OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Special Counsel John Durham said in a court filing that attorneys for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign paid a technology company to “infiltrate” servers that were in Trump Tower, and after the election in the White House, in order to create an “inference” and “narrative” to link Donald Trump to Russia.
Fox Business host Stuart Varney believes that Durham likely did “Democrats are favor,” arguing the news could prevent Hillary Clinton from mounting a 2024 presidential run as rumors swirl she may consider mounting a bid.
“This is unbelievable. In the media, Trump’s hatred still rules. The Durham report also revealed that the current National Security Advisor played a role. Look at this, three weeks before the election in 2016 Jake Sullivan said, ‘Computer scientists have uncovered a covert server linking the Trump organization to a Russian-based bank. This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery to Trump’s ties to Russia,'” Varney said.
“Sullivan is now the mouthpiece for President Biden in the Russia-Ukraine standoff. He is the National Security Advisor and he’s at the heart of this nonsense six years ago. Now in one respect, John Durham did the Democrats favor, Hillary will surely not be running in 2024,” he added.
WATCH:
A federal judge recently gave Durham another victory in his case.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that GPS Fusion, the research firm Clinton’s 2016 campaign hired to dig up dirt on Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, must turn over nearly two dozen emails to Durham’s team.
“Those emails – which are largely exchanges between Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman and Fusion GPS – are part of a batch that prosecutors subpoenaed last year. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper blocked prosecutors from getting 16 of those emails but allowed Durham to obtain 22,” Fox News reported.
“Cooper ruled that the 16 emails in question were protected by attorney-client privilege and attorney-work-product while the remaining 22 were not. Still, the judge ruled that those emails will not be admissible in the impending trial of Sussman – who is charged with lying to the FBI during a September 2016 meeting – because of the untimeliness of Durham’s request,” the report added.
Durham has indicted a prominent lawyer who worked for the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Michael Sussmann was indicted for allegedly lying to FBI lawyer James Baker during a 2016 meeting about who he was representing when he gave information about Donald Trump and Russia to the bureau.
Sussmann’s legal team has been fighting Durham over his efforts to secure a number of documents from Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign they have claimed are protected by the attorney-client privilege.
Durham has been arguing that the campaign could not hide materials based on that claim because the materials being hidden have already been widely distributed to third parties.
Last week, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., sided with Durham and ordered the former campaign to produce the documents requested by the special counsel.
UPDATE – Durham won the first part of the fight.
Durham’s motion to compel has been granted.
“Privileged” Fusion GPS e-mails/docs will be provided to the court for in camera review.
The court will then determine whether the “privileges” apply. (Durham will get the docs.) https://t.co/sPmR8Qackg pic.twitter.com/PZTXlpVEqx
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) May 4, 2022
Fusion GPS poisoned the public with deceitful “opposition research”
And now, to keep documents from Special Counsel Durham, the Clinton Campaign tells the court Fusion GPS was providing “legal advice”
The lies are catching up to them.https://t.co/CWhrdzEH8y
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) April 20, 2022
Durham’s efforts to get a judge to look at documents shielded by attorney-client privilege claims from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee were ramping up:
The prosecutor submitted a filing in federal court Monday pointing to a Federal Election Commission ruling that fined those Democrats for violating rules with the funding of research that became a central part of the effort to accuse Clinton’s rival, Donald Trump, of collusion with Russia.
The submission is part of the case against Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who was indicted in September for allegedly concealing his clients — Clinton’s campaign and “Tech Executive-1,” Rodney Joffe — from FBI general counsel James Baker in September 2016 when he presented internet data that suggested a now-discredited back-channel link between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.
Durham’s motion attached recently public FEC filings, including the FEC’s “conciliation agreement” with the DNC and Hillary for America. The FEC found “probable cause to believe” the Clinton campaign and the DNC improperly reported their payments to Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s opposition research as “legal and compliance consulting,” the special counsel said.
He went on to note that evidence presented at Sussmann’s trial, which began this week, will indicate that in late July 2016, the Clinton attorney along with Joffe and “agents of the Clinton campaign” was “assembling and disseminating the Russian Bank-1 allegations and other derogatory information about Trump and his associates to the media and the U.S. government.”
