The war between Trump and the CIA

[Albany Rifles]

Statue of limitations usually runs from discovery of the event not from the event.

I thought the discovery was in 2017 and this is a reinterpretation.

Regardless, its up to the court to determine on this finding.

[Parihaka]

Serious question; Wasn't the foundation of the suspicions Sussman's billing and work done for others were erroneously attributed to the Clinton 2016 campaign? I believe that was something which came out 8 months or so ago.
.

There were reports, including posted here somewhere or other quoting "anonymous sources with inside knowledge" that claimed that.
Durham's latest filing states categorically (Sussman) "had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including a technology executive (Tech Executive 1) at a U.S.-based internet company (Internet Company 1) and the Clinton campaign."

I doubt he has filed that statement without possession of the receipts.

Edit to add: Sorry, full filing here

[zraver]

These filings are also part of notification to Sussman and the Court that Defense Counsel has a conflict of interest.

[zraver]

I thought the discovery was in 2017 and this is a reinterpretation.

Regardless, its up to the court to determine on this finding.

Pretty sure each and every crime inside the conspiracy has its own statue of limitations and the conspiracy itself and all included offenses doesn't toll until 5 years from the day of the last affirmative act. Some crimes like treason and espionage never have a clock.

Snookering the government into falsely impeaching a president moves the date to Feb 2025.

[Albany Rifles]

https://www.expertlaw.com/library/cr...of-limitations

Not seeing in the attached where the statute of limitations applies in a perjury case. This is not treason nor is it espionage...if there was wiretapping it is domestic politics and not for a foreign power. No one was charged or convicted for espionage during Watergate...the closest equal to this. In fact Daniel Ellsburg got his espionage charges dropped because the White House Plumbers broke into his psychiatrist's office.

Again, neither of us is an attorney or on the bench so we will just have to see where this ends up going.

[DOR]

When He Who Should Not Be Named says it is a bigger scandal than Watergate, you can safely assume there's nothing to it. When he and his henchmen hint that the death penalty should be considered, you can safely assume that subsequent commentary will be reality-free.

An investigator hired by the White House informed the CIA in 2017 that telephones made in Russia were being used near the White House. Someone sitting in the White House didn't like that. Perhaps the investigator should have just gone directly to Vladimir Putin, but instead he went to someone he knew was actually an enemy of Russian espionage, the US intelligence community.

The brief John Durham (he was appointed the the unmentionable previous White House resident) filed in court was an attempt to discredit former FBI Director Robert Mueller's investigations into crimes committed by a certain New York political organized crime family (“the T Bags”). The link to the White House was through someone working for a law firm that a Durham target also worked for.

Obviously, any two people working for the same huge law firm have to be working on the same case, right? Well, when filing documents in court, lawyers put their professional reputations – and licenses – at stake, and so that tends to be where right-wing shenanigans go to die a cold and lonely death. Durham did not name any Clinton in his filings, nor anyone directly working for any Clinton. He carefully left that bit of slander to Fox News, so as to protect his license to practice law.

Did anyone mention that the reported use of Russian phones near the White House was from a time before the T Baggers seized power?

As former T Bagger John Ratcliffe points out, there was nothing illegal in what that investigator did.
It reminds me of the Benghazi investigations … nothing but hot air.

[Albany Rifles]

Some analysis on Friday's filing

The link is behind a pay wall but here it is...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...-by-democrats/

Here’s why Trump once again is claiming ‘spying’ by Democrats

(Ross D. Franklin/AP)
By Glenn Kessler
Staff writer
Today at 3:00 a.m. EST




“The latest pleading from Special Counsel Robert [sic] Durham provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia. … In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.”
— Former president Donald Trump, in a statement, Feb. 12

“I was proven right about the spying, and I will be proven right about 2020!”

— Trump, in a statement, Feb. 14

It’s not every day that a former president suggests that his political opponents should be executed. But ever since Trump in early 2017 falsely accused former president Barack Obama of spying on him, based on sketchy, anonymously sourced reports, he and his allies have sought to somehow make the claim come true. (Never mind that now the claim is against the Clinton campaign.)

