A few days ago when the Michael Sussmann indictment was still ‘looming‘—on September 16, actually—we consider Durham’s Investigative Theory. I had already noted Durham’s apparent interest in Sussmann’s (and Marc Elias’) former law firm, Perkins Coie (PC), but wasn’t sure whether Durham’s interest in PC was in the firm as an entity or simply more or less coincidental to Sussmann and Elias being partners at PC. However, on September 16 I offered this consideration:
Most interesting that he was hired to analyze the Alfa Bank data for the Senate committee; why didn't he figure out it was all BS? Is he incompetent, or was he part of keeping the lie going, and covering up the conspiracy to obstruct justice with it?
I think the main takeaway has to do with the battles over attorney client privilege that certainly took place. Durham certainly could have brought this specific indictment without going that route, but he obviously decided it was worth the extra time and effort to do the deep dive. IOW, he has plans for the future that may ride on the records he gathered in this way. At the very least he sees the records playing an important supporting role in corroborating witness testimony.
Key point: records cited by Durham in Sussmann indictment could not be obtained without the attorney-client privilege being pierced, most likely by the Crime-Fraud exception. The nuance is the ongoing/future crime has to be by the client, not the attorney, for the exception to apply!
That means Durham has evidence that the clients (Joffe or DNC/Hillary campaign) were involved in current/ongoing, or future criminal behavior.
SWC argues this is the real focus of what Durham documented in the Sussmann indictment.
Also makes an argument that the subpoena fight likely took place in a judicial district other than DC.
I think all of us are missing the most important part of this absolutely wild indictment that quashes so many Deep State narratives of the last 5.5 years.
Sussman was the lawyer tasked with handling the alleged hacking of the DNC, and in that role he hired Crowdstrike. According to this indictment, in the very month before he made that hire, he was conspiring with three tech companies and two university researchers to unlawfully use their access to nonpublic information provided by a pending government cyber security contract to spy on the Trump organization and to fabricate DNS logs that would appear to show that a Trump server was communicating with a Russian bank. These fabricated logs were then fed to the FBI general counsel and the resulting FBI investigation leaked to the media. (Sources: Mueller Report and Sussman Indictment).
Is there any reason to believe the fabricators of those DNS logs could not have taken Russian and Ukrainian malware available on the dark web to anyone with a Tor account to fake an attack on the DNC’s email servers? We have no way of knowing for certain, because after the FBI said the Russians hacked the DNC, Sussman refused them access to the DNC servers, and had Crowdstrike destroy all of the evidence, so that no independent government or private organization could ever examine the logs.
Does Durham dare go all the way and prove that not only Russian Collusion but Russian Interference never happened?!
How has he not been fired yet? It’s not like he’s Mueller, where the corporate press would immediately accuse the DOJ of a cover up—how many Americans even know who he is? And again, unlike Mueller and Rosenstein, his supervisors are implicated in actual misconduct. Monaco was a senior DOJ official throughout, who I believe even took DOJ’s role in Danchenko’s 18-21 JAN 2017 interrogation. Garland was one of the DC Circuit Court Judges that voted to take a a rare en banc case and then overturn a panel decision that had imposed a writ of mandamus on Sullied Sullivan to dismiss the case against LTG Flynn. And this was even after DNI Radcliffe published the transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak proving that Mueller and Van Grack suborned perjury and Flynn had been telling the truth the entire time.
Crazy idea, but it’s not any more crazy than the rest of this conspiracy, Does President Trump have tapes of Sullivan or Garland talking to Obama or his lieutenants talking about the Flynn case? That sounds like Q trust the plan type craziness but for the life of me I can’t imagine why else Durham wouldn’t be fired the second he told Garland I’m going to subpoena Perkins Coie’s Billings records from the 2016 Clinton campaign.
