{"id":1497866,"date":"2022-05-31T08:59:45","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T12:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1497866"},"modified":"2022-05-31T08:59:47","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T12:59:47","slug":"the-special-counsel-has-won-even-if-the-jury-doesnt-convict-sussmann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-special-counsel-has-won-even-if-the-jury-doesnt-convict-sussmann\/","title":{"rendered":"The Special Counsel Has Won Even If the Jury Doesn\u2019t Convict Sussmann"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/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%2Fthe-special-counsel-has-won-even-if-the-jury-doesnt-convict-sussmann%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=1497866&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><\/div>\n<p>The jury in the Michael Sussmann criminal case resumes deliberations today after the long Memorial Day weekend. While prosecutors presented <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/05\/27\/why-the-jury-should-convict-michael-sussmann-of-lying-to-the-fbi-but-probably-wont\/\">overwhelming evidence<\/a> over the last two weeks that Sussmann lied to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in 2016, an acquittal by the D.C. jury still <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/05\/27\/why-the-jury-should-convict-michael-sussmann-of-lying-to-the-fbi-but-probably-wont\/\">seems likely<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Judging the success of Special Counsel John Durham\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/file\/1370931\/download\">probe<\/a> into the investigation of President Trump and those associated with the Trump campaign and administration should not rest on the outcome of the Sussmann prosecution, however. In fact, even if the special counsel\u2019s office scores a conviction in its false statement case against Sussmann, that would do little to right the scales of justice unbalanced by more than five years of the politically motivated abuse of power that began as Crossfire Hurricane and continued even after Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued his final report.<\/p>\n<p>So, measuring Durham\u2019s performance by the outcome in <em>United States v. Sussmann <\/em>would be a mistake. Also, especially in the case of an acquittal, it would ignore the valuable information exposed related to the broader Spygate scandal. Using that gauge as a measure, the special counsel\u2019s office succeeded wildly.<\/p>\n<h2>Durham Proved the Collusion Hoax Was a Hillary Clinton Enterprise<\/h2>\n<p>On September 19, 2016, Sussmann provided Baker data and whitepapers purporting to show a secret communications network between the Russia-based Alfa Bank and Donald Trump. In indicting Sussmann for allegedly lying to Baker during this meeting, the special counsel\u2019s office <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/09\/17\/democrat-lawyer-michael-sussmann-indicted-for-lying-to-fbi-about-his-role-in-russian-collusion-hoax\/\">revealed<\/a> in its 27-page speaking indictment \u201ca scandal much deeper than merely Sussmann\u2019s role in a second Russian hoax \u2014 a scandal that entangles the Clinton campaign, multiple internet companies, two federally-funded university researchers, and a complicit media.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since then, proof that the Clinton campaign held near-total responsibility for launching the Russia-collusion hoax mounted with nearly every legal filing. It eventually culminated during the Sussmann trial when former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified that Hillary Clinton personally \u201cagreed with the decision\u201d to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/hillary-clinton-approved-trump-russian-bank-allegations-sussmann-trial\">feed<\/a> the unverified\u2014and quickly debunked\u2014theory that Trump was communicating secretly with Russia through a back-door Alfa Bank channel.<\/p>\n<p>Other trial evidence <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SarahNLynch\/status\/1526950307762163712\">confirmed<\/a> the Clinton campaign paid the law firm Perkins and Coie a flat fee of as much as $130,000 per month during the campaign, and authorized lead counsel Marc Elias to hire Fusion GPS for opposition research. Billing records then showed Sussmann charged his time for working the Alfa Bank hoax\u2014including the time he spent meeting with the FBI\u2019s General Counsel Baker\u2014to the Clinton campaign. In fact, late last week, the jury in the Sussmann case learned that Sussmann even charged the Clinton campaign for two thumb drives purchased at Staples used for the Alfa Bank project.