The Durham Report has Several Omissions However

Posted on May 17, 2023May 17, 2023 by Denise Simon

The first glaring omission is the media. Outside of Fox News and a minute or so with Jake Tapper, nothing was mentioned by the legacy media including print media. One has to wonder if the Clinton Foundation or the Brookings Institute actually paid key media to advocate the whole operation from it’s inception. Will there ever be an apology or retraction not just to Donald Trump but to those whose lives were turned upside down including General Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cavuto and countless others. Furthermore, every person in this country suffered through years of the hoax …..THE BIGGEST LIE of all in our history. We are a divided country, never to be restored as proven by the rebuttals of Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Hillary herself.

To be sure, while all sources including the Durham report having Hillary ‘approving’ the Clinton plan, you can bet she did not concoct it from the start….she merely approved it. So, the Durham report leaves out the real genesis of the hoax. Consider those that Durham did not interview in his investigation, Hillary, Comey, Strzok, Lisa Page, Susan Rice, McCabe, John Podesta and many others that were likely the players of the whole plan from the start. Did Durham obtain the various types of communcation from those people or others such as Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell or Harry Reid? Nah…

What about Stafan Halper or Joseph Misfud? What about Robert Mueller and his team and their alleged documents?

Meanwhile, everyone one of those people should have their security clearances stripped. Every willing accomplice should be forced to pay at least the legal fees of those victims of this hoax such as Carter Page. Let the civil suits begin.

Now on to the 7th floor of the FBI. It has not been reformed at all as Director Christopher Wray has stated given those ‘missteps’ he referred to. Consider the investigations going on now including the Hunter laptop and the targets of churches and parents trying to sustain a good education for their children in public schools.

The names mentioned above gave little if any consideration to the permanent damage to the country as all of them were self-serving to advocate for Hillary to be president. Sadly, would her presidency actually be any different than Biden’s presidency? No.

The reputation of our country has forever been tarnished globally. Consider that media across the globe has reported on all these travesties and scandals for years and years. China, Russia, Brazil, Iran and others have postured and planned for a post America world while we figure out still what happened, the consequences and if there is a restoration in the near term.

There are corrupt leaders across the globe and corrupt countries as well, is there anything now that separates us as a nation from that? Yes, only decent and informed American citizens that get in the game and commit to break the American oligarchs of which there are many.

While the Durham report is 300 plus pages, of which you can read here, it is prudent to at least skim the report for context and details that support the assertions above.

This report will likely have zero legal consequences but it will further explain the width and depth of the deep state of which continues to hardly be understood by voters.

Do we really understand the war against the deep state?

Durham’s Evidence of Hillary et. al and the Concocted RussiaGate

Posted on February 14, 2022February 14, 2022 by Denise Simon

It was and for that matter still is an unconventional and unconditional war on a presidential candidate, a president and the American people. It should also be noted that Hillary did not invent the whole fake scandal but she did approve it and paid for it.

When former Attorney General William Barr gave testimony and said in summary that the Trump operation was SPIED on, he was right and more right that we can understand. When Donal Trump said that his team was wire-tapped…while wire tapping is no longer the tactic used…he too was quite right.

This is a very confusion affair but there are several key people that should be not only indicted but surely jailed. The BIG question is will now Attorney General Merrick Garland allow prosecution as it should happen…

John Brennan, former Director of the CIA

Remember Peter Strzok and Marc Elias? They both have given testimony to the Grand Jury. But where is Obama, Hillary, Biden, Brennan and Comey in the mix so far? There is nothing yet to report on those players…but there is hope. It is then we need to know and understand the relationship between the various agencies and the media that were willing accomplices. Biden and Sullivan are in the equation too…

Sit back and read on….maybe even take notes.

If you are a detailed kinda person that want to read in full the documents, go –>

here

EXCLUSIVE: Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe met with Special Counsel John Durham on more than one occasion and told him there was evidence in intelligence to support the indictments of “multiple people” in his investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, sources told Fox News.

Fox News first reported on Durham’s latest filing, which alleged that lawyers from Hillary Clinton‘s presidential campaign in 2016 had paid to “infiltrate” servers belonging to Trump Tower and later the White House, in order to establish an “inference” and “narrative” to bring to federal government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia.