Tantalizing Mark P, on the other hand if "they" end up merely dangling Sussman and he gets the klinesmith treatment, in other words if Durham doesn't go there, then leaving Durham in place and letting him indict Sussman seems like the same old crisis management approach: give us the tiniest bit of red meat, admit the scheme and all the lies and fraud in a kind of "but that was so long ago, everybody's moved on haven't they" kind of way, and nobody of consequence gets held accountable at all. See DOJ IG.
Related: Dan Bongino has pulled together some very interesting details, and concludes the Sussmann indictment is a much bigger deal than most people think.
Watch his podcast from ~10:00 minutes to ~25:00 minutes as he outlines the material some of which is gleaned from Fool Nelson's twitter feed.
1. When Steele first passed info to FBI/DOJ regarding allegations that Trump Campaign was colluding with Russia, he revealed that the ultimate clients -- for whom FusionGPS, and he by Fusion, were hired by Perkins Coie -- were Hillary's Campaign/DNC.
2. FBI opens Crossfire Hurricane at about this time, putatively based on Downer's tip about PapaD conversation with Mifsud.
3. FBI wants to get a FISA warrant, but knows a warrant based solely on oppo research material from an opposing campaign, won't fly with the FISA court.
4. Steele passes info to FBI via Legat in London and concurrently passes it to people in the NY Field office (Gaeta?)
5. Halper is passing related info (about Carter Page and PapaD) to his handler in NYFO (Somma)
6. NYFO shares info with FBI HQ, which is also getting it from Steele's contacts in DC.
7. Gaeta transfers to CH investigation in mid-August 2016, after having received Steele reporting, which FBI knows is tainted oppo research material.
8. Sussmann goes to Baker at FBI with Alfa Bank connection data/allegation, and specifically states he's not doing this on behalf of any client (which is the basis of his indictment) on 19 September.
9. McCabe immediately orders the field offices to ceases all contact, acceptance of info, from sources Halper and Steele.
10. Bongino concludes McCabe did this because now FBI had a source for an allegation of collusion with Russia that wasn't officially connected back to Hillary's Campaign, and didn't want to risk receiving anything else from less pristine sources that they would have to reveal to
the FISA Court when applying for a warrant on Carter Page.
Two bonus points:
11. Bogino mentions Sara Carter's reporting over the weekend that Alfa bank hired forensic cyber tech people to trace the source of the mysterious lookups from their server's IP address to/from the Trump server. She reported to Bongino that Alfa's techs traced the source one three specific occasions to somewhere in the US, causing their server to appear to be looking up Trump's server.
12. An inference from what Bogino was saying is that Gaeta knew the essence of the Steele Dossier reporting in July 2016, and then JOINED CH in DC in mid-August, but FBI maintained that CH knew nothing about the Dossier material until mid-September. That's contradicted by virtue of Gaeta knowing about it in July, then joining the CH team in mid-August!
Side story: Mickey Dickenson is listed as one of the people being subpoenaed by Alfa Bank in its civil lawsuit. He worked in the Obama WH as a IT guru. What does Alfa bank's attorney's know that we don't?
#8 There's a hitch there. The Steele "reporting" on Cohen meeting in Prague with "Kremlin officials" was key for the FISA to show continuity in Kremlin - Trump campaign contacts after Carter Page dropped out of Trump campaign. That Steele "reporting" was accepted by the FBI and was dated 10 October 2016--well after McCabe's supposed stand down order re Steele reporting. However, it came AFTER Steele met personally with Weissmann and several other non-NS DoJ lawyers (criticized by OIG) with top FBI people in CH. I believe that meeting was to tell Steele exactly what type of additional "reporting" was needed for the FISA and to solicit additional reporting. All that blows a hole in Bongino's neat narrative.
