Sussmann Russia Trump Collusion trial begins Monday. But Mr. Durham has already won

by KANE


SOURCE — Kim Strassel WSJ

Special Counsel John Durham steps into court Monday with the first trial of his probe into Democrats’ Russia-collusion hoax. That’s a formality. Mr. Durham has already won.

 Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann stands accused of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by claiming the dirt on Donald Trump he fed to the FBI wasn’t delivered on behalf of “any client.” Mr. Sussmann was in the pay of the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee and worked extensively with outside players and the media to produce the collusion narrative as well as documents that stoked FBI probes of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to Durham filings. Mr. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.

Commentators spent last week warring over whether Judge Christopher Cooper’s rulings on the use of evidence would help or hinder Mr. Durham’s case. It doesn’t much matter. Mr. Durham has already accomplished his far bigger goal with this narrow indictment. He’s put every sleazy collusion player in the hot seat, with ramifications beyond the courtroom.

From the day the special counsel released the 27-page Sussmann indictment in September (and the follow-on charges against dossier contributor Igor Danchenko), it’s been clear he had ambitions that went far beyond a conviction for lying. Each of his filings follows the same, deliberate strategy—lengthy briefs and long exhibits full of names, emails and documents, all of which connect the dots and expose the web that enabled this hoax, and the lies that kept it hidden.

Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias isn’t charged, but he also no longer heads the elite political-law practice at Perkins Coie. The firm last August announced Mr. Elias, who’d been there 28 years, was leaving to start his own small practice. A few weeks later, the Sussmann indictment laid bare the role Mr. Elias, a longtime DNC and Clinton lawyer, played in ginning up and distributing the bogus Trump-Russia claims.

Christopher Steele, author of the infamous dossier, once lauded by the press as an international superspy, is now a man in search of a reputation. His dossier’s “intelligence,” Mr. Durham’s documents show, came primarily from a Brookings Institution employee, Mr. Danchenko, who was recycling salacious chatter from a Clinton associate. Whatever work Mr. Steele may find in future, it won’t include assisting the FBI or any other respectable agency.

Fusion GPS, which hired Mr. Steele, has become toxic in Washington. The Durham prosecutions show how the opposition-research firm operates—not by producing real research, but by shopping seamy claims to law enforcement, then browbeating journalists into covering the “investigations” Fusion inspires. (Fusion in court filings says its job was to help Perkins Coie with legal advice—a claim the judge largely rejected Thursday.) The Washington press corps knows it got played—and how. A recent Durham filing released dozens of emails showing reporters at top outlets palling it up with their Fusion narrators, with one Slate writer even sending a draft October 2016 article for Fusion to review. Is the DNC going to hire Fusion anytime soon? Even credulous reporters will think twice before running with another Fusion lead.

Mrs. Clinton won’t be in the courtroom, but the campaign’s claims it was in the dark about the Perkins Coie and Fusion work are in ashes. Mr. Durham’s evidence shows top Clinton aides—including campaign manager Robby Mook—were apprised of allegations and helped circulate them. Also among the circulators was current national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who faces calls to resign given his role.

Then there’s James Comey’s FBI. One downside of the Durham “lying” strategy is that it requires prosecutors to present the FBI as dupes of the Clinton operation. Yet amusingly, this has lured the defense into providing evidence of FBI rot. Mr. Sussmann’s lawyers will argue at trial that their client can’t be found guilty of lying to the FBI, since “they have reviewed more than 300 emails that show the bureau understood Sussmann worked for Democratic campaign entities,” as the Washington Post reports. 

The FBI knew all along and ran with unvetted political dirt, even if Mr. Sussmann’s alleged lie allowed it to pretend it was aboveboard. And as the Durham evidence shows, it went on pretending, failing to follow up on Mr. Steele, the dossier or its Clinton origins until long after the election (at which point special counsel Robert Mueller failed to follow up on the FBI for nearly two years more). Most of the FBI’s former leaders have been fired or left, its reputation is in tatters, and the GOP will dig further if it regains Congress this fall.

Many conservatives remain frustrated that Mr. Durham hasn’t pursued far more sweeping conspiracy charges. But conspiracy cases are hard to prove. A sweeping prosecution of high-name figures would cause a political feeding frenzy, and be proclaimed by the media a partisan exercise. A court loss would make it easier for the press to cast the entire effort as debunked.

The narrow prosecution of the little-known Mr. Sussmann has allowed for a focus on the bigger story. Stay tuned for a flood of more information coming out of a trial that on its face is about one lawyer, but in reality is the continuing tale of one of the dirtiest tricks in modern U.S. history.




Fusion GPS loses its fight in Durham's Sussmann case over "privileged" documents and MUST Release

by Techno Fog


We’ve documented the ongoing battle to obtain Fusion GPS e-mails and documents in the Michael Sussmann case. At issue in the Sussmann case are 38 e-mails and attachments between and among Fusion GPS, Rodney Joffe, and Perkins Coie. These 38 e-mails and attachments are among approximately 1,500 documents that Fusion GPS withheld from production to the grand jury based on “privilege.”

What Fusion GPS has to produce.