Fox News first reported in October 2020 that Ratcliffe provided nearly 1,000 pages of material to the Justice Department to support Durham’s investigation.

‘Enough evidence’

But sources told Fox News this week that during his meetings with Durham, Ratcliffe, who served as a congressman and as the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas, said he believed there was “enough evidence” in those materials that he provided to indict “multiple people.”

The sources pointed to one key piece of declassified intelligence, which Fox News first reported in October 2020, revealing that intelligence community officials within the CIA forwarded an investigative referral on Hillary Clinton purportedly approving “a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections” in order to distract the public from her email scandal to the FBI.

RATCLIFFE SAYS ODNI HAS PROVIDED NEARLY 1,000 DOCUMENTS TO DOJ TO SUPPORT DURHAM PROBE

Sources told Fox News that the CIA memo, also known as a Counterintelligence Operational Lead (CIOL), was properly forwarded to the FBI, and to the attention of then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok.

Fox News first obtained the declassified memo in October 2020.

“The following information is provided for the exclusive use of your bureau for background investigative action or lead purposes as appropriate,” the 2016 CIA memo to Comey and Strzok stated.

“This memorandum contains sensitive information that could be source revealing. It should be handled with particular attention to compartmentation and need-to-know. To avoid the possible compromise of the source, any investigative action taken in response to the information below should be coordinated in advance with Chief Counterintelligence Mission Center, Legal,” the memo read. “It may not be used in any legal proceeding — including FISA applications — without prior approval …”

“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,” the memo continued. “”An exchange [REDACTED] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”

The memo was heavily redacted.

Concerns raised

A source familiar with the matter told Fox News that Ratcliffe, privately, has raised concerns that the CIOL was directed to Comey and Strzok.

DNI DECLASSIFIES BRENNAN NOTES, CIA MEMO ON HILLARY CLINTON ‘STIRRING UP’ SCANDAL BETWEEN TRUMP, RUSSIA

Fox News, at this point, has not obtained evidence to suggest the FBI opened an investigation into Clinton’s plan per the CIA referral.

Meanwhile, Ratcliffe had also declassified documents that revealed former CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s purported “plan” to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server” ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

“We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED],” Brennan’s declassified notes, which were first obtained by Fox News in October 2020, read. “CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

Three indictments

At this point, Durham has indicted three people as part of his investigation: Igor Danchenko on Nov. 4, 2021, Kevin Clinesmith in August 2020, and Michael Sussmann in September 2021.

Ratcliffe told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” on Nov. 8, 2021, that he was expecting “many indictments” out of Durham’s special counsel investigation.

Danchenko was charged with making a false statement and is accused of lying to the FBI about the source of information that he provided to Christopher Steele for the anti-Trump dossier. Kevin Clinesmith was also charged with making a false statement. Clinesmith had been referred for potential prosecution by the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, which conducted its own review of the Russia investigation.

Specifically, the inspector general accused Clinesmith, though not by name, of altering an email about Page to say that he was “not a source” for another government agency. Page has said he was a source for the CIA. The DOJ relied on that assertion as it submitted a third and final renewal application in 2017 to eavesdrop on Trump campaign aide Carter Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

HILLARY CLINTON 2016 TWEETS PUSHED NOW-DEBUNKED CLAIM OF TRUMP USE OF ‘COVERT SERVER’ LINKED TO RUSSIA

Durham also charged former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann with making a false statement to a federal agent. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.

The indictment against Sussmann says he told then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016, less than two months before the 2016 presidential election, that he was not doing work “for any client” when he requested and held a meeting in which he presented “purported data and ‘white papers’ that allegedly demonstrated a covert communications channel” between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, which has ties to the Kremlin.

Fox News, this weekend, first reported on Durham’s filing on Feb. 11. In a section titled “Factual Background,” Durham reveals that Sussmann “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.”

Durham’s filing said Sussmann’s “billing records reflect” that he “repeatedly billed the Clinton Campaign for his work on the Russian Bank-1 allegations.”

The filing revealed that Sussmann and the Tech Executive had met and communicated with another law partner, who was serving as General Counsel to the Clinton campaign. Sources told Fox News that lawyer is Marc Elias, who worked at the law firm Perkins Coie.

