“He’s taking advantage of a weakened United States national security position.”What is Vladamir Putin’s real goal in escalating threats of war with Ukraine? Is it a sleight of hand?And what new revelations are in special counsel John Durham’s recent court filing?
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| Hey everybody and welcome back to Cash's Corner. | |
| So Cash, some pretty heavy material we're going to talk about today. | |
| I mean, first off, you know, I think everybody now knows I'm Polish. | |
| Well, I now know. | |
| No. | |
| Well, and a lot of Poles are very worried right now, frankly, right? | |
| Um, is there going to be war in eastern and central Europe? | |
| Is Russia going to war? | |
| Or is it just some kind of play by Putin to, you know, consolidate some power, get some concessions. | |
| I mean, I've seen some pretty varied takes on this at the moment. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Um, but also, you know, just the other day, uh, Durham's back with a new pleading. | |
| Yeah, and it looks really interesting. | |
| And we're gonna have to get your take on that too. | |
| So everyone knows, obviously, I'm a former federal prosecutor, so I tend to geek out on all things. | |
| John Durham, maybe uh our viewership will give me a pass on that and allow us to delve into it later on in the show. | |
| Okay, so here's the thing, right? | |
| Poland. | |
| Uh, we're kind of used to being run over by Russia. | |
| Okay, and we've been under so Soviet occupation for for many years prior to 1989. | |
| Um there's a genuine fear and concern that Russia could be making moves on Ukraine, and if it's Ukraine, it could be Poland. | |
| Anyway, big big questions. | |
| So, you know, I've you've been out there talking about this a little bit, but let's dive deeper. | |
| Okay, let's set the table. | |
| So I think people get a lot of terms thrown out there, NATO and all this stuff, and Western European alliances and America. | |
| Ukraine is not a member of NATO. | |
| NATO happens to be basically, in essence, the largest conglomeration of Western superpowers that have sort of come together to make a treaty, an agreement in international terms, that they will basically defend one another should there be aggression or conflict against one of the NATO partners. | |
| There's also a lot of economic value and trade value and things that go into NATO, but for our purposes, I just want to set the stage. | |
| What has and the other thing I want to remind people is people think, you know, is Ukraine-Russia just like something that happened last week. | |
| They've been fighting in one form of another for the last eight years, that is the Ukraine and the Russians. | |
| That's kind of a long time, especially in modern history, to be in a conflict with another two, you know, civilized nations are at literally, I don't want to say war, but physically fighting, shooting, killing each other for the last eight years. | |
| So it's been an ongoing issue in that region. | |
| So Putin has made advancements into the sovereignty of Ukraine before. | |
| During the Obama administration, everybody remembers what happened in Crimea, which is that peninsula that sticks out in the Black Sea, that's part of the Ukraine, but Russia thought it was part of Russia. | |
| So there was all that. | |
| And we won't get too much into that, except uh that one difference I want to highlight is that many people in Crimea requested Putin to annex Crimea into Russia. | |
| Not all of them, but many did. | |
| And that's a little bit of a different situation than we have today with the Ukraine. | |
| Well, there's this huge, there's this sizable Russian population in there. | |
| That that is true. | |
| But essentially what happened, right? | |
| And I mean, you're right, there's there's there's a lot of nuance, and there's a lot of, you know, we could talk about the activity, how Russia kind of was involved in creating that situation, as certainly the analyses that I've read. | |
| But I mean, the bottom line is that not too long ago, Putin did take over Crimea and with essentially no pushback. | |
| I mean, no meaningful pushback, and it's kind of become the status quo and unc unquestioned almost. | |
| No, you're you're right. | |
| If if and yeah, we'll we'll leave Crimea off for another day, but I just wanted to set the historical context that you know Putin's been doing something like this, but there is a difference, at least in my mind, and I'll explain why later. | |
| I don't I'm not saying it was right for Putin to go in and take Crimea. | |
| I'm just saying a large portion of that populace asked him to do so, which is slightly different from the Ukraine situation we have today. | |
| But in Putin's mind, what he's always, and he said this publicly, he is always, he, Putin, the head of the Russian Federation has always thought all of Ukraine should be in Russia. | |
| He's made No bones about keeping that quiet. | |
| So the Ukrainians and the Ukrainian government has since the fall of the Soviet Union disagreed with that position. | |
| They th they think, and rightfully so, that they have their own sovereign nation. | |
