday alleged that the Hillary Clinton Campaign conspired to infiltrate the campaign of her opponent, Donald Trump, and continued to infiltrate his communications after the 2016 election when he was president. Needless to say, Trump was pissed when he heard about it.

The pleading (here) sounded innocuous enough, GOVERNMENT’S MOTION TO INQUIRE INTO POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST. It was filed in the case of Michael Sussman, a lawyer at Perkins Coie which represented the Clinton Campaign, who has since been indicted on one count of lying to F.B.I.’s then-General Counsel James Baker when he told the agency he was not working on behalf of a client and swore to the FISA Court about Trump’s alleged (and phony) Russian connection in order to illicitly obtain a warrant to surveil him. (Sussman has pleaded not guilty.) The Motion states Sussman was working for at least two clients: a technology executive whose name was redacted (believed to be Neustar Senior Vice President Rodney Joffe) and Clinton’s campaign, which billing records repeatedly substantiate. (After the F.B.I. in 2016, Sussman reportedly peddled his bull to the C.I.A. in 2017.)

The pleading is simply a motion in an ongoing case and is not a charging document for Hillary, although it is a fascinating look at what is hopefully in the works for Hillary’s future. It appears Durham wanted the court in Sussman’s case to examine whether there is a conflict of interest with respect to a member of Sussman’s defense team in his pending criminal case who had previously worked as counsel to the then-FBI Director from 2013 to 2014, and who had professional and personal relationships with people involved with the F.B.I.’s investigation of a Russian bank, Alfa-Bank. Current counsel is Latham & Watkins LLP, which may have a conflict because it represented Perkins Coie and Marc Elias in this same investigation and likely has privileged information about their role in Sussman’s past activities. Further, Latham had represented both the Clinton Campaign and Hillary for America in this same investigation.

Presumably, Durham cares about this potential conflict because it could affect his ability to prosecute Sussman or delay it, although there may be other reasons, too. He may want to introduce evidence or call witnesses at trial that he was made aware of from the Clinton Campaign or Hillary for America. The Motion can be read in its entirety here. And a good synopsis of Durham’s dilemma was digested by Techno Fog via The Reactionary at SubStack, here.

The Clinton Campaign apparently paid their lawyers, including General Counsel Marc Elias, to hire technicians to infiltrate DNS (domain name service) servers, and capture internet traffic at, and mine data from four critical locations, including Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, and a Trump-owned apartment building on Central Park West, both in New York, along with the Executive Office of the President at the White House, and an unnamed health care provider (thought to be Spectrum Health). These techs allegedly not only had access to the dedicated servers, but they maintained them, as well. The idea was to try to establish a link between Trump and Alfa, which was alleged to have Kremlin ties, and use the information to create a “narrative” that became the Trump-Russia-collusion hoax, now often referred to as Crossfire Hurricane.

An unnamed tech executive allegedly exploited his access to the non-public and/or proprietary internet traffic of Trump and his associates and turned over information which Sussman and his firm used to create “white papers” out of whole cloth. A “U.S.-based university” was also allegedly involved in receiving and analyzing internet data for a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract. (The university may be Georgia Tech, or Georgia Institute of Technology.)

The university researchers fed information to the tech exec who fed it to Sussman, which was puked out as the “narrative.” The tech executive reportedly said he was seeking to please certain “V.I.P.s,” meaning Perkins Coie and Clinton herself. By the time they were surveilling Trump as President in the White House, an investigative firm, numerous cyber researchers, and employees at multiple internet companies had all been assembled to collectively advance the “white papers.”

Fox reported the indictment alleges that on a second occasion, Sussman met with the government and gave them “an updated set of allegations” and “provided data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by these entities of internet protocol (IP) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider.” This meant, Sussman said, that Trump and his associates used rare, Russian-made wireless phones in and around the White House and elsewhere. For his part, Durham claimed there was no support for Sussman’s allegation, adding, “lookups were far from rare in the United States.”