Today, the court in the Sussmann case made an important ruling and rejected, in large measure, Fusion’s assertion of attorney-client or work-product privilege:

Fusion GPS will have to produce these documents to Special Counsel Durham by May 16, 2022. What do these e-mails and documents contain? The court’s order provides guidance, stating they relate to:

Internal Fusion GPS e-mails discussing the Alfa Bank data and e-mails circulating draft versions of the Alfa Bank white papers that were “ultimately provided to the press and the FBI.”

Here are some examples of what these e-mails might include. These are privilege logs in Fusion GPS’s other litigation relating to the Alfa Bank hoax.



The other emails.

This leaves 16 e-mails and documents remaining. For now, Durham will not get them. These are divided into two categories:

  1. Eight of the e-mails involve internal communications among Fusion GPS employees. The court was “unable to tell from the emails or the surrounding circumstances whether they were prepared for a purpose other than assisting Perkins Coie in providing legal advice to the Clinton Campaign in anticipation of litigaiton.” Coming from the court, that’s a long way of saying that the sworn declarations of Fusion/Clinton lawyers (Levy and Elias) were sufficient to meet the “privilege” burden. This doesn’t mean that Durham can’t overcome this hurdle - just that it hasn’t been overcome yet.

  2. The other eight e-mails and attachments include those among Fusion GPS’s Laura Seago, Sussmann, and Rodney Joffe. The court observed that the e-mails are consistent with Joffe’s assertion of privilege.

With respect to the Joffe e-mails, we note that he is still a subject - perhaps a target - of the Special Counsel’s investigation. Here’s a portion of the transcript from an evidentiary hearing in the Sussmann case that discusses their ongoing investigation into Joffe:


Because the investigation into Joffe is ongoing, it makes sense that the Special Counsel is hesitant to disclose to the court information that could overcome this purported “privilege.” Keep in mind the crime-fraud exception, where communications are not considered privileged where they “are made in furtherance of a crime, fraud, or other misconduct” (citation omitted). In other words, the Special Counsel may still be able to get Joffe’s e-mails - assuming Joffe is charged under 18 USC 1031. He can also get them through the grand jury process, as we saw with Mueller’s investigation of Paul Manafort.1

I’ll also add that the fact that privilege applies to some of these documents strengthens the Special Counsel’s argument that Sussmann was representing a client when he met with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016.

As to the e-mails and documents Durham will obtain, he cannot use them during trial. The court considered Durham’s efforts to be too close to the May 16, 2022 trial date to allow these e-mails and documents into trial. I’m not sure that matters. Sussmann is facing a false statement charge, and the court observed these e-mails are not “particularly revelatory.”

Finally, while “Court takes no position on the other approximately 1500 documents that Fusion GPS withheld as privileged,” we can assume based on this ruling that the majority of those documents would not be privileged. Durham will likely get most of them.

For those interested: After I wrote this post, New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau filed this request for a protective order. Lichtblau will be called as a witness by Sussmann’s attorneys to discuss “communications between Mr. Sussmann and Mr. Lichtblau” - meetings at which Rodney Joffe was present (that confidentiality privilege was waived).

The Special Counsel has refused to limit Lichtblau’s testimony to that narrow topic:

Durham is taking this position because Lichtblau was in contact with Peter Fritsch (and Glenn Simpson) of Fusion GPS leading up to the 2016 election. Fritsch was feeding Lichtblau Fusion “opposition research” (what we might accurately call bullshit), and Lichtblau was at least somewhat receptive, though not salivating like Franklin Foer. These are relevant to the broader “media relations” strategy that Sussmann and Fusion GPS pursued on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Here are the e-mails:


John Durham Wins First Part of the Fight to Obtain “Privileged” Fusion GPS Documents in Huge Blow to Clinton Campaign

by Cristina Laila


Special Prosecutor John Durham secured a victory against Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

As previously reported by Techno Fog, as part of the prosecution of former Clinton Campaign/DNC lawyer Michael Sussmann: Special Counsel Durham is seeking the following e-mails/communications that have been either redacted or hidden from his review:

  1. Documents involving Fusion GPS’s provision of opposition research and media-related strategies to Hillary for America, the DNC, and Perkins Coie. This includes the Fusion GPS/Perkins Coie contract and 38 e-mails and attachments between and among Fusion GPS, Rodney Joffe, and Perkins Coie.

  2. Communications between Fusion GPS and Rodney Joffe relating to the Alfa Bank allegations, and “other emails that precede, and appear to relate to, those communications.” This include emails between Joffe and Laura Seago, whom Durham has subpoenaed as a trial witness
The Clinton Campaign (including Robby Mook and John Podesta), Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie, Rodney Joffe, and the DNC are fighting to keep these e-mails and records secret, reasoning Fusion’s “role was to provide consulting services in support of the legal advice attorneys at Perkins Coie were providing to” the Clinton Campaign.

That argument – that Fusion GPS was helping with “legal advice” – is hopefully the last conspiracy theory they’ll provide to the public, after Fusion GPS has already poisoned the America, through the FBI, DOJ, and the press, with baseless allegations of secret back-channels between Trump Organization and Russian marketing servers, piss tapes, and broader allegations of Trump/Russia collusion.

John Durham won the first round in the fight to obtain the “privileged” Fusion GPS documents.

The documents will be provided to the court for in camera review.

Then the court will determine whether the “privileges” apply.