{"id":1317950,"date":"2022-02-20T11:10:45","date_gmt":"2022-02-20T16:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1317950"},"modified":"2022-02-20T11:11:35","modified_gmt":"2022-02-20T16:11:35","slug":"5-media-lies-about-the-latest-special-counsel-revelations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/5-media-lies-about-the-latest-special-counsel-revelations\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Media Lies About The Latest Special Counsel Revelations"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2F5-media-lies-about-the-latest-special-counsel-revelations%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1317950&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>One week ago today, Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion in the government\u2019s criminal case against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. That motion, in requesting the court obtain Sussmann\u2019s waiver of any conflicts of interest held by his lawyers on the record, provided in excruciating detail the factual basis for the purported conflicts.<\/p>\n<p>In doing so, it <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/14\/special-counsel-democrats-framed-and-spied-on-trump-while-he-was-president\/\">revealed<\/a> that \u201cenemies of Donald Trump surveilled the internet traffic at Trump Tower, at his New York City apartment building, and later at the executive office of the president of the United States, then fed disinformation about that traffic to intelligence agencies hoping to frame Trump as a Russia-connected stooge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While earlier filings by Durham had <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/10\/21\/special-counsel-filing-reveals-more-about-alfa-bank-conspiracy-theory\/\">revealed<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/11\/12\/why-special-counsel-john-durham-is-investigating-the-brookings-institution\/\">equally<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/01\/26\/6-new-revelations-from-the-john-durham-spygate-probe\/\">explosive<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/01\/31\/special-counsel-clarification-reveals-the-dojs-inspector-general-is-not-a-team-player\/\">facts<\/a>, this time the special counsel\u2019s motion generated enough attention that #Durham began to trend on Twitter. Not since the special counsel\u2019s office indicted Sussmann in September 2021 for lying to the FBI\u2019s former general counsel, James Baker, has the Durham investigation forced itself into the legacy press\u2019 purview.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than report on the latest developments, the corrupt media spun Friday\u2019s filing as a big nothingburger, while parading several false narratives\u2014just as it <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/09\/24\/5-false-narratives-about-the-spygate-indictment-of-michael-sussmann\/\">did<\/a> when news of the indictment of the Clinton campaign\u2019s lawyer broke.<\/p>\n<p>Charlie Savage at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/02\/14\/us\/politics\/durham-sussmann-trump-russia.html?referringSource=articleShare\">New York Times<\/a> led the way in a Monday article headlined, \u201cCourt Filing Started a Furor in Right-Wing Outlets, but Their Narrative Is Off Track.\u201d Amazingly, several of Savage\u2019s talking points coincided with arguments presented by Sussmann\u2019s attorneys in a document filed with the court that same day.<\/p>\n<p>By Tuesday, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2022\/02\/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-white-house-spying\">Vanity Fair<\/a> had joined in, quoting Savage\u2019s \u201canalysis.\u201d That evening, Jimmy Kimmel turned the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mrctv.org\/videos\/kimmel-mocks-fox-viewers-soft-oatmeal-brains-caring-about-durham-story\">talking points<\/a> into one-liners. Wednesday saw Brian Stelter at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/02\/16\/media\/durham-report-trump-maga-analysis\/index.html\">CNN<\/a> further cribbing from the Savage\u2019s initial take at the Times.<\/p>\n<p>While the leftist press continues to fall in line to advance the unofficial defense of the Clinton campaign\u2019s former attorney, the talking points the Durham deniers are pushing remain nothing but gibberish. Here they are and why they are wrong.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"1-it-s-just-those-crazy-right-wingers\">1. It\u2019s Just Those Crazy Right-Wingers<\/h2>\n<p>In his opening salvo in the Sussmann counter-offensive, Savage began his New York Times column by noting that Durham\u2019s Friday night filing \u201cset off a furor among right-wing outlets about purported spying on former President Donald J. Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Framing the \u201cfuror\u201d as right-wing proves a ready go-to for a corrupt media seeking to discount the substance of the reporting. Stelter likewise hit this talking point repeatedly over at CNN, in his article \u201cRight-wing media said it was exposing a scandal. What it really revealed is how bad information spreads in MAGA world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hillary Clinton likewise pushed the right-wingers angle, tweeting that \u201cTrump &amp; Fox are desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"570\" height=\"262\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/hillarytweetfrom-margot.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-267831\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/hillarytweetfrom-margot.jpg 570w, https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/hillarytweetfrom-margot-300x138.jpg 300w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Of course, while casting coverage of Special Counsel Durham\u2019s investigation as the cries of cray-cray conservatives might resonate with their readers, as a substantive counter to the most recent revelations in the Sussmann case it falls flat.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"2-pay-no-attention-to-the-facts-behind-the-filing\">2. Pay No Attention to the Facts Behind the Filing<\/h2>\n<p>The second narrative pushed by Savage and then quickly parroted by his ilk is that the facts behind Durham\u2019s most recent court filing are too dense for readers to bother using their brainpower to decipher. Yes, I am serious.<\/p>\n<p>The facts \u201calso tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time\u2014raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims,\u201d Savage wrote in his Monday <em>pro bono <\/em>P.R. piece for Sussmann.<\/p>\n<p>Amazingly, CNN quoted this passage in its coverage of the issue, demonstrating the utter lack of regard in which the leftist press holds its readers.