Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Actually, This:

Is as simple as this: Let Wonkette explain it for you: Or better, I'll do it via Wonkette, leaving out all the detail (which you can learn, if you like. But the bones here are pretty straighforward):

1) Computer security experts (hereafter CSE's, if I remember to keep to that.  No guarantees this will be carefully edited before publication), noted that "a Trump Organization server that had all these odd electronic pings to a server associated with a Russian entity known as Alfa Bank."

Got that?  Trump Org, server, Alfa Bank (a Russian entity).  They found this because it had become known Russia was hacking DNC servers, so there was a risk RNC/Trump servers were being hacked, too.

To be clear, these guys were granted access to the data [from Trump Tower]. They didn't hack Trump Tower, or the Trump Organization, or the White House, or the Trump campaign. The only hack was the one Russia waged against the Clinton campaign, which Trump gleefully weaponized.

Just to use names for a minute, Rodney Jaffee, one of the CSE's ("a legend," says Wonkette; so there) went to Michael Sussman, his lawyer, with this info.  Sussman works for Perkins, Cole, who represented the Clinton campaign and the DNC.  Okay, here's where Special Counsel Durham (and yes, Viriginia, this is why there should NEVER be a "Special Counsel."  Did we learn nothing from Ken Starr's Star Chamber?) gets hinky with it:

In September of 2016, Sussman brought the Alfa Bank data to FBI general counsel James Baker. When Baker testified to the House Judiciary Committee in 2018, GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows were openly scornful of his assertion that he didn't know Sussman's firm repped the DNC and Clinton's campaign. But Special Counsel John Durham, appointed by Bill Barr to make something, anything stick to the Clinton campaign, has taken the opposite tack.

In September of 2021, five minutes before the five-year statute of limitations was going to lapse, Durham indicted Sussman on one count of making a false statement to James Baker. Sussman says he claimed not to be coming to the FBI on behalf of a particular client, which is technically true, since his firm repped both the DNC and Joffe. Baker says he doesn't remember what Sussman said, but it wouldn't have made any difference because they'd have followed it up the same way regardless of the genesis of the information — i.e. even if Sussman lied about coming there on behalf of the Clinton campaign, it probably wouldn't meet the legal standard for materiality.

But when Baker called his deputy Bill Priestap to hand the thing off, Priestap's notes read, "said not doing this for any client." And that was right before he wrote, "Represents DNC, Clinton Foundation, etc." Like we said, everyone knew who his clients were, and DC ain't that big. 

Tl;dr:  Sussman went to the FBI, FBI went to House Judiciary (then in GOP hands).  Durham charged Sussman with making a false statement to the FBI, i.e., not revealing his connections to the Clinton campaign when he went to the FBI.  And Baker's deputy's notes agree with Sussman's story.

So what's up now?  In a truly Ken Starr-inspired move, Durham is alleging, for the sake of an investigation, not as a legal indictment (yet), that Durham's criminal representation has a conflict of interest because that firm has represented Perkins, Cole.  So?  So:

As part of that work, Durham alleges, [Marc] Elias [another Perkins, Cole partner] met with Joffe and Sussman to massage the Alfa Bank allegations prior to a February 9, 2017, meeting Elias had with the CIA. As national security guru Marcy Wheeler points out — God bless this person for explaining this shit to us! — Sussman was never charged with lying to the CIA, and the five-year statute of limitations just expired re: this meeting. Nevertheless Durham uses the specter of "conflicts" between Elias, Sussman, and Perkins Coie to suggest there was something hinky about that meeting. 

Again, tl:dr, Sussman wasn't (and can't be) charged with lying to the CIA.  Too late, no date.  But possible, maybe, if you squint one eye, close the other, and lay on your side and look through a pin-hole in a piece of paper you might imagine you see it, "conflicts," have to be investigated.

If the court will allow.

Let me pause here to bring CNN into the mix:

CNN says Durham asserts:
Michael Sussmann, the Democratic lawyer, spoke about internet data related to Trump in a meeting with a federal agency, which sources say was the CIA, more than five years ago. Sussmann claimed the information "demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations," according to the filing.
There is no evidence of that, Durham says, which Durham further says makes Joffe look like a suspicious character:
The data was compiled by a tech firm that had special access to the purportedly suspicious internet data through an "arrangement" with the US government, and that firm was in touch with Sussmann, according to the filing.
Yeah, we know that; and we know whar the "special arrsngement" was.
An executive at the tech company, Rodney Joffe, and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining domain name system traffic associated with the Executive Office of the President and other data "for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump," Durham's prosecutors wrote.
This us why your lawyer tells you not to talk to the police. This is also why special prosecutors are such a bad idea. No legitimate prosecutor would bother with this crap. They have real crimes to prosecute.

By the way: did the CIA take these allegations seriously?
"Upon identifying DNS queries from Russian-made Yota phones in proximity to the Trump campaign and the EOP, respected cyber-security 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," the spokesperson added later in the statement.
So what’s it all about, Alfie?

Durham's court filing doesn't allege that the pro-Clinton researchers use of internet data meant that there was any eavesdropping on content of communications.

Durham has used the Sussmann case to more broadly draw attention to the role of unsavory political opposition research in the 2016 election.

Sussmann is set to go to trial in a few months, and the case is largely expected to be based on the testimony of former FBI General Counsel James Baker, who has made shaky statements in testimony over the past few years about his memory of his interactions with Sussmann.

This is going to go well.

If this seems like a lot of explaining to make it simple, that’s because Durham has to make it complicated so it seems like something is there. It isn’t. This is a pile of shit.

Now what you've waded through that, Wonkette ends with a tl;dr that's worth quoting in toto:

Rodney Joffe had legitimate access to the data that showed possible contacts between Trump and Russia at a time when he was publicly asking Vladimir Putin to go steal Hillary Clinton's emails. ("Russia, if you're listening ...")

The only campaign that was spied on was Hillary Clinton's, which got hacked and saw its internal communications weaponized by Trump surrogates like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon.

Trump's campaign met with a Russian agent promising dirt on Hillary Clinton ("If it's what you say, I love it!)

Clinton never paid Rodney Joffe — in fact Joffe paid Sussman for his services. Literally no one in DC was ignorant of Sussman or Perkins Coie's connection to the Clintons and the DNC. Jim Baker doesn't remember what happened in the meeting, and his deputy's notes are probably hearsay anyway.

And Durham is only airing this supposed "conflict" between Sussman and his lawyers — a conflict the Special Counsel knew about five months ago when he indicted Sussman and which Sussman has anyway already waived — after the statute of limitations ran out, and its value exists solely in feeding a false narrative from his buddies on the right.

It's smoke and mirrors.

And PS, if you had trouble following this, ask yourself if the average mouth-breathing MAGA doofus is going to be able to make heads or tails of it.

The average mouth-breathing MAGA doofus doesn't have to understand it; they just have to be outraged by it.  Outrage is all that matters!  Truth and facts are part of the conspiracy!  The reports on it are, themselves, dubious:

Not sure where those reports are appearing; my bet is MAGA heads on the intertoobs. Truth is getting its boots on while a lie is already half-way ‘round the world. Same as it ever was.

As for me, this is another reason why "special counsels" should not be allowed:  period.  They run wild hunting for snipe and turning legal process into "sentence first, verdict afterwards!" affairs.  The few that don't are the exception that prove the rule.


I've had enough of outrage.  And more than enough of people who don't see how outrageous it is.  This ain't no way to run a railroad.


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