Not a fatal blow, if one considers that McCabe's order was for all other fields offices not working on CH to cease contact with Steele. CH (and others in DOJ) continued to meet with him, as you point out, and accept material from him (and I agree they likely gave him a specific description of the type of additional "evidence" he needed to "find" for them to get a FISA on Carter Page.) IOW, the point of the McCabe's "stand down" to the field offices was to prevent intake of some evidence from Steele or Halper that is NOT under CH control, but which would be formally documented containing info to which they did NOT wish to draw FISA court's attention. By restricting Steele to working directly with the CH team, they controlled what "evidence" from him they choose to accept. Perhaps that may well have been the point of making him a paid informant. And that's the real reason they went hensh*t when they found out he was still leaking info to Journos after they hired him; it put them at risk for Steele saying something that could jeopardize the CP FISA application. McCabe and company couldn't afford the risk, cut him loose, and then used Bruce Ohr as a back channel from Steele, in case he came up with something useful, and otherwise unfavorable or exculpatory info could be ignored.
By the September time frame, McCabe probably realized to get a FISA before the election they would have to rely on Steele's info, and came up with the clever footnote to obscure the fact it was paid oppo research funded by DNC/Hillary's campaign, while still being able to claim they technically revealed it.
I've seen it alluded to several times in the past few weeks, but I'm not sure where it comes from. Horowitz report? Or perhaps some recently released FBI documents?
While Gaeta was stationed at the US Embassy in Rome, he collected Steele's Dossier reports, and he officially forwarded a few of them to the New York Field Office. However (I am sure), he immediately, directly and secretly sent all of them to the Counterintelligence Chief at FBI Headquarters.
Bongino's Port #4 is correct -- except that the Legat (Gaeta's official boss) thought that Gaeta was sending all the Dossier reports only to the NYFO. The Legat did not know that Gaeta was sending all the Dossier reports to FBI Headquarters.
Gaeta had been stationed in the NY Field Office before he was transferred to the US Embassy in Rome.
While Gaeta had been stationed in the NYFO, he had been involved in an FBI investigation of a Russia-based international gambling ring that operated from Trump Tower. I speculate that the FBI investigated that gambling ring's funding and communications, and that was where suspicions about Alfa Bank and Trump began.
While all this is of interest, it likely will be mostly moot, in that the Dems best play may be, for Biden to issue preemptive pardons (akin to Ford/ Nixon) to all major players, before any pleas/ convictions.
That way, the MSM etc. can crow about how "nothing was proven, so let's move on."
I've been thinking the same thing .... but don't know if Biden/Dems will dare to do it this close to mid term elections 14 months from now, and with Durham still writing a report on what he found regardless of pardons.
I have subsequently found a press release from Jenner & Block dated 6 August, that, in passing, mentions Weissmann as a "former partner." So his departure -- for some sort of "in house" position IIRC -- had to be prior to 6 August.
Curiously, Weissmann also suddenly ceased tweeting™ on 10 July. Is that because of the same thing that caused him to leave the law firm where he had scored a gig just a year and a half earlier? Could be coincidence, or not .... Could it be .... a target letter?
Have you considered this--maybe he stopped tweeting because he suddenly ceased to have opinions on much of anything? :-) That'd be like me ceasing to have opinions.
Re the date, the late August date, of course, is simply the date at which the rumors re Durham went public in a major way. There was certainly plenty of activity behind the scenes before that date.
Dan Jones testified before Durham GJ?
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/senate-dems-tapped-soros-funded-operative-to-research-trump-russia-conspiracy/
Hmmmmm .....
Very interesting. We knew that Jones had been subpoenaed and that he's super connected as a Dem operative, but this article fleshes out the picture.
Most interesting that he was hired to analyze the Alfa Bank data for the Senate committee; why didn't he figure out it was all BS? Is he incompetent, or was he part of keeping the lie going, and covering up the conspiracy to obstruct justice with it?
Consider this: At the time, that was a GOP controlled Senate.
