THE DIRTIEST TRICK GETS DIRTIER [UPDATED]
The Russia collusion hoax is the dirtiest trick in the history of American politics, but if the latest filing by John Durham is correct, the Steele dossier wasn’t the half of it:
Lawyers for the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to “infiltrate” servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the White House, in order to establish an “inference” and “narrative” to bring to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia, a filing from Special Counsel John Durham says.
Durham filed a motion on Feb. 11 focused on potential conflicts of interest related to the representation of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman, who has been charged with making a false statement to a federal agent. …
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Durham’s filing states that in July 2016, the tech executive worked with Sussman, a U.S. investigative firm retained by Law Firm 1 on behalf of the Clinton campaign, numerous cyber researchers and employees at multiple internet companies to “assemble the purported data and white papers.”“In connection with these efforts, Tech Executive-1 exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data,” the filing states. “Tech Executive-1 also enlisted the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.”
“Tech Executive-1 tasked these researchers to mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia,” Durham states. “In doing so, Tech Executive-1 indicated that he was seeking to please certain ‘VIPs,’ referring to individuals at Law Firm-1 and the Clinton campaign.”
Durham also writes that during Sussman’s trial, the government will establish that among the Internet data Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited was domain name system (DNS) internet traffic pertaining to “(i) a particular healthcare provider, (ii) Trump Tower, (iii) Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and (iv) the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP).”
Durham states that the internet company that Tech Executive-1 worked for “had come to access and maintain dedicated servers” for the Executive Office of the President 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,” Durham states.
The filing also reveals that Sussman provided “an updated set of allegations” including the Russian bank data, and additional allegations relating to Trump “to a second agency of the U.S. government” in 2017.
Durham says the allegations “relied, in part, on the purported DNS traffic” that Tech Executive-1 and others “had assembled pertaining to Trump Tower, Donald Trump’s New York City apartment building, the EOP, and the aforementioned healthcare provider.”
The most shocking part of these allegations, as I understand them, is that the Democratic Party used a tech contractor working for the White House to gather (or fabricate) data intended to put then-President Trump in a bad light. If this understanding is correct–apart from the claim that the same thing occurred during the presidential campaign–it is a truly shocking scandal that implies serious criminal charges.
So far I haven’t seen Durham’s filing, but only the linked Fox news account of it.
UPDATE: Durham’s motion is embedded below. The key factual allegations were included in the Fox News story, and most of them are quoted above. I note that the Fox story puts the word “infiltrate” in quotes, but that word does not appear in the motion. Not sure what is going on there.
The point of the motion is that the Latham & Watkins law firm, which started out in Los Angeles but now has global reach, has its fingers in multiple pies regarding the Russia collusion hoax, and one or more of its lawyers or former lawyers–funny how that keeps happening–may be witnesses at trial. Therefore Latham has multiple conflicts that should be cleared before trial, or else the firm must be disqualified from representing criminal defendant Michael Sussmann.
Latham’s neck-deep involvement in the Democratic Party’s scandal is much less than that of the Perkins Coie firm, which started out in Seattle but is now, like Latham, global. Marc Elias, the Democratic Party’s chief political lawyer, and criminal defendant Michael Sussmann are both former partners in Perkins Coie. I assume that Elias left Perkins Coie in the expectation that he will be indicted. We should be so lucky; I have wondered for quite a while why Elias, the architect of the Steele dossier and much else, is not in prison.
Maybe someday he will be, but I doubt it. He is smart enough to erect a layer of plausible deniability between himself and underlings like Sussmann. And, of course, Hillary Clinton is one step further removed. She and Elias would assert attorney-client privilege as to their communications, but the privilege does not apply to plotting crimes. So I assume they didn’t put anything in writing.
What all of this reflects is the determination of America’s establishment to destroy Donald Trump. Our establishment includes 200 or so major, super-respectable law firms like Latham & Watkins and Perkins Coie. Pretty much all of these firms, as members of the establishment in good standing, would happily have enlisted in the anti-Trump crusade. And I think most of them, like Latham and Perkins, would have facilitated criminal conduct if that would help the Democrats’ cause and cement their standing with our–sort of–ruling class.
Here is the Durham motion:
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