The latest “evidence” comes via a court filing by special counsel John Durham, who was tasked by former attorney general William P. Barr to investigate the roots of the FBI counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. Since being appointed special counsel 16 months ago, after a preliminary investigation lasting 17 months, Durham has filed two indictments. Every subsequent court filing is scrutinized carefully by right-leaning media, sometimes in misleading ways.

For instance, Fox News has reported that Durham alleged that Clinton’s “presidential campaign in 2016 had paid to ‘infiltrate’ servers belonging to Trump Tower and later the White House.” But the word “infiltrate,” even though it is in quotes, appears nowhere in Durham’s filing. Instead that word comes via Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official who offered his own spin on the document.

The Durham filing says much less than what Trump claims. Thus far, Durham has not charged anyone with spying on Trump. In fact, the statute of limitations has already expired for a key meeting cited in the filing.


Here’s a guide for the perplexed.
What’s this about?

In September, Durham charged Michael Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor with expertise in computer cases, with lying to the FBI during a meeting in 2016. The indictment alleged that he told the FBI he was not acting on behalf of clients when in fact, the indictment said, he was secretly acting on behalf of Clinton’s political team. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have denied he ever said he had no clients.
Why did Sussmann meet with the FBI?

On Sept. 19, 2016, Sussmann told James Baker, general counsel at the FBI, that cybersecurity researchers had found possible evidence of a secret communications channel between computer servers associated with the Trump Organization and with Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked financial institution. The researchers allegedly had been enlisted by someone identified in the indictment as Tech Executive-1 and was later revealed to be Rodney Joffe, an Internet entrepreneur who founded the world’s first commercial Internet hosting company. Joffe, who has not been charged, had hired Sussmann in February 2015 “in connection with a matter involving an agency of the U.S. government,” according to the indictment.


The FBI investigated Sussmann’s tip but concluded that it was not suspicious at all. The indictment said agents found that the computer in question “was not owned or operated by the Trump Organization, but, rather, had been administered by a mass marketing email company that sent advertisements for Trump hotels and hundreds of other clients.”
What is the connection to the Clinton campaign?

Sussmann worked for Perkins Coie, which was employed by the Clinton presidential campaign. The indictment claims that in Perkins Coie internal paperwork, Sussmann billed his time with Baker to the Clinton campaign. He also billed much of his time on the Alfa Bank matter to the Clinton campaign, according to the indictment. But Sussmann’s lawyers have said the billing records are misleading because the Clinton campaign received a flat retainer so the hours did not result in additional charges.


In a later filing in October, Durham appeared to acknowledge that he did not have evidence that Sussmann ever spoke directly to the Clinton campaign about Alfa Bank. Instead, he suggests that such communications took place via another Perkins Coie lawyer who was general counsel for the Clinton campaign. (At one point, for instance, the lawyer sent an email about the Alfa Bank matter to Clinton campaign officials, including current national security adviser Jake Sullivan.) A Durham spokesman declined to comment.
Why does this matter?

Trump and his allies have charged that the Clinton campaign ginned up allegations of connections between Trump and Russia in the months before the election, leading to negative news stories and improper federal investigations.

Multiple investigations have found clear evidence of the Russian government’s efforts to intervene in the 2016 election on the side of Donald Trump. But special counsel Robert S. Mueller III could not find evidence of a conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin; he merely concluded that the campaign was opportunistic about apparent assistance from Russia.


Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign has been connected to negative media reports during the campaign about Trump and Russia. A former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, working under contract for a private investigation firm at the behest of Clinton’s campaign, actively pitched his findings to news reporters, even though his reports later turned out to be poorly sourced.

So far, there is no evidence that the Clinton campaign directly managed the Steele reporting or leaks about it to the media.

The alleged Alfa Bank connection was also pursued by reporters, though only one publication published an article before the election. The indictment of Sussmann says that he disseminated the Alfa Bank allegations to the media, even before he met with the FBI. The Clinton campaign tried to exploit the story, but it was pretty quickly dismissed and largely ignored.
Where does the ‘spying’ claim come from?

Durham on Feb. 11 asked the court to examine what he called were potential conflicts of interest regarding Sussmann’s counsel, Latham & Watkins. As part of that document, he took the opportunity to raise new allegations, though no new crimes were claimed.