Elias’s law firm, Perkins Coie, is the firm that the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign funded the anti-Trump dossier through. The unverified dossier was authored by ex-British Intelligence agent Christopher Steele and commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

‘Large amounts of Internet data’

Meanwhile, Durham’s latest filing states that in July 2016, the tech executive worked with Sussmann, 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 Sussmann’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 Sussmann 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.”

In Sussmann’s meeting with the second U.S. government agency, Durham says he “provided data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by these entities of internet protocol (IP) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider,” and claimed that the lookups “demonstrated Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.”

“The Special Counsel’s Office has identified no support for these allegations,” Durham wrote, adding that the “lookups were far from rare in the United States.”

“For example, the more complete data that Tech Executive-1 and his associates gathered–but did not provide to Agency 2–reflected that between approximately 2014 and 2017, there were a total of more than 3 million lookups of Russian Phone-Prover 1 IP addresses that originated with U.S.-based IP addresses,” Durham wrote. “Fewer than 1,000 of these lookups originated with IP addresses affiliated with Trump Tower.”

Durham added that data collected by Tech Executive-1 also found that lookups began as early as 2014, during the Obama administration and years before Trump took office, which he said, is “another fact which the allegations omitted.”

“In his meeting with Agency-2 employees, the defendant also made a substantially similar false statement as he made to the FBI General Counsel,” Durham wrote. “In particular, the defendant asserted that he was not representing a particular client in conveying the above allegations.”

“In truth and in fact, the defendant was representing Tech Executive-1–a fact the defendant subsequently acknowledged under oath in December 2017 testimony before Congress, without identifying the client by name,” Durham wrote.

Trump’s reaction

Former President Trump reacted to the filing on Saturday evening, saying Durham’s filing “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.”

“This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution,” Trump said. “In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.”

“In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.”

— Former President Trump

Then-President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Oct. 31, 2017. (Associated Press)

Trump added: “In addition, reparations should be paid to those in our country who have been damaged by this.”

Former chief investigator of the Trump-Russia probe for the House Intelligence Committee under then-Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., Kash Patel, said the filing “definitively shows that the Hillary Clinton campaign directly funded and ordered its lawyers at Perkins Coie to orchestrate a criminal enterprise to fabricate a connection between President Trump and Russia.”

“Per Durham, this arrangement was put in motion in July of 2016, meaning the Hillary Clinton campaign and her lawyers masterminded the most intricate and coordinated conspiracy against Trump when he was both a candidate and later President of the United States while simultaneously perpetuating the bogus Steele Dossier hoax,” Patel told Fox News, adding that the lawyers worked to “infiltrate” Trump Tower and White House servers.

Meanwhile, unearthed Hillary Clinton tweets from days before the 2016 presidential election show the candidate pushing now-debunked information that Donald Trump was using a “covert server” linking him to Russia.

Clinton, on Oct. 31, 2016, tweeted: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank,” and shared a statement from her campaign’s senior policy advisor Jake Sullivan, who now serves as President Biden’s White House National Security advisor.

“This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow,” Sullivan said in the October 2016 statement. “Computer scientists have uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”

Sullivan said the “secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia.”

“This line of communication may help explain Trump’s bizarre adoration of Vladimir Putin and endorsement of so many pro-Kremlin positions throughout this campaign,” he continued. “It raises even more troubling questions in light of Russia’s masterminding of hacking efforts that are clearly intended to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

Sullivan added that they “can only assume federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia’s meddling in our elections.”

A second Clinton tweet from that day stated it was “time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia.”

Clinton tweeted an image that states that Trump had “a secret server” to “communicate privately with a Putin-tied Russian bank called Alfa Bank.”

NSC Jake Sullivan, Family Affair and the Russian Collusion Scandal

Posted on November 12, 2021November 12, 2021 by Denise Simon

Do you really want to know the fundamentals of the back story on who is involved still in the Russian collusion scandal that froze not only the Trump administration, an impeachment and proved the real collusion? Good, then let’s look deeper at Jake Sullivan. He is presently the National Security Advisor for Joe Biden…but it gets worse, much worse. Frankly, I would submit the FBI never investigated the whole Russian collusion operation but rather enhanced the plot.