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"3-there-was-no-infiltration-so-there-is-no-story\">3. There Was No \u2018Infiltration,\u2019 So There Is No Story<\/h2>\n<p>A third counter pushed in response to Durham\u2019s Friday court filing focused on Fox News\u2019 coverage and its opener that read, \u201cLawyers for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-clintons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Clinton<\/a> campaign paid a technology company to \u2018infiltrate\u2019 servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/politics\/executive\/white-house\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">White House<\/a>, in order to establish an \u2018inference\u2019 and \u2018narrative\u2019 to bring to government agencies linking <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/person\/donald-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Donald Trump<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/world\/world-regions\/russia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Russia<\/a>, a filing from Special Counsel <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/topic\/durham-probe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">John Durham<\/a> found.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Durham never said \u201cinfiltrate,\u201d however, came the rejoinder. At least on this point, the press members suffering from \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/jonathanturley.org\/2022\/02\/15\/media-vapors-how-special-counsel-john-durham-has-triggered-a-media-meltdown\/\">media vapors<\/a>\u201d have a point: <em>Durham <\/em>did not say \u201cinfiltrate.\u201d Rather, Kash Patel, a former chief investigator for Devin Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee, used that word in an interview with Fox News, as the article later explained.<\/p>\n<p>Durham said the data Sussmann provided to the CIA came from data tech executive Rodney Joffe obtained when he \u201cexploited\u201d his access to sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President (EOP).<\/p>\n<p>It is likewise true that the special counsel\u2019s Friday filing did not claim that the \u201cClinton campaign paid to \u2018infiltrate\u2019 Trump Tower, White House servers to link Trump to Russia,\u201d as Fox News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/clinton-campaign-paid-infiltrate-trump-tower-white-house-servers\">headlined<\/a> its coverage of the developments in the Sussmann case. Rather, it appears that Joffe voluntarily exploited his access to the data and received no compensation from Clinton for his forays into the EOP and other databases.<\/p>\n<p>These criticisms by the Times, CNN, and others might hold more weight if the same outlets hadn\u2019t pushed the Russia collusion hoax for five years. But, in any event, correcting those two points does nothing to counter the serious allegations revealed in Durham\u2019s latest filing revealed.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, he exposed so many significant details that it required two <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/15\/what-we-learned-from-michael-sussmanns-response-to-the-spygate-special-counsel\/\">separate<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/14\/8-more-intrigues-inside-the-latest-special-counsel-filings\/\">articles<\/a> to adequately cover the developments. Notwithstanding the concerted pushback against the Fox News article, The Federalist\u2019s in-depth coverage remains unblemished.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"4-but-trump-wasn-t-even-president-yet\">4. But Trump Wasn\u2019t Even President Yet<\/h2>\n<p>The next narrative launched to minimize the significance of the revelations contained in Durham\u2019s motion focused on the data Sussmann presented to the CIA purporting to show \u201cthat Russian-made smartphones, called YotaPhones, had been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The data relating to the White House \u201ccame from Barack Obama\u2019s presidency,\u201d the Times reported, quoting two lawyers representing one of the researchers who aided Joffe. Rather, \u201cto our knowledge,\u201d the lawyers claimed, \u201call of the data they used was nonprivate DNS data from before Trump took office.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This counter is nothing but lawyerly wordsmithing, however, and anyone who read the actual court filing\u2014that dense document Savage believed beyond the grey matter of his readers\u2014would know that fact. As the motion explained, in providing the DNS data to the CIA, Sussmann told the government agents \u201cthese lookups 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a matter of pure logic, the data Sussmann presented to the CIA related to the White House <em>must <\/em>have somehow related to Trump or it would not \u201cdemonstrate\u201d that \u201cTrump and\/or his associates were using\u201d the Russian cell phones \u201cin the vicinity of the White House.\u201d Most likely, then, the data presented concerned the transition period. Further, there is nothing to say that after Trump took office Joffe stopped \u201cexploiting\u201d the data.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"5-it-s-old-news\">5. It\u2019s Old News<\/h2>\n<p>The fifth response, which Savage again initiated, ran that the \u201cnews\u201d was \u201cold news.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news,\u201d Savage wrote early in his Times coverage. He reiterated that point later: \u201cfor one, much of this was not new: The New York Times had reported in October <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/10\/01\/us\/politics\/trump-alfa-bank-indictment.html\">what Mr. Sussmann had told the C.I.A.<\/a> about data suggesting that Russian-made smartphones, called YotaPhones, had been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Surprise, surprise: It was Savage himself who made passing reference to the YotaPhones in his October 1, 2021, Times article that focused primarily on the Alfa Bank aspect of the indictment. In retrospect, we should have foreseen Durham\u2019s latest revelations because they were handed to the Sussmann-friendly reporters who penned the October article, in what is now an obvious attempt to get ahead of the bad news Sussmann\u2019s legal team knew was coming.<\/p>\n<p>What the Times did not report on October 1, 2021, however, was that Joffe\u2019s internet company \u201chad come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the [Executive Office of the Presidency] as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nor did the Times report, as Durham alleged, that Joffe and his associates, \u201cexploited this arrangement by mining the EOP\u2019s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.\u201d Also missing from the October 2021 coverage was the fact that DNS data compiled, but withheld, from the CIA showed the DNS lookups involving the EOP and the Russian cellphone provider \u201cbegan at least as early as 2014 i.e., during the Obama administration and years before Trump took office.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In other words, this was new news, and those claiming otherwise serve, not as journalists, but as pushers of propaganda.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. <\/p>\n<p>Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize\u2014the law school\u2019s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. <\/p>\n<p>As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One week ago today, Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion in the government\u2019s criminal case against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. That motion, in requesting the court &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1317950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}