One claim — the source of the “spying” allegation — is that Durham has evidence that Joffe and his associates “exploited” domain name system (DNS) Internet traffic at an unnamed health-care provider, Trump Tower, Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and “the Executive Office of the President of the United States.”

DNS information shows what a person has been doing on the Internet, such as browsing activity. Companies and government offices use special-purpose DNS providers that might monitor for suspicious traffic or filter out potentially dangerous web addresses that include typos.

The indictment added that Joffe’s employer “had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP. Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.”


The indictment does not make clear the circumstances of the White House contract, but Durham appears to be claiming the company kept track of the web addresses that Internet users at the White House were visiting. It is unclear whether such monitoring might have been part of the original contract. If so, that’s somewhat like hiring a security guard at the front gate to run a badge-scanning system, and then being shocked the security guard is keeping track of your comings and goings from the office. That’s not really the same as eavesdropping.

Moreover, contrary to much of the reporting in right-wing media, Durham does not specifically say the alleged monitoring of EOP took place while Trump was president — and the circumstances suggest it took place in 2016.

“The Special Counsel has again made a filing in this case that unnecessarily includes prejudicial — and false — allegations that are irrelevant to his Motion and to the charged offense, and are plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool,” Sussmann’s lawyers charged in a response filed with the court Monday night that noted a number of reports that appeared in conservative media. The team, headed by Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth of Latham & Watkins, requested that the court strike “factual background” of the Durham filing that made these allegations.


A spokesperson for Joffe also denied any nefarious intent in a statement to the Fact Checker.

“Contrary to the allegations in this recent filing, Mr. Joffe is an apolitical Internet security expert with decades of service to the U.S. Government who has never worked for a political party, and who legally provided access to DNS data obtained from a private client that separately was providing DNS services to the Executive Office of the President (EOP). Under the terms of the contract, the data could be accessed to identify and analyze any security breaches or threats,” the statement said. “As a result of the hacks of EOP and DNC [Democratic National Committee] servers in 2015 and 2016, respectively, there were serious and legitimate national security concerns about Russian attempts to infiltrate the 2016 election. Upon identifying DNS queries from Russian-made Yota phones in proximity to the Trump campaign and the EOP, respected cybersecurity researchers were deeply concerned about the anomalies they found in the data and prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the CIA.”

In any case, Trump’s original claim in 2017 was that Obama had wiretapped him, not that web searches had been tracked by the Clinton campaign. Trump relied on a report by a British journalist that a “FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrant was granted in connection with the investigation of suspected activity between the server [in Trump Tower] and two banks, SVB Bank and Alfa Bank.”

The FBI did obtain a secret court order to monitor a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. But as we noted, the FBI had quickly dismissed the Alfa Bank tip.
What else is new?

Durham mentions a meeting Sussmann had on Feb. 9, 2017, with “a second agency of the U.S. government,” previously identified in congressional testimony as the CIA. Durham alleges that Sussmann made new allegations against Trump, relying on the DNS traffic that had been collected, including that “Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other location.” Durham’s filing said that his office found “no support” for these claims.

What is noteworthy about the date is that the meeting took place after Trump had already assumed the presidency. But that may be less nefarious than it seems. Sussmann, in December 2017, had previously explained to congressional investigators that he had tried to set up the meeting during Obama’s review of Russian involvement in the election.

“For reasons known and unknown to me, it took a long time to — or it took — you know, it took a while to have a meeting, and so it ended up being after the change in administration,” he said. He said he reported to the CIA “information that was reported to me [from a client] about possible contacts, covert or at least nonpublic, between Russian entities and various entities in the United States associated with the — or potentially associated with the Trump Organization.”

If Sussmann had planned to provide this material before Trump became president, that suggests any possible DNS monitoring took place in 2016 — as both the statement from Joffe’s spokesperson and the response from Sussmann’s legal team said.

