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Dec. 19, 2021 - Epoch Times
15:22
John Durham just filed Criminal Charge Against Hillary Clinton Campaign Lawyer | Facts Matter
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Good evening and welcome to a special report.
Late last night, John Durham, who is the special counsel currently investigating the alleged spying that was done against Trump's campaign back in 2016, he released this grand jury indictment.
And in it, he charged a lawyer who represented both the DNC as well as the Clinton campaign with lying to the FBI. However, there is a lot more to this case than meets the eye.
And so, let's dig through it together.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
And now let's begin today's discussion by talking about John Durham.
And in case you don't know, John Durham is the former U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, and he is also the special counsel who is currently investigating the alleged spying that was done against the Trump campaign back in 2016.
And just yesterday, Mr. Durham officially filed his second indictment.
In fact, here it is right here in my hands, and it's pretty long.
It's 27 pages.
Now, specifically, this grand jury indictment is against a man named Michael Sussman.
And Michael Sussman is a lawyer.
In fact, he works for a firm called Perkins Coey, and he represented both Hillary Clinton as well as the DNC during the 2016 election cycle.
And in terms of the crime that he's being accused of, this indictment charges Mr. Sussman with lying to the FBI.
Now, in order to explain what's actually going on with this indictment, I need to set the stage for you just a little bit.
You might remember that back in late October of 2016, so just about a week before the election, there were multiple news reports which began to emerge which stated that the U.S. government was investigating allegations of a secret back channel that existed between the Trump organization and a Russian bank, a Russian bank specifically called Alpha there were multiple news reports which began to emerge which stated As an example, here's an article from Slate which was titled, Was a Trump Server Communicating with Russia?
And then the subhead for that article reads, This spring, a group of computer scientists set out to determine whether hackers were interfering with the Trump campaign.
They found something they weren't expecting.
Now, as you can see, that article was published in the late afternoon on October 31st.
And within hours, the Clinton campaign amplified its reach.
That's because one of Hillary Clinton's senior policy advisors, he issued an official statement from the Clinton campaign, which was then tweeted out by Hillary Clinton herself, which said this in part.
This could be, referring to the Slate article, the most direct link between Donald Trump and Moscow.
Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.
The secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia.
It certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists.
So that is a fairly damning accusation, saying that the Trump campaign had a secret server set up in the Trump Tower, which allowed them to covertly communicate with a Russian bank.
However, this accusation turned out to be false.
The FBI looked into it, and they determined that there was no real evidence of any kind of a secret bag channel.
In fact, a few years later, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, Mr.
Michael Horowitz, he also looked into this allegation, and he likewise determined that the accusation was false.
There was no truth to it.
However, given the fact that it took place during an election year, the damage had already been done.
In fact, I know people who, to this very day, believe that Trump colluded with Russia, and one of the examples they give is that there was that secret backchannel which allowed the Trump Organization to communicate within Russian Bank.
Regardless of the fact that it was proven to be false, this whole affair naturally leads to a very big question.
If this allegation was not true, then where did the accusation come from?
And that question, it leads us right back to this indictment by Mr.
John Durham, which just came out last night.
And so to start with, this indictment begins by quoting a story that was published in the New York Times in late October.
Here's what it says, quote, So, the FBI spent weeks examining this data.
However, how did this investigation over at the FBI actually begin?
Well, according to this indictment, the FBI initiated this investigation as a response to a meeting that they had with Mr.
Michael Sussman.
And during that meeting, which by the way Mr.
Michael Sussman himself requested, here's what happened according to this indictment.
Quote, So, what appears to have happened is that the lawyer who was representing both the DNC as well as the Clinton campaign, he met with the FBI, he handed them documents, and then he suggested that they should investigate Mr.
Donald Trump.
Now, you might be asking yourself, why wasn't the FBI more cautious about this?
I mean, clearly there is a conflict of interest.
Well, that is where the alleged crime comes in.
This indictment says this, And because Mr.
Sussman lied about what he was actually doing, This indictment says that the FBI did not examine the origins of this data as thoroughly as they otherwise would have.
But actually, this story gets a lot deeper than that.
Because as it turns out, Mr.
Mr. Sussman was not only working with the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
It turns out that he had another client who was not only feeding him all this information, but that other client also had a very, very real vested interest in making sure that Hillary Clinton was elected president.
And I'll tell you more about that other client in a second after a quick word from our sponsor.
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Now, Roman in the studio, back to you.
Now, as I mentioned a moment ago, Mr.
Michael Sussman had another client.
And that other client had a very real vested interest in getting Hillary Clinton elected as president.
And in fact, according to this indictment, it was this other client who was feeding Michael Sussman the so-called evidence of the Trump Organization Alpha Bank connection.
And so you might be asking yourself, who is this other client and what is this vested interest that he had in getting Hillary Clinton elected as president?
Well, in regards to the first question, this other client was a tech executive who worked at a U.S.-based internet company.
Now, in this indictment, this tech executive's name is not provided, but it does allude to the fact that he was likely a very big fish.
That's because this tech executive said that if Hillary Clinton became president, he would be offered a top position in the U.S. government.
Here's specifically what he said according to this indictment.
And so let me back up for a moment and restate what it appears happened.