<\/p>\n<p>While the Sussmann case focused on the Alfa Bank hoax, the detailed evidence presented over the course of that prosecution also confirmed the Clinton campaign paid for Fusion GPS to compile the Christopher Steele dossier. Given Mook\u2019s testimony that he sought Clinton\u2019s approval to push the Alfa Bank claims to the media, it is only <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ProfMJCleveland\/status\/1529102942824980483\">reasonable<\/a> to infer she likewise personally green-lighted the peddling of the claims contained in the Steele dossier.<\/p>\n<p>But even if Clinton did not personally approve of peddling the lies contained in the Steele dossier, the Sussmann case established that her campaign paid for the lies\u2014including those <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/21\/4-special-counsel-revelations-tying-spygate-to-hillary-clintons-campaign\/\">emanating<\/a> from the Russian-national Igor Danchenko. And Special Counsel Durham\u2019s indictment against Danchenko <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/11\/11\/what-we-learned-in-the-special-counsels-latest-spygate-indictment\/\">reveals<\/a> that individuals hired by the Clinton campaign fed that Russian disinformation to U.S. media, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n<h2>A Court Ruling Requiring More Disclosures<\/h2>\n<p>Beyond exposing the Clinton campaign\u2019s responsibility for the Russia-collusion hoax, Durham\u2019s prosecution of Sussmann sets the stage for potentially even more damaging revelations about Clinton\u2019s personal involvement in the scandal.<\/p>\n<p>To date, the Clinton campaign has hidden behind claims of attorney-client privilege to prevent Durham from obtaining documents, communications, and testimony through the grand jury. The Clinton campaign claimed material prepared by, or communications between, Perkins and Coie attorneys, Fusion GPS employees, investigators, and other third parties are protected by attorney-client privilege. Prosecutors in the Sussmann case, however, succeeded in obtaining a court ruling that several documents withheld by Fusion GPS, based on the Clinton campaign\u2019s claims of privilege, are not protected and must be given to prosecutors.<\/p>\n<p>While Fusion GPS continues to withhold thousands of documents, this precedent provides the special counsel\u2019s office solid grounds to challenge the privilege in both the Danchenko case and in other grand jury probes that may be pending. Piercing the privilege will prove key to further exposing Clinton\u2019s personal involvement in Spygate.<\/p>\n<h2>Killing the Alfa Bank Hoax For Good<\/h2>\n<p>No matter the verdict the jury returns in the Sussmann case, the special counsel\u2019s prosecution also revealed that the Alfa Bank stories were hoaxes\u2014and the scandalous way they were crafted and seeded to America.<\/p>\n<p>Voters first learned of the supposed connection between Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank about one week before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when Slate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/cover_story\/2016\/10\/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html\">reported<\/a> that trusted cyber experts had discovered an \u201cirregular pattern of server lookups\u201d that suggested \u201ca sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the Slate article hedged somewhat by admitting \u201cwhat the scientists amassed wasn\u2019t a smoking gun,\u201d and that the data \u201cdoesn\u2019t absolutely preclude alternative explanations,\u201d the headline, \u201cGroup of Computer Scientists Believes a Trump Server Was Communicating With a Russian Bank,\u201d captured the essence of the article\u2014and what its author Franklin Foer, Fusion GPS, and the Clinton campaign wanted Americans to believe.<\/p>\n<p>The Alfa Bank hoax did not end there, however, or even after Trump\u2019s election. Sussmann continued to push the theory to the CIA in February 2017, following Trump\u2019s inauguration. Soon thereafter, Daniel Jones, a former staffer for the U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence, Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and the president and CEO of The Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP) continued the Alfa Bank witch-hunt.<\/p>\n<p>According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/empowr.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/2021-10-08-JF-to-Sen.