SWC's latest: https://shipwreckedcrew.substack.com/p/the-sussmann-indictment-reads-like
I think the main takeaway has to do with the battles over attorney client privilege that certainly took place. Durham certainly could have brought this specific indictment without going that route, but he obviously decided it was worth the extra time and effort to do the deep dive. IOW, he has plans for the future that may ride on the records he gathered in this way. At the very least he sees the records playing an important supporting role in corroborating witness testimony.
Key point: records cited by Durham in Sussmann indictment could not be obtained without the attorney-client privilege being pierced, most likely by the Crime-Fraud exception. The nuance is the ongoing/future crime has to be by the client, not the attorney, for the exception to apply!
That means Durham has evidence that the clients (Joffe or DNC/Hillary campaign) were involved in current/ongoing, or future criminal behavior.
SWC argues this is the real focus of what Durham documented in the Sussmann indictment.
Also makes an argument that the subpoena fight likely took place in a judicial district other than DC.
The indictment sets that out in plain terms in #6.
I think all of us are missing the most important part of this absolutely wild indictment that quashes so many Deep State narratives of the last 5.5 years.
Sussman was the lawyer tasked with handling the alleged hacking of the DNC, and in that role he hired Crowdstrike. According to this indictment, in the very month before he made that hire, he was conspiring with three tech companies and two university researchers to unlawfully use their access to nonpublic information provided by a pending government cyber security contract to spy on the Trump organization and to fabricate DNS logs that would appear to show that a Trump server was communicating with a Russian bank. These fabricated logs were then fed to the FBI general counsel and the resulting FBI investigation leaked to the media. (Sources: Mueller Report and Sussman Indictment).
Is there any reason to believe the fabricators of those DNS logs could not have taken Russian and Ukrainian malware available on the dark web to anyone with a Tor account to fake an attack on the DNC’s email servers? We have no way of knowing for certain, because after the FBI said the Russians hacked the DNC, Sussman refused them access to the DNC servers, and had Crowdstrike destroy all of the evidence, so that no independent government or private organization could ever examine the logs.
Does Durham dare go all the way and prove that not only Russian Collusion but Russian Interference never happened?!
We can dream ...
How has he not been fired yet? It’s not like he’s Mueller, where the corporate press would immediately accuse the DOJ of a cover up—how many Americans even know who he is? And again, unlike Mueller and Rosenstein, his supervisors are implicated in actual misconduct. Monaco was a senior DOJ official throughout, who I believe even took DOJ’s role in Danchenko’s 18-21 JAN 2017 interrogation. Garland was one of the DC Circuit Court Judges that voted to take a a rare en banc case and then overturn a panel decision that had imposed a writ of mandamus on Sullied Sullivan to dismiss the case against LTG Flynn. And this was even after DNI Radcliffe published the transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak proving that Mueller and Van Grack suborned perjury and Flynn had been telling the truth the entire time.
Crazy idea, but it’s not any more crazy than the rest of this conspiracy, Does President Trump have tapes of Sullivan or Garland talking to Obama or his lieutenants talking about the Flynn case? That sounds like Q trust the plan type craziness but for the life of me I can’t imagine why else Durham wouldn’t be fired the second he told Garland I’m going to subpoena Perkins Coie’s Billings records from the 2016 Clinton campaign.
Tantalizing Mark P, on the other hand if "they" end up merely dangling Sussman and he gets the klinesmith treatment, in other words if Durham doesn't go there, then leaving Durham in place and letting him indict Sussman seems like the same old crisis management approach: give us the tiniest bit of red meat, admit the scheme and all the lies and fraud in a kind of "but that was so long ago, everybody's moved on haven't they" kind of way, and nobody of consequence gets held accountable at all. See DOJ IG.
Techno Fog's latest assessment of where Durham may be headed:
https://technofog.substack.com/p/where-does-john-durham-go-from-here
He sees many potential targets.
Good timing and right before he gets hitched with “Tiger Lily” too.
In O/T response from Lawfare courtesy of the witty Wittes. https://www.lawfareblog.com/special-counsels-weird-prosecution-michael-sussmann
Related: Dan Bongino has pulled together some very interesting details, and concludes the Sussmann indictment is a much bigger deal than most people think.