Jake Sullivan’s wife once clerked for Merrick Garland when he was a DC Circuit judge and is now part of the Department of Justice . Additionally, Jake’s brother, Tom Sullivan presently serves as the Chief of Staff for policy at the State Department and Tom’s wife, Rose is the acting assistant secretary for legislation at HHS. Understand that Merrick Garland oversees the work of the John Durham investigation, rather it appears that, Margaret Goodlander, Jake’s wife is the point person at the DoJ for the Durham operation. This is all while the Russian collusion plot was concocted to cover for Hillary’s email server scandal and this was a time that Jake was Hillary’s Chief of Staff. Beginning to see how this work and still works? Jake’s wife Margaret

L to R: Ben Rhodes, Jake Sullivan, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Tom Donilon.

Fox News reported Tuesday that Sullivan is the “foreign policy advisor” referred to in the indictment of former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, according to two well-placed sources. This is the closest Durham’s probe into the origins of the Russia investigation has come to anyone directly associated with the Biden White House.

The Durham indictment lays out a scenario in which an unnamed Clinton campaign lawyer “exchanged emails with the Clinton Campaign’s campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor [Jake Sullivan] concerning the Russian Bank-1 allegations that Sussmann had recently shared,” with an unnamed reporter.

There is no indication that Sullivan is a target of Durham’s investigation, only that he received information from a campaign lawyer. Durham’s indictments have since revealed that the information he received, about an alleged link between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian bank, and that was fed to the FBI, was false.

In light of Sullivan’s newly confirmed connection to a Clinton campaign lawyer, there is a new focus on Biden’s national security adviser’s role in previous political scandals and his family ties to the Biden administration.

Matthew Buckham, founder of the group American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing transparency to government officials and political elites, told Fox News that it is especially “troubling” that Sullivan has a family member at the top level of DOJ, the agency responsible for overseeing the Durham probe. In addition, AAF plans to recommend to Congress that it launch an investigation into Garland’s ties to Sullivan.

“The fact that he has relatives in the agency responsible for overseeing the investigation is very troubling from an oversight and a watchdog perspective and is something that we would recommend and potentially will recommend Congress keep a close eye on and investigate,” said Buckham. “This is something we always flag and we don’t want any undue influence from family members in an ongoing investigation.”

***

Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is teeming with conflict, double standards and conspiracy, but you be the judge. Some facts are just pesky things that cannot be denied.
Perhaps to put this is some further context watch this video:

More sourcing.

Rigged: The Other Facts About the 2020 Election

Posted on October 18, 2021October 18, 2021 by Denise Simon

Two of the most dangerous people of the 2020 election were Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Elias. We all know Zuckerberg but many need to be reminded who Marc Elias really is.

Marc Elias the Democratic National Committee’s election lawyer and legal adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, filed more than 50 lawsuits around the country challenging state election laws in advance of the 2020 presidential election.

In a 2018 Tweet, President Donald Trump referred to Elias as the Democrats’ “best Election stealing lawyer.”

Though most of the state laws he challenged have been on the books for years, Elias went full steam ahead asking courts to overrule state election laws, force states to count ballots that came in after Election Day, or force states to have unattended ballot collection boxes.

Elias chairs the political law group for the progressive, Seattle-based firm Perkins Coie, “which has had a stranglehold on Democratic legal work for years,” National Review noted in a Nov. 3 analysis.

Since 2019, Perkins Coie has been paid at least $41 million for its political work by Democratic-affiliated organizations, according to Federal Election Commission records. Republican lawyers say that is likely just a fraction of what Perkins Coie has received, because it doesn’t include legal work for many left-wing nonprofits.

Elias was also a key player in the Russia collusion hoax. As the attorney for both the DNC and Clinton campaign, he helped bankroll research by Fusion GPS that created the bogus “Steele dossier” used by the FBI to obtain FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign during the 2016 race. source

***

In “Rigged,” author Mollie Hemingway lays out what amounts to a fascinating alternative to the “stolen” charge. She presents a strong case that the $419 million that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg ostensibly spent to get out the vote was actually used by Democrat activists to infiltrate local election operations and take over jobs government workers were supposed to do.

Hemingway, a senior editor at The Federalist and a Fox commentator, shows how two Zuckerberg nonprofits used their unprecedented deep pockets to line up left-wing groups in key cities that in turn hired poll workers, collected absentee ballots and cured those with errors.