“Although the special counsel implies that in Mr. Sussmann’s February 9, 2017 meeting, he provided [the CIA] with EOP data from after Mr. Trump took office, the special counsel is well aware that the data provided to [the CIA] pertained only to the period of time before Mr. Trump took office, when Barack Obama was President,” Sussmann’s legal team said in its filing. “Further — and contrary to the special counsel’s alleged theory that Mr. Sussmann was acting in concert with the Clinton campaign — the motion conveniently overlooks the fact that Mr. Sussmann’s meeting with [the CIA] happened well after the 2016 presidential election, at a time when the Clinton campaign had effectively ceased to exist.” The filing added that it is “false” that Sussmann billed the Clinton campaign for the September 2016 meeting with the FBI.

What is also noteworthy is that Durham raised this allegation in a filing dated Feb. 11. That means, as national security writer Marcy Wheeler first noted, the five-year statute of limitations for charging a crime in connection with the CIA meeting had expired two days earlier.

[TopHatter]

Some analysis on Friday's filing

"....Michael Sussman, an attorney facing a single charge of making a false statement to the FBI"

Wait, isn't that merely a process crime? And isn't the FBI a tool of the Deep State (controlled by Soros, the Rothschilds and the Clintons, naturally)? And anyway the FBI probably tricked him into making that false statement, right?

And where have I heard all this shit before....

Also, why didn't Biden immediately fire Durham upon taking office? Ohhhh right. Biden isn't a career criminal that specializes in obstruction of justice (which is probably just another process crime anyway)

[TopHatter]

But Her E-mails, Vol. CCXLV

Special counsel John Durham was appointed by then-AG William Barr to look into the various investigations of Donald Trump's ties to Russia. Current AG Merrick Garland could theoretically fire Durham, but it would look politically motivated, and would make it seem as if someone—The Democrats, the Biden Administration, Hillary Clinton, the Deep State, the Cincinnati Bengals' offensive line, the original cast of "South Pacific," the guy who invented the Pet Rock, etc.—has something to hide. So, better to let Durham keep going and hope he will reveal himself to be a pettifogger. That moment might have arrived yesterday, as his latest filing in federal court was made public.

The actual filing bends over backwards to make mountains out of what certainly seem to be molehills. It points out that:

1. Hillary Clinton was the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in 2016
2. The Democratic Party employs lawyers
3. One of those lawyers is Michael Sussmann
4. Sussmann had information suggesting Russian-made phones were used by the Trump campaign
5. Sussmann passed the information on to the CIA in hopes of getting them to investigate
6. The CIA apparently did not take the matter seriously, and did not follow up

It's true that Sussmann is facing trial on the charge that he lied to the FBI, and that Durham is looking for anything he can find in order to nail Sussmann to the wall. That said, we are not seeing any real wrongdoing here—certainly nothing criminal. It's common to go to the CIA, FBI, etc. with dirt on one's opponents, and to hope that the G-Men run with it. And the right-wing folks who are gnashing their teeth and rending their garments right now, and lamenting how sleazy and underhanded the Democratic campaign was in 2016, are conveniently forgetting the whole purpose of the Hillary Clinton e-mails line of attack (if you need a reminder, here's a hint: "Lock her up!").

There's also more to this story. Either Durham just writes sloppy briefs, or he was deliberately trying to feed the right-wing outrage machine—whatever it is, he put stuff in the Sussmann brief that has Fox, et al., frothing at the mouth. It's rather complicated, but the executive summary is that the brief points out that Sussmann got the data for the Russian phones claim from a company called Neustar. And elsewhere, the brief notes that since 2015, Neustar has aided the federal government in trying to unravel Russian cyberatttacks and to prevent future ones, including attacks against the White House and its computer servers.

From these scattered bits and pieces within the brief, the right-wing media concluded that the real story here is that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid someone to infiltrate a White House computer server. This makes no sense, of course—recall that when Clinton was campaigning, Barack Obama was in the White House. Why would she want or need to infiltrate a server there? But beyond that, this assertion requires several leaps of logic that are not present in Durham's actual briefing. The Clinton campaign paid for none of this and, besides, Neustar's work on the White House servers actually took place in 2015, before Donald Trump was even a candidate for president, much less the actual president.

Perhaps the most unhinged ranting and raving came from Fox entertainer Jesse Watters, who decreed:

Durham's documents show that Hillary Clinton hired people who hacked into Trump's home and office computers before and during his presidency, and planted evidence that he colluded with Russia.