Kash Patel, the former chief investigator of the House Intelligence Committee’s Trump-Russia probe under Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told Fox this “definitively shows that the Hillary Clinton Campaign directly funded and ordered its lawyers at Perkins Coie to orchestrate a criminal enterprise to fabricate a connection between President Trump and Russia,” adding, “Per Durham, this arrangement was put in motion in July of 2016, meaning the Hillary Clinton Campaign and her lawyers masterminded the most intricate and coordinated conspiracy against Trump when he was both a candidate and later President of the United States while simultaneously perpetrating the bogus Steele Dossier hoax.”

Jim Jordan, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee said, “You had the government working with the Clinton campaign to go after the Republican Party’s nominee for president, to spy on that campaign. We’ve never seen anything like that in history.”

Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, stressed the most newsworthy and crucial part of the story: “They didn’t just spy on Donald Trump’s campaign. They spied on Donald Trump as sitting president of the United States. It was all even worse than we thought. Indeed, it takes little imagination to see how dangerous a situation this dirty trick could quickly become.

And former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowsky observed and wondered, “They spied on the president of the United in the White House. That’s treason. Who’s going to jail for the rest of their life?” (Or at least be indicted and tried?)

On Saturday evening, Trump issued a statement, saying in part, “This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution. In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.”

Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted this on his ‘de-platformed’ father’s behalf: “BREAKING: Donald Trump and the RNC funded SIGINT collection AGAINST the Executive Office of the President of the United States, just like the Russians do. This is TREASON! Just kidding, it was Hillary Clinton and a big tech executive. Durham is coming.”

Trump, and much of the country isn’t really surprised. Trump had been interviewed about it by CBS’s 60 Minutes, but it wasn’t aired in its entirety. (Full interview here.) Much has been known, and little reported since 2016. Durham has been working on his investigation for years as a U.S. Attorney before having been appointed Special Counsel in Dec. of 2020 by then-Attorney General Bill Barr, who did so to ensure Durham could continue his work after the Biden regime was installed.

Of recent note is speculation surrounding Hillary’s appearance at the New York Democratic Party convention announced last week. Some suggested she might announce her candidacy for president in 2024. She would be 79, but Biden would be a very senile almost-82-year-old. With Durham’s latest, though, peoples’ recollections of Clinton corruption should be refreshed and defray that notion once and forevermore.

Redux/Reflux: An Update on John Durham’s Spygate Probe

ON MONDAY, SPECIAL COUNSEL John Durham filed what he called a “discovery update” (PDF here.) and a motion to postpone providing relevant documents in the Michael Sussman criminal case. Writing for The Federalist, Margot Cleveland, whose observations are typically astute, noted three aspects of the court filing. The first is directly about the Sussman case; the second, about the broader investigation by Durham; and the third, about a seeming “rift” between Durham’s people and the Inspector General’s.

Sussman is Hillary Clinton’s former 2016 campaign lawyer. On 9/16/21, Durham filed a one-count indictment (here) against him for lying to F.B.I. General Counsel James Baker when he gave information that he claimed proved the Trump organization had a covert channel to Russia’s Alfa Bank. More specifically, he was misleading when he claimed he was not providing the details on behalf of a client. In fact, he was: the client was Clinton’s campaign and an executive named Rodney Joffe.

The now fully debunked Trump-Russia-collusion story lingered for three years. In May of 2019, then Attorney General William Barr directed Durham to “investigate certain intelligence and law-enforcement activities surrounding the 2016 presidential election.” Barr named Durham as a special counsel before the 2020 election so he could continue his work. Durham has been working under the radar since.

There has been little progress publicly identified. In August, Durham charged F.B.I. lawyer Kevin Klinesmith with altering an email to advance a FISA warrant against Carter Page. (He pleaded guilty and received a wrist-slap.) In November, Durham charged Igor Danchenko, Christopher Steele’s “primary sub-source” with five counts of lying to the F.B.I. A month later, we learned of an “active, ongoing criminal investigation” of Sussman.