In Green Bay, Wisconsin, the Democratic mayor outsourced the planning and managing of the election to these activists. Hemingway cites an e-mail from the mayor’s chief of staff saying, “I am taking all of my cues” from one of the Zuckerberg groups.

The city clerk, nominally in charge of the election, was reportedly unhappy with the changes, went on leave shortly before election day and soon resigned.

As Hemingway puts it in excerpts published by The Post, “It was a genius plan. And because no one ever imagined that a coordinated operation could pull off the privatization of the election system, no laws were built to combat it.”

Texas researcher William Doyle crunched the numbers showing how the nonprofits concentrated in areas Biden won, often spending three or four times as much money per voter as they spent in districts Trump won.

“The 2020 election wasn’t stolen,” Doyle concluded. “It was likely bought by one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men pouring his money through legal loopholes.”

*** Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized ...

Back in December of 2020, this site published two items exposing these operations.

Georgia/The Fulton County Board of Commissioners voted to accept a $6.3 million grant from the Mark-Zuckerberg funded Center for Technology and Civic Life “Safe Elections” project at a September 2, 2020 board meeting. It proceeded without asking a single question about the name of the group providing the funding, the origin of the funding, or the details of what the funding would be used for.

Here is the report on the clawback provisions Zuclerberg demanded if his money was not used as he required.

It begins with the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), which received nearly $400 million from Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg began the sizeable donations is September boost resources for local election officials, such as additional polling places and ballot drop boxes. Four federal lawsuits were filed in late September by Michigan’s Election Integrity Fund, by the Wisconsin Voters’ Alliance, by the Minnesota Voters’ Alliance, and by two Pennsylvania congressional candidates and several state house members. The lawsuits contend federal law prohibits local governments from accepting private federal election grants. Zuckerberg won the lawsuits in each case, so far.

The lawsuits focus on the Center for Tech and Civic Life spending about $26 million in grants across 12 cities in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin, which combined cast over 75% off their two million votes in favor of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, according to the plaintiffs. source

Then in June of 2021, is the other item:

In exchange for the money, elections divisions agreed to conduct their elections according to conditions set out by the CTCL, which is led by former members of the New Organizing Institute, a training center for progressive groups and Democratic campaigns.

A CTCL partner, the Center for Civic Design, helped design absentee ballot forms and instructions, crafted voter registration letters for felons and tested automatic voter registration systems in several states, working alongside progressive activist groups in Michigan and directly with elections offices in Georgia and Utah.

Still other groups with a progressive leaning, including the Main Street Alliance, The Elections Group and the National Vote at Home Institute, provided support for some elections offices.

“COVID-19 response” grants of varying amounts to 2,500 municipalities in 49 states.

Center for Tech and Civic Life

Facebook, with the CTCL, was also part of the effort, providing a guide and webinar for election officials on how to engage voters. Included were directions to report “voter interference” to Facebook authorities. The company also provided designated employees in six regions of the U.S. to handle questions. Together, the groups strategically targeted voters and waged a voter assistance campaign aimed at low-income and minority residents who typically shun election participation, helping Democratic candidates win key spots all over the U.S.

The little-explored roles of CTCL and other such groups emerged in emails and other records obtained by RealClearInvestigations and public documents secured by conservative litigants and groups, including the Foundation for Government Accountability, which has filed more than 800 public records requests with elections offices accepting the grants.

Previously, the Zuckerberg-funded effort has been described in generally positive terms, notably when NPR reported in December on “How Private Money From Facebook’s CEO Saved The 2020 Election” — in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump’s doubts about the legitimacy of the process and “Congress’ neglect.”

In 2018, RCI reported that a New York University School of Law program funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg had placed environmentally minded lawyers in the offices of Democratic state attorneys general to challenge Trump administration policies. And examples of private efforts to steer cash-strapped public education are numerous, from the Koch charities on the right to more recent race-conscious programs on the left emphasizing the legacy and centrality of white racism in society.

Zuckerberg did not respond to an emailed request from RCI for comment. In a post-election interview, he praised Facebook’s security work during the election and singled out its policing of “misinformation.” He noted working with polling officials to watch for information that might lead to “voter suppression” and said Facebook had strengthened its enforcement “against militias and conspiracy networks like Q-Anon.”