Yeah. You heard that right. Hillary broke into a presidential candidate's computer server and a sitting president's computer server, spying on them. There, her hackers planted evidence, fabricated evidence connecting Trump to Russia, then fed that doctored material to the feds and the media.

Literally not one iota of that is actually in the filing. The first link above is to the filing itself; you can check for yourself, if you wish. It's badly written, so it might take you a while to slog through it, but you'll see it says none of these things.

In any event, Durham has now used up whatever remaining credibility he had as a special counsel and a former U.S. Attorney. Either he's a sloppy lawyer or a partisan hack (or both). Further, he's spent about 2 years and has come up with almost nothing. Maybe he'll dig up something yet, but we have our doubts. (Z)
__________

In brief: Not reading the shit that you post is apparently an endemic problem with the far-right.

Also I learned a new word today: "Pettifogger". Which is a fancy way of saying "ambulance chaser", i.e. it's no wonder Trump appointed this clown.

[Parihaka]

So, after 5 years of vehement denials we are at the point that ok, yes, the Clinton Campaign, the FBI and the CIA did in fact spy on both the Trump campaign and Presidency in an attempt to subvert the election and bring the presidency down; and did in fact invent a fake dossier, again in attempt to bring down the Presidency; but the latest meme from the left is that's all ok because someone somewhere might have used a Russian made phone near the White House (with no proof whatsoever of this claim), and Durham is a Trump stooge.

Looking forward to the next series of indictments.

[TopHatter]

Looking forward to the next series of indictments.

I'm looking forward to you not actually reading those either

[Parihaka]

I'm looking forward to you not actually reading those either

These?
Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.pdf - Google Drive
The Deep State Goes to War With President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer (theintercept.com)
US intel sources warn Israel against sharing secrets with Trump administration (ynetnews.com)
The FBI’s Darkest Hour › American Greatness (amgreatness.com)
FISC Dec 5 Redacted Order 191220.pdf (uscourts.gov)
FISA Surveillance – Title I & III and Section 702 (themarketswork.com)
Why Civil Libertarians Should Be Worried about the FISA Warrant on Carter Page - Tablet Magazine
Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied to Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme to Co-Opt the CIA and FBI to Tar Trump | RealClearInvestigations
(Sullivan of course is next on the list)
Microsoft Word - Conflicts-Motion-7.docx (courtlistener.com)

[TopHatter]

These?
Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.pdf - Google Drive
The Deep State Goes to War With President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer (theintercept.com)
US intel sources warn Israel against sharing secrets with Trump administration (ynetnews.com)
The FBI’s Darkest Hour › American Greatness (amgreatness.com)
FISC Dec 5 Redacted Order 191220.pdf (uscourts.gov)
FISA Surveillance – Title I & III and Section 702 (themarketswork.com)
Why Civil Libertarians Should Be Worried about the FISA Warrant on Carter Page - Tablet Magazine
Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied to Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme to Co-Opt the CIA and FBI to Tar Trump | RealClearInvestigations
(Sullivan of course is next on the list)
Microsoft Word - Conflicts-Motion-7.docx (courtlistener.com)

There's new indictments already? And they're in those links? Wow, neat!

[TopHatter]

US intel sources warn Israel against sharing secrets with Trump administration (ynetnews.com)

Fuck man, did you even read that one?

It's well known that Donald Trump and his "Administration" were massive sieves for classified information. Hell he even took that shit out of the White House when he left.

So tell me again how that's the Clinton's fault. Or the CIA's fault. Or the FBI's fault.

Or are you saying they're the ones who that put that shit in Trump's outgoing luggage?

[DOR]

Just to be absolutely clear ...

But Her E-mails, Vol. CCXLV

During the Obama Administration,

1. Hillary Clinton was the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in 2016
2. The Democratic Party employs lawyers
3. One of those lawyers is Michael Sussmann
4. Sussmann had information suggesting Russian-made phones were used by the Trump campaign

During the previous (mal)administration,

1. Sussmann passed the information on to the CIA in hopes of getting them to investigate
2. The CIA apparently did not take the matter seriously, and did not follow up

.