It appears these charges were filed to ensure the statute of limitations didn’t run. Monday’s filing suggests there is more coming. Durham wrote his “…office maintains an active, ongoing criminal investigation of these and other matters that is not limited to the offense charged in the indictment.” (emphasis added.) Elias is believed to have hired Fusion GPS, which in turn, hired Steele.

Also noteworthy is that Marc Elias, Clinton’s top attorney at Perkins Coie and Sussman’s colleague, has provided sworn testimony before the grand jury, according to Durham’s filing. It appears the attorney-client privilege was inapplicable because of the crime-fraud exception according to Techno Fog, an anonymous writer for The Federalist and blogger of The Reactionary.

Others have testified, too, including James Baker and Bill Priestap, a former F.B.I. counterintelligence official. Also the assistant director of the agency’s counterintelligence division, a former deputy assistant director for counterintelligence, a special agent, a supervisory special agent from HQ, two C.I.A. employees, two Georgia Tech employees, and a former employee of an internet company identified in the indictment that may have been Joffe’s concern.

Durham’s filing also names individuals and companies who have been served grand jury subpoenas for documents. These include the Clinton campaign; a “political organization” thought to be the D.N.C.; Perkins Coie; three internet companies involving Joffe; Georgia Tech; Fusion GPS; and a P.R. firm. All told, it seems Durham’s team has interviewed at least 94, including at least two dozen current or former F.B.I. employees; numerous C.I.A. employees; a dozen internet employees connected to Joffe’s, former chairman of Perkins Coie; a former employee of the Clinton campaign; and four current and former Georgia Tech employees. (Clinton might want to rethink her foolish notion of running for president yet again in 2024.)

Durham’s office has also provided Sussman almost 400 emails that it obtained from the F.B.I. which were sent to, received from, or copied to Sussman’s Perkins Coie email address from Jan. 2016 – June 2017. What they say we do not yet know.

Finally, Durham’s filing shows the O.I.G. provided his office with a written forensic report about a “cyber-related matter” that Sussman had told a special agent from the O.I.G. about. Apparently, early in 2017, Sussman told the agent that one of his “clients had observed that a specific OIF employee’s computer was ‘seen publicly’ in ‘Internet traffic’ and was connecting to a Virtual Private Network in a foreign country.”

The O.I.G. gave Durham the forensic report, saying it had nothing further relating to the cyber matter. But a week ago, Sussman’s attorneys informed Durham that Sussman had actually met with the I.G. in March of 2017, and told him that “Tech Exec-1” was Joffe, who discovered the O.I.G. computer connecting to the V.P.N. Durham then learned it wasn’t just the I.G. he met with, but also his then-General Counsel. Durham then sought documents relating to that interaction.

Mistakes happen, but Durham seems okay with this being publicly disclosed. We know nothing about the V.P.N. or the employee using it. It may have been agency protocol to use it, or highly suspect. But why did Joffe know about it? Was he monitoring government computers? If so, why?

Questions, questions. Perhaps one day, we’ll have some answers, hopefully before 2024’s presidential election process commences.

The Durham Train is Chugging Along. James Baker May Be Aboard…or Not.

According to former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova (known for, inter alia,  prosecuting disgraced D.C. mayor, Marion Barry), who appeared on Howie Carr’s syndicated radio talk show this week, not only is General Flynn’s criminal case unraveling, the coup to remove President Trump from office is, too. 

Grassley Trying to Unbury Dirty Details Deep Within the State.

It’s been buried amidst the nonstop and redundant impeachment news, but Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee requested detailed information from the director of the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment pertaining to F.B.I. informant Stefan Halper’s work contracts during their 2016 election probe.  O.N.A., as the secretive office is abbreviated, is run by James Baker, who has held his position since he was appointed by Obama in 2015.

Is Barr Pulling a Sessions?

 

The Hill’s John Solomon has been among several reporters who has done justice to the Trump-Russia-collusion/Spygate witch hunt.  Others include Dan Bongino,  Sara Carter and Sean Hannity, among a few others.