Watch his podcast from ~10:00 minutes to ~25:00 minutes as he outlines the material some of which is gleaned from Fool Nelson's twitter feed.
https://rumble.com/vmqrfn-ep.-1608-an-online-investigator-exposes-a-troubling-connection-the-dan-bong.html
Key points:
1. When Steele first passed info to FBI/DOJ regarding allegations that Trump Campaign was colluding with Russia, he revealed that the ultimate clients -- for whom FusionGPS, and he by Fusion, were hired by Perkins Coie -- were Hillary's Campaign/DNC.
2. FBI opens Crossfire Hurricane at about this time, putatively based on Downer's tip about PapaD conversation with Mifsud.
3. FBI wants to get a FISA warrant, but knows a warrant based solely on oppo research material from an opposing campaign, won't fly with the FISA court.
4. Steele passes info to FBI via Legat in London and concurrently passes it to people in the NY Field office (Gaeta?)
5. Halper is passing related info (about Carter Page and PapaD) to his handler in NYFO (Somma)
6. NYFO shares info with FBI HQ, which is also getting it from Steele's contacts in DC.
7. Gaeta transfers to CH investigation in mid-August 2016, after having received Steele reporting, which FBI knows is tainted oppo research material.
8. Sussmann goes to Baker at FBI with Alfa Bank connection data/allegation, and specifically states he's not doing this on behalf of any client (which is the basis of his indictment) on 19 September.
9. McCabe immediately orders the field offices to ceases all contact, acceptance of info, from sources Halper and Steele.
10. Bongino concludes McCabe did this because now FBI had a source for an allegation of collusion with Russia that wasn't officially connected back to Hillary's Campaign, and didn't want to risk receiving anything else from less pristine sources that they would have to reveal to
the FISA Court when applying for a warrant on Carter Page.
Two bonus points:
11. Bogino mentions Sara Carter's reporting over the weekend that Alfa bank hired forensic cyber tech people to trace the source of the mysterious lookups from their server's IP address to/from the Trump server. She reported to Bongino that Alfa's techs traced the source one three specific occasions to somewhere in the US, causing their server to appear to be looking up Trump's server.
12. An inference from what Bogino was saying is that Gaeta knew the essence of the Steele Dossier reporting in July 2016, and then JOINED CH in DC in mid-August, but FBI maintained that CH knew nothing about the Dossier material until mid-September. That's contradicted by virtue of Gaeta knowing about it in July, then joining the CH team in mid-August!
Side story: Mickey Dickenson is listed as one of the people being subpoenaed by Alfa Bank in its civil lawsuit. He worked in the Obama WH as a IT guru. What does Alfa bank's attorney's know that we don't?
#8 There's a hitch there. The Steele "reporting" on Cohen meeting in Prague with "Kremlin officials" was key for the FISA to show continuity in Kremlin - Trump campaign contacts after Carter Page dropped out of Trump campaign. That Steele "reporting" was accepted by the FBI and was dated 10 October 2016--well after McCabe's supposed stand down order re Steele reporting. However, it came AFTER Steele met personally with Weissmann and several other non-NS DoJ lawyers (criticized by OIG) with top FBI people in CH. I believe that meeting was to tell Steele exactly what type of additional "reporting" was needed for the FISA and to solicit additional reporting. All that blows a hole in Bongino's neat narrative.