-Ethics-Cmte-SASC-Complaint-Request-for-Inv.pdf\">complaint<\/a> filed with the Senate\u2019s Ethics Committee, staff and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including T. Kirk McConnell, \u201crequested and accepted\u201d professional services from Jones and TDIP. Specifically, the complaint alleged that the Armed Services Committee, \u201cvia senior leadership staff acting in their official capacity, asked Mr. Jones to research and offer his insights into the alleged connections between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization servers,\u201d and to \u201cevaluate information it had received about DNS look-ups between Alfa Bank servers and Trump Organization servers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jones, the TDIP, and the Senate Armed Services Committee continued the Alfa Bank investigation long after the FBI had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/storage\/120919-examination.pdf\">concluded<\/a> in early February 2017 that there \u201cwere no such links\u201d between the Trump organization and Alfa Bank. The media also persisted in pushing the supposed Russia collusion scandal. <\/p>\n<h2>Media Keeps the Lies Circulating<\/h2>\n<p>The New Yorker\u2019s Dexter Filkins re-upped the Alfa Bank tale in 2018, in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2018\/10\/15\/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign\">tome<\/a> titled, \u201cWas There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign?\u201d Filkins then resurrected the story for The New Yorker in October 2020, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/news-desk\/the-contested-afterlife-of-the-trump-alfa-bank-story\">repeating<\/a> many of the same allegations in \u201cThe Contested Afterlife of the Trump-Alfa Bank Story.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In both pieces, Filkins referenced \u201cMax,\u201d who claimed that he, along with a team of other supposed guardians of the internet, had uncovered the mysterious Alfa Bank-Trump connections. But thanks to the prosecution of Sussmann, we now know \u201cMax\u201d is tech executive Rodney Joffe, and that his fellow cyber experts pushing the Alfa Bank hoax were April Lorenzen and David Dagon.<\/p>\n<p>Court filings in the Sussmann case also revealed that the cyber researchers saw the Alfa Bank theory as flawed. They also showed another expert, Manos Antonakakis, who reviewed the Alfa Bank-Trump whitepapers, had <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/14\/exclusive-researcher-tells-durham-he-saw-holes-in-the-alfa-bank-hoax-before-democrats-shopped-it-to-the-fbi\/\">congratulated<\/a> Joffe on crafting the paper to avoid the most glaring hole in the thesis.<\/p>\n<p>The more devastating take-down of the Alfa Bank theory, however, came during Sussmann\u2019s trial, when government cyber security experts testified of their review of the data, telling the jury they had quickly concluded the hypothesis made no sense. One agent noted it sounded \u201c5150ish\u201d at the time. He explained to the jury he meant that the individual positing the Alfa Bank-Trump connection sounded as if he \u201cwas suffering from some mental disability.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Exposing Deep Intelligence Corruption<\/h2>\n<p>Beyond burying the Alfa Bank hoax as a crazy conspiracy theory, Durham\u2019s investigation also exposed the scandalous way the theory permeated both the media and U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Joffe tasked two Georgia Tech cyber researchers, as well as employees at tech companies over which he had influence, with mining proprietary and sensitive government data for any connection between Trump and Russia to push the Russia collusion narrative. Joffe also held responsibility for providing the Alfa Bank data to Sussmann, who shared it with the Clinton campaign\u2019s head lawyer, Elias, and Fusion GPS, with the group then plotting to push the tale to the media.<\/p>\n<p>The evidence further showed that Sussmann then fed the Alfa Bank story to the FBI, lying to Baker at the time, prompting the FBI to launch an investigation into the supposed secret communication network. Meantime, Joffe provided a different FBI contact the same Alfa Bank \u201cintel\u201d while asking that agent to maintain his anonymity, thereby creating a problem of circular reporting. Special Counsel Durham also revealed that Joffe still risks prosecution.<\/p>\n<p>As with Sussmann, whether Joffe ever faces charges or a conviction says nothing of the success of the Durham investigation. To date, the special counsel has succeeded in exposing Hillary Clinton\u2019s role in the hoax\u2014and that the Alfa Bank hoax was real and spectacularly scandalous.<\/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>The jury in the Michael Sussmann criminal case resumes deliberations today after the long Memorial Day weekend. While prosecutors presented overwhelming evidence over the last two weeks that Sussmann lied<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":489,"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-1497866","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\/1497866","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\/489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1497866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1497866\/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=1497866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1497866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1497866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}