The First Possible Prosecution from the Durham Investigation

Posted on September 16, 2021September 16, 2021 by Denise Simon

Durham “has told the Justice Department that he will ask a grand jury to indict a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on a charge of making a false statement to the FBI,” the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing “people familiar with the matter.”

Sussmann’s lawyers, Sean M. Berkowitz and Michael S. Bosworth, acknowledged Wednesday that they expected him to be indicted, but denied wrongdoing.

“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” they told the Times. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work. We are confident that if Mr. Sussmann is charged, he will prevail at trial and vindicate his good name.

Durham has until the weekend to charge Sussmann because of a five-year statute of limitations, the newspaper said. source

Michael Sussmann (@michaelsuss) | Twitter

Breaking report from the New York Times (Savage and Goldman, et al.): Special Counsel John Durham “will ask a grand jury to indict” former DNC/Clinton campaign lawyer (and Perkins Coie partner) Michael Sussman for giving false statements. The false statement charges would relate to a September 19, 2016 meeting FBI lawyer James Baker had with Sussman, where Sussman relayed to the FBI the discredited theory that the Trump Organization was communicating with Alfa Bank.

The New York Times states:

Mr. Baker, the former F.B.I. lawyer, is said to have told investigators that he recalled Mr. Sussmann saying that he was not meeting him on behalf of any client.

This was contradicted by (1) Sussman’s testimony to Congress; and (2) Sussman’s own billing records. Sussman’s lawyers acknowledged “they expected him to be indicted.”

As to Sussman’s testimony, here is a portion where he discusses the Alfa Bank information was given to him by a client.

As we have discussed, the New Yorker first reported back in 2020 that Durham had impaneled a grand jury relating to the false Alfa Bank/Trump Organization story. There is the potential that former Feinstein staffer Daniel Jones – as well as the researches behind the Alfa Bank matter – will also face charges of giving false information to federal officials.

More recently, we noted that Fusion GPS has been fighting to keep secret its communications about Trump/Alfa Bank secret in a civil suit. Court records we reviewed appear to show the degree with which Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, and their associates went in drafting and promoting the false Alfa Bank/Trump Organization story.

One court document of interest is this August 26, 2016 e-mail from Fusion GPS to Michael Sussman.

That Fusion GPS-Sussman correspondence occurred not long before Sussman met with FBI General Counsel James Baker weeks later.

The e-mails correspond to the dates the Alfa Bank/Trump Organization was getting media exposure. One has to wonder what other correspondence Sussman had with Fusion GPS.

Questions have long been asked about Sussman’s involvement in the potential cover-up of the DNC hack in 2016. It was Sussman who brought in CrowdStrike (given his close relationship with founder Shawn Henry) to look into the DNC hack. According to Politico:

In late April [2016], the DNC’s IT department noticed some suspicious behavior and contacted DNC chief executive officer Amy Dacey, according to a DNC official. Dacey reached out to DNC lawyer Michael Sussmann, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm and a former federal prosecutor specializing in cybercrimes. Sussmann called Shawn Henry, the president of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, to get his company’s help.

This CrowdStrike/Perkins Coie links put into perspective this information in the the New York Times article, where Durham

has been pursuing a theory that the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie to submit dubious information to the F.B.I. about Russia and Mr. Trump in an effort to gin up investigative activity to hurt his 2016 campaign.

If that is the case, then we doubt it would be limited to the Alfa Bank allegations.

Future Developments

We’ll be following the Sussman story closely and will post the charging documents and criminal information once – or if – Durham gets the indictment. (hat-tip)

***

When Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked about the origin of the infamous Trump dossier, James Comey brushed off most of the questions. The former Federal Bureau of Investigations director said someone on his “senior staff”—he couldn’t remember who—had “briefed” him on the dossier “sometime in the fall” of 2016. Mr. Comey had been told it came “from a reliable source.” He insisted he “never knew exactly which Democrats had funded” it. He then continued on about his book, which meditated on the importance of “truth.”

Testifying before a joint session of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, Mr. Baker said Mr. Sussmann approached him. The contact was initiated before the FBI and Justice Department applied for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for key Trump campaign figure Carter Page, according to the Daily Caller’s report.

Mr. Baker was instrumental in obtaining the warrants for Mr. Page. source