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Hillary Clinton Responds to Durham Report

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Editor’s note: An original version of this story incorrectly said a court filing from Special Counsel John Durham stated that Clinton’s campaign “paid to spy on President Donald Trump” and his campaign. Durham’s filing did not state that the Clinton campaign led this effort nor that they “infiltrated” Trump’s server in any capacity, as noted by Newsguard and a fact-check from PolitiFact. “There’s no evidence that the data he passed along was gathered after Trump became president. There is also no evidence the data was obtained illegally, nor did the filing suggest that it was. The filing also doesn’t say the Clinton campaign directed the effort,” Politifact reported. We regret the error and have updated our story as well as the headlines.

Twice failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has responded to the bombshell report alleging her 2016 presidential campaign paid to spy on President Donald Trump.

Clinton took to Twitter and responded to a report from the left-wing outlet Vanity Fair, which defended Clinton and also referred to Trump as a “moron.”

“Trump & Fox are desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones. So it’s a day that ends in Y. The more his misdeeds are exposed, the more they lie. For those interested in reality, here’s a good debunking of their latest nonsense,” Clinton tweeted.

Clinton was confronted by a reporter late on Tuesday over the bombshell report.

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A reporter from The Daily Mail asked her about the court filings from Special Counsel John Durham, but Clinton completely ignored the questions.

“Hillary Clinton refused to answer questions about allegations that her allies spied on the Trump campaign as the controversy continued to engulf her Tuesday,” The Daily Mail reported. “Exclusive pictures and video obtained by DailyMail.com show a stoney faced Clinton silently waving away repeated questions of whether she spied on Donald Trump.”

WATCH:

The bombshell news was first reported by Fox News:

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. Sussman has pleaded not guilty.

The indictment against Sussman 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.

In the February 11 filing in a section titled “Factual Background,” Durham said that 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.”

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

The filing showed that the Tech Executive and Sussman met and talked to another law partner, who was serving as General Counsel to the Clinton campaign. That attorney, sources said, is Marc Elias, who worked at the law firm Perkins Coie.

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 said. “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 said. “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.”