I don’t want to go overboard at this seemingly late date but, assuming the truth of NYT reports that former Perkins Coie and Clinton/DNC lawyer Michael Sussmann is about to be indicted for making false statements to the FBI, it’s worth our while to consider--once again--who else could be in trouble if Sussmann does a plea deal with Durham. While we don’t know for sure, it seems likely that Sussmann’s criminal lawyers have been in touch with Durham--Sussmann’s surprise departure from Perkins Coie last month is an indication that he knew of his jeopardy at that time and reported it to the Perkins Coie partners. That would have come from communication with Durham’s team.
Last night we drew attention to Techno Fog’s reference to former Dianne Feinstein staffer Daniel Jones as possibly being in danger. While Techno Fog didn’t elaborate, it’s been known for a long time that Jones was called before a grand jury that was investigating the facts that are the basis for Sussmann’s troubles: the Alfa Bank hoax. In addition, we pointed to Jake Sullivan--then (2016) a high level Hillary adviser, not National Security Adviser to Zhou--as having connections to the Alfa Bank hoax.
This morning Zerohedge is running a story titled "Russiagate In A Nutshell": Glenn Greenwald Breaks Down Significance Of Expected Indictment Against Hillary Clinton Lawyer. Greenwald’s contributions appear to be in the form of embedded tweets, although the entire article is a nice overview of this aspect of the Russia Hoax. The importance of the Alfa Bank hoax is that--while it was very quickly debunked by FBI investigation--it did create a media buzz very shortly before the 2016 election and, especially, it is perhaps the aspect of the overall Russia Hoax that can be most directly tied to the top levels of the Clinton campaign organization and to Hillary herself. In that regard, Greenwald pithily summarizes the fraud--the unnamed person here is Sussmann:
Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald·
Sep 16, 2021
Replying to @ggreenwald
In sum, a DNC-linked lawyer -- partners with Clinton lawyer @marceelias -- fabricated a Trump/Russia link, fed it to DNC operatives masquerading as journalists, had Hillary trumpet it, then lied to FBI about who he worked for.
I think our assumption has to be that Durham’s team has been attempting to determine whether some or all of the persons embraced in that account--and in our previous posts--could be indicted as being part of a conspiracy to make false statements to the FBI. For example, suppose that Sussmann consulted with Elias, or Hillary herself, before going to his meeting with FBI General Counsel James Baker. Suppose further that Sussmann was instructed: Whatever you do, don’t tell Baker that you work for Hillary and don’t tell bill this meeting with Baker to the Hillary account! The difficulty with the hypothesis, which Durham would need to overcome, would be this: How likely is it that those to whom Sussmann reported would guess that Baker would ask such a question: At whose request are you telling me all this? In the real world, it’s not far fetched to presume that Baker would ask that question, as he did--Baker would have been well aware of Sussmann’s political connections, given Sussmann’s previous involvement in the DNC “hack” case, as well as from Baker’s own general knowledge. But there is just that bit of doubt.
OK, so with that in mind, I’ll present just the concluding paragraphs from the Zerohedge post, which are devoted to a quote from an earlier Daily Caller article. Note that in the Daily Caller’s account does go beyond the technicalities of the current “false statement” allegations and hint at the substance of what was presented to the FBI. As Greenwald’s tweet (above) does. Chris Steele testified in court that he was basically told what to write, and that was then presented to the FBI. That suggests the people at whose instruction Steele was writing--including, beyond Sussmann, Marc Elias and Glenn Simpson and possibly others--might have been very aware that the substance of the story was in fact a hoax--a web of false statements that was specifically designed to be presented to the FBI and to instigate an FBI investigation:
As the Daily Caller noted in April 2020, Sussmann "set off a chain of events that led to Steele publishing a Sept. 14, 2016 memo accusing the founders of the bank, Alfa Bank, of having “illicit” ties to Vladimir Putin," before meeting with former UK spy Christopher Steele of bullshit 'dossier' infamy.
A week after Steele wrote that memo, he had another meeting with Sussmann’s colleague, Marc Elias, according to the transcript.
Steele disclosed the previously unreported meetings with Sussmann and Elias during testimony in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by the Alfa Bank founders, the transcript shows.
Steele’s testimony about Sussmann and Elias provides insight into how deeply involved the two lawyers were in the Trump investigation, and suggests they helped shape Steele’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. -DCNF
"I’m very clear is that the first person that ever mentioned the Trump server issue, Alfa server issue, was Mr. Sussman [sic]," Steele told Alfa Bank lawyer Hugh Tomlinson according to a March 2020 transcript. Steele then said that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson instructed him to write a report about Alfa bank based on Sussmann's fabrication.
"I was given the instruction sometime after that meeting by Mr. Simpson," said Steele, adding that Simpson's instruction "was absolutely, definitely linked to the server issue."
As the Caller further noted at the time, "Sussmann shopped the allegations about the Alfa Bank computer servers around to others besides Steele, including to journalists and the FBI’s top lawyer."
Could Elias and Simpson be drawn in? Probably not without cooperation from Sussmann.
Great work!
If Tucker etc. duck this story tonite, that'll be a major Tell, that this Durham stuff will be trivial. If we hear much on this tonite, I'll wonder what extreme moves the DS is weighing.