Not a fatal blow, if one considers that McCabe's order was for all other fields offices not working on CH to cease contact with Steele. CH (and others in DOJ) continued to meet with him, as you point out, and accept material from him (and I agree they likely gave him a specific description of the type of additional "evidence" he needed to "find" for them to get a FISA on Carter Page.) IOW, the point of the McCabe's "stand down" to the field offices was to prevent intake of some evidence from Steele or Halper that is NOT under CH control, but which would be formally documented containing info to which they did NOT wish to draw FISA court's attention. By restricting Steele to working directly with the CH team, they controlled what "evidence" from him they choose to accept. Perhaps that may well have been the point of making him a paid informant. And that's the real reason they went hensh*t when they found out he was still leaking info to Journos after they hired him; it put them at risk for Steele saying something that could jeopardize the CP FISA application. McCabe and company couldn't afford the risk, cut him loose, and then used Bruce Ohr as a back channel from Steele, in case he came up with something useful, and otherwise unfavorable or exculpatory info could be ignored.
By the September time frame, McCabe probably realized to get a FISA before the election they would have to rely on Steele's info, and came up with the clever footnote to obscure the fact it was paid oppo research funded by DNC/Hillary's campaign, while still being able to claim they technically revealed it.
How do we actually know there was ever such a stand down?
I've seen it alluded to several times in the past few weeks, but I'm not sure where it comes from. Horowitz report? Or perhaps some recently released FBI documents?
Also a quibble with Bongino's Point #4: Gaeta was in the Rome field office, not NY. That's where he hooked up Papadopolos with Mifsud.
While Gaeta was stationed at the US Embassy in Rome, he collected Steele's Dossier reports, and he officially forwarded a few of them to the New York Field Office. However (I am sure), he immediately, directly and secretly sent all of them to the Counterintelligence Chief at FBI Headquarters.
Bongino's Port #4 is correct -- except that the Legat (Gaeta's official boss) thought that Gaeta was sending all the Dossier reports only to the NYFO. The Legat did not know that Gaeta was sending all the Dossier reports to FBI Headquarters.
Gaeta had been stationed in the NY Field Office before he was transferred to the US Embassy in Rome.
While Gaeta had been stationed in the NYFO, he had been involved in an FBI investigation of a Russia-based international gambling ring that operated from Trump Tower. I speculate that the FBI investigated that gambling ring's funding and communications, and that was where suspicions about Alfa Bank and Trump began.
Gaeta had past connections with Steele re the FIFA case. That's why Gaeta flew from Rome to London to talk to Steele.
While all this is of interest, it likely will be mostly moot, in that the Dems best play may be, for Biden to issue preemptive pardons (akin to Ford/ Nixon) to all major players, before any pleas/ convictions.
That way, the MSM etc. can crow about how "nothing was proven, so let's move on."
I've been thinking the same thing .... but don't know if Biden/Dems will dare to do it this close to mid term elections 14 months from now, and with Durham still writing a report on what he found regardless of pardons.
OK, the sooner they do this, the less it affects the 2022s, insofar as the really fear a Kev McCarthy as speaker.
I'm not sure they fear him much.
Were I them, I'd rather take chances on that, than on a slow drip drip of busts/ trials, lasting "forever".
Such busts/ trails would likely have bigger impact upon the public, than would any report Durham would issue.
What dent did Horowitz make?
I have subsequently found a press release from Jenner & Block dated 6 August, that, in passing, mentions Weissmann as a "former partner." So his departure -- for some sort of "in house" position IIRC -- had to be prior to 6 August.
Curiously, Weissmann also suddenly ceased tweeting™ on 10 July. Is that because of the same thing that caused him to leave the law firm where he had scored a gig just a year and a half earlier? Could be coincidence, or not .... Could it be .... a target letter?
Have you considered this--maybe he stopped tweeting because he suddenly ceased to have opinions on much of anything? :-) That'd be like me ceasing to have opinions.
Re the date, the late August date, of course, is simply the date at which the rumors re Durham went public in a major way. There was certainly plenty of activity behind the scenes before that date.
My new blog article:
http://people-who-did-not-see.blogspot.com/2021/09/steeles-dossier-report-about-alfa-bank.html
Mike
Great blog post!
I feel like a flow chart on Gaeta’s involvement with this mess would help.
There are so many touch points and relationships involved.