Mr.
Sussman went to the FBI and presented so-called evidence that the Trump Organization was secretly communicating with a Russian bank.
Mr.
Sussman told the FBI that he was giving them this information of his own accord and that he was not working for anyone.
However, unbeknownst to the FBI, here is what actually happened behind the scenes.
Mr.
Sussman was employed by a well-known law firm called Perkins Coey.
And during that same time period, Perkins Coey, on behalf of the DNC, they hired another company called Fusion GPS, who in turn hired a British spy named Christopher Steele to produce the so-called Steele dossier, which was later used to justify spying on a Trump campaign advisor.
Furthermore, Mr.
Sussman had several clients, including the DNC, the Clinton campaign, as well as that aforementioned tech executive.
And that tech executive, he tasked several people, several researchers, to do research on these alleged Trump-Russia ties.
Here's what this indictment says about that part of the process.
The tech executive exploited his access to non-public data at multiple Internet companies and enlisted the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract designed to identify the perpetrators of malicious cyber attacks and protect U.S. national security.
And so what it appears happened is that this tech executive, he used his connections within the industry to enlist the help of those aforementioned people who had access to data that normal people like you and me just don't have access to.
And why did they have access to that data?
Because they were literally working on a federal government cybersecurity research contract that these people utilized to pull data on the Trump Organization.
Now, let's play devil's advocate here, and you might say, if you're being generous, that this tech executive was acting in good faith.
After all, maybe he really thought that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia, and he really wanted to get to the bottom of it.
However, this indictment by John Durham paints a very different picture.
Here's how John Durham describes the situation.
Moreover, and as alleged below, the tech executive provided information that he gathered through these interactions to his lawyer, Mr.
Sussman, so that Mr.
Sussman could assist in drafting and disseminating materials to the media and the FBI. And that appears to be exactly what happened.
Mr.
Sussman went to the FBI and he presented this information to them, although he said that he's just there as a citizen doing a good job because he came across this data in the natural course of events without mentioning what is actually happening in the background, the fact that he's working with all these different people.
Now, there's a lot of other solid evidence presented in this grand jury indictment, such as the fact that Mr.
Sussman, he was actually billing the Clinton campaign for some of the time that he was spending with his tech executive, and he was billing that time under the category of general political advice.
Specifically, here's what Mr.
John Durham said.
Mr.
Sussman, acting on behalf of tech executive and the Clinton campaign, disseminated the Russian bank allegations to the media starting in the summer of 2016, and he billed this time to the Clinton campaign.
And so what all this appears to look like, although, again, these are allegations, it'll all have to be proven in court, but what it looks like is that Mr.
Sussman was using his position, as well as his established relationships within the FBI, to force an investigation of his client's political opponent.
That investigation was then picked up by the media and then used by the Clinton campaign to discredit...
But again, an indictment is just an accusation.
All of this will have to be proven out in court.
Now, the actual charge being levied against Mr.
Sussman, the one that he is facing, is a single felony count of making a false statement during a meeting with the FBI, which is a charge that he has denied.
In fact, according to Mr.
Sussman's lawyer, he says that there is no evidence of crime, and the whole thing, he claims, is a political hit job.
Here's specifically what Mr.
Mr. Sussman's lawyer said in a statement.
Mr. Sussman has committed no crime.
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.
Furthermore, when you go over to the Perkins Coey website and you try to access the page for Michael Sussman, it has just been removed.
And in fact, here is a statement from a spokesperson representing Perkins Coie.
Now, according to the office of Mr.
John Durham, Michael Sussman can make his initial appearance in federal court as early as Friday, which is today, although at the moment we have not heard whether he has appeared or not.
Now, if you would like to dig deeper into this case, and if you have about an hour to spare, then I would highly recommend that you actually read this indictment for yourself, because the way it's laid out is pretty clear, it's all very logical, and it's fairly easy to follow.
I'll throw a link to it into the description box below this video for you to check out.
Otherwise, we will continue to follow this particular case as long as it's going to be making its way through the federal court, and also, we will continue to report on anything else that John Durham might find in the course of his investigation.
Look out for all that in the coming weeks.
And now lastly, if you would like to watch something really cool after you're now finished with our episode, well, we just published an awesome episode of Counterpunch with Trevor Loudon, which is over on Epic TV, and in that episode, he delved deep into the hidden communist connections of one of the most powerful committees in the U.S. Congress.
Here's a trailer for that episode.
The Judiciary Committee, the most powerful committee in the U.S. Congress.
The Judiciary Committee A lot of people ask me, why all these communists in government, why a pro-Chinese communist Black Lives Matter running riot on the streets?
Why isn't the FBI doing something about these people?
Because the FBI is overseen by the Judiciary Committee.
It is the committee that they look to for guidance, sets their budget, etc.
The Judiciary Committee is chock full of communists and socialists.
We need to be investigating Congress members for violating their oath and working in the interest of internal communists and foreign powers.
because it's going on right now.
If you'd like to check out that full episode for yourself, I'll throw a link to Epic TV right there at the very top of the description box.
And lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm, subscribe to this YouTube channel if you haven't already in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed, I publish behind-the-scenes research as well as spicy memes.
And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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