{"id":1483732,"date":"2022-05-19T07:47:12","date_gmt":"2022-05-19T11:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1483732"},"modified":"2022-05-19T07:47:42","modified_gmt":"2022-05-19T11:47:42","slug":"michael-sussmann-defense-contradicts-itself-on-another-key-argument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/michael-sussmann-defense-contradicts-itself-on-another-key-argument\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Sussmann Defense Contradicts Itself On Another Key Argument"},"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%2Fmichael-sussmann-defense-contradicts-itself-on-another-key-argument%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=1483732&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--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/sussmannexitingcarfortrial.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Rodney Joffe, the tech executive responsible for giving the Hillary Clinton campaign the data used to peddle the Alfa Bank hoax, served as a confidential human source for the FBI. Yet on at least one occasion, former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann admits relaying a tip from Joffe to a high-level Department of Justice official. That Joffe used Sussmann, and not his handler, to feed supposed intel to the DOJ supports the special counsel\u2019s false statement charge against Sussmann, but whether the jury will learn of this fact remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<p>Last fall, Special Counsel John Durham charged Sussmann with lying to former FBI General Counsel James Baker when Sussmann met with Baker on September 19, 2016, to provide Baker data and whitepapers purporting to establish a secret communications network between Donald Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank. Prosecutors claim Sussmann told Baker that he was sharing the information on his own, when in fact Sussmann represented both the Clinton campaign and Joffe.<\/p>\n<p>Trial on the one-count false statement charge began earlier this week in a federal court in Washington D.C. Sussmann\u2019s legal team previewed their theory of defense for the jury during Tuesday\u2019s opening argument. <\/p>\n<p>Sussmann shared the Alfa Bank data with the FBI out of a genuine national security concern and not on behalf of the Clinton campaign, they argued, telling jurors Sussmann wanted to give Baker a heads-up about an impending New York Times story. That was not something the Clinton campaign wanted, Sussmann\u2019s lawyers maintained\u2014even though the <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/05\/18\/spygate-conspirators-start-selling-their-hoax-to-a-washington-dc-jury-but-the-facts-dont-fit\/\">facts<\/a> don\u2019t fit that storyline.<\/p>\n<p>The defense team also rejected the idea that Sussmann was representing Joffe when he met with Baker, telling the jurors, \u201cSussmann wasn\u2019t there to promote Mr. Joffe\u2019s interests either.\u201d \u201cMr. Joffe had nothing to gain from this meeting,\u201d Sussmann\u2019s Latham and Watkins attorney claimed in his opening argument.<\/p>\n<p>From the jury\u2019s perspective, that argument may well seem persuasive. After all, presiding judge Christopher Cooper has already axed one motive prosecutors hoped to suggest to the jury when he ruled pre-trial that the special counsel could not admit into evidence an email Joffe sent shortly after Trump\u2019s November 2016 victory over Clinton.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was tentatively offered the top [cybersecurity] job by the Democrats when it looked like they\u2019d win. I definitely would not take the job under Trump,\u201d the email <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/02\/21\/the-shady-past-of-clinton-tech-joffe-who-targeted-trump\/\">read<\/a>. But, absent evidence that Joffe had, in fact, been tempted with a position in a Clinton administration, the email would not be allowed, the court ruled, eliminating mention of that possible motive.<\/p>\n<p>The defense team\u2019s argument that Joffe had no reason to use Sussmann to share the Alfa Bank information with the FBI also received a boost when trial testimony on Tuesday revealed that at the time of Sussmann\u2019s meeting with Baker, Joffe was a confidential human source, or a \u201cCHS,\u201d for the FBI. Questioning by the defense team further indicated that in September 2016, when Sussmann was allegedly meeting with Baker on behalf of Joffe, Joffe had presented his handler, FBI Special Agent Tom Grasso, a copy of the Alfa Bank whitepaper.<\/p>\n<p>Not only would there be no reason for Joffe to use Sussmann to push the Alfa Bank intel to the FBI but, as Sussmann\u2019s attorney posited during opening argument, \u201cIf anything, if Mr. Sussmann had told the FBI about Mr. Joffe, they would have taken all of this more seriously, not less, given who Mr. Joffe is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This line of defense is eminently reasonable, but like Sussmann\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/05\/18\/soaring-gas-prices-reach-new-record-high-for-12th-day-straight\/\">attempt<\/a> to sell the jury on the claim that the Clinton campaign did not want him going to the FBI, the facts say otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>In early 2017, Sussmann <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/01\/31\/special-counsel-clarification-reveals-the-dojs-inspector-general-is-not-a-team-player\/\">told<\/a> a DOJ Office of Inspector General special agent in charge that an unnamed client \u201chad observed that a specific OIG employee\u2019s computer was \u2018seen publicly\u2019 in \u2018Internet traffic\u2019 and was connecting to a Virtual Private Network in a foreign country.\u201d While Sussmann did not inform the OIG of his client\u2019s identity, in January 2022, Sussmann\u2019s lawyers informed the special counsel\u2019s office that his \u201cunnamed client\u201d was Joffe. Sussmann\u2019s legal team also alerted Durham to the fact that Sussmann had not merely shared his tip with a special agent, but personally met with Inspector General Michael Horowitz.<\/p>\n<p>So, the precise scenario Sussmann\u2019s lawyers told the jury was illogical, according to Sussmann\u2019s own narrative of what happened in March of 2017: Sussmann, on behalf of Joffe, shared intel with someone high-up in the DOJ, without revealing Joffe\u2019s role in gathering the evidence\u2014something Sussmann\u2019s lawyers stressed would have provided the data more gravitas given Joffe\u2019s reputation. At that time Joffe, still served as a CHS, with his termination for cause only coming years later in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>What possible benefit, then, was there for Joffe to task Sussmann with meeting on his behalf with the DOJ\u2019s inspector general, as opposed to Joffe providing the intel to his handler? Who knows! Whatever the reason, we do know that Sussmann met with the DOJ inspector general on Joffe\u2019s behalf, without revealing his client\u2019s identity\u2014a scenario Sussmann\u2019s defense claims is inconceivable.<\/p>\n<p>Sussmann\u2019s meeting with the CIA in February 2017 also follows this pattern, with Sussmann allegedly sharing supposed intel of a connection between the Russian-made Yota phones and Trump, on behalf of the unnamed Joffe. While the trial court ruled the government may admit evidence related to this February 2017 meeting with the CIA in Sussmann\u2019s trial, the problem for prosecutors is that they must still convince the jury that Sussmann represented Joffe during the CIA meeting.<\/p>\n<p>The special counsel does not face that hurdle, however, on Sussmann\u2019s meeting with the DOJ\u2019s inspector general, because it was Sussmann\u2019s legal team who alerted prosecutors to the fact that Sussmann had met with the inspector general on behalf of Joffe.<\/p>\n<p>Sussmann taking Joffe\u2019s intel anonymously to the DOJ\u2019s OIG supports the prosecutor\u2019s argument that when Sussmann met with Baker on September 19, 2016, he was likely representing an unnamed Joffe. But whether the special counsel will seek to admit this evidence remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Margot Cleveland is The Federalist&#8217;s senior legal correspondent. 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>Rodney Joffe, the tech executive responsible for giving the Hillary Clinton campaign the data used to peddle the Alfa Bank hoax, served as a confidential human source for the FBI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1483732","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\/1483732","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\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1483732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483732\/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=1483732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1483732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1483732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}