| That is the Ukraine, and it is not subject to Russian ascension or Russian rule. | |
| So those are the two sides. | |
| Enter NATO again that we talked about earlier. | |
| Putin has said he does not want the Ukraine to become a member of NATO. | |
| Why is that such a big deal? | |
| It is a huge deal for any Western European ally to be a member of NATO, because once you're a member of NATO, you are allies and partners with the United States of America by international law. | |
| And not just us, but Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, you know, these places. | |
| It's bit it's a big deal to get into NATO and to offer a vignette. | |
| I remember when Montenegro, most people don't even know where Montenegro is on the Balkans, joined NATO. | |
| It was during the Trump administration. | |
| I was actually over there doing work on the Intel side of things, and it was a really big celebration because what entering NATO does is it opens up trade and economic value that you can't get unless you're in. | |
| But what it also does is, and this is the important kicker, um, there's this whole thing called Article 5 NATO, not to get down into the weeds, but basically it says if a NATO member is attacked by someone else, and they say we are being attacked, all other NATO members, per the agreement, have to come in and defend that country that's under attack under NATO. | |
| That's why it's also critical to defense of a nation to be a member of NATO. | |
| Putin has said publicly and repeatedly, he does not want the Ukraine to become a member of NATO, because then a country could invoke Article V of NATO and say, I, the Ukraine are being attacked, we're in NATO, America, England, Spain, France, Germany, everybody else, we have to go to war against Putin. | |
| So that is sort of setting the field as to where Putin's coming from on the Ukraine in his mindset in terms of NATO. | |
| And that has been the negotiation. | |
| We'll get into the diplomatic side of it, I think a little later on, but that's been the tussle between the West and Putin's position. | |
| Like the West he's saying, you, the West have to agree, you will not accept Ukraine into NATO. | |
| And the West is saying, well, hang on a minute, we might let them into NATO next year, the year after or year later. | |
| So that's the crux of the tension right now. | |
| And I I think the uh Russian messaging is is roughly that the West is making, you know, these threatening incursions by expanding NATO, by expanting this front against Russia. | |
| How true is that? | |
| So from a Russian Federation perspective, I don't agree with it, but from their perspective, everyone that joins and becomes an ally with the U.S. is in their eyes an enemy of the Russian Federation by extension. | |
| That's just the way they see the world. | |
| Right? | |
| If we America put ourselves on the other side and said, what is Russia doing? | |
| Are they doing so are they partnering with an enemy of America or are they partnering with an ally of America, right? | |
| If the Russians do something, for instance, with the Cubans, 90 miles from our shores, and Putin has threatened this in response to our position on uh the Ukraine. | |
| Putin has actually threatened, and he can call the Castro regime down there and go in and put military equipment there, move personnel there because they have a relationship. | |
| But the Cuban government is not an ally of the American populace or the American government. | |
| So that's sort of a loose analogy of what I think Putin's doing down there. | |
| This is the heart of the issue, the propaganda cost and effect here. | |
| I believe Putin did a similar operation back in 2015 and 16 when he spent 40,000 to interfere with the U.S. election apparatus. | |
| Now, we're not going to dive into that, but we found multiple investigations found no votes were changed. | |
| But what Putin got out of that for very minimal investment was a propaganda machine to say that the Russian Federation interfered with the election cycle, the presidential election cycle of the United States government. | |
| For him, that was a propaganda win that he couldn't possibly pay enough for, and he spent almost no money doing it, and we're still talking about it four or five years later. | |
| We'll get back to it with John Durham at the end of the show. | |
| In his mind, Putin's a former intelligence officer. | |
| He's thinking, how do I get the most value without expensing the most money? | |
| And I think he's doing the same thing that Xi Jinping's doing for the CCP versus in with Taiwan and the and the South China Sea. | |
| He's going here and saying, I want all the global attention. | |
| I'm putting it on me. | |
| So he's moving troops around the Ukraine, uh, not in it, but around it, and saying there might be a threat of a Russian incursion or invasion into the Ukraine. | |
| And so what does the whole world do? | |
| They stop. | |
| And what I think Putin's doing additionally, and this is what I've been talking about lately, is that I think he's taking advantage of a weakened United States national security position. | |
| And we can go around the world and elaborate why I think that's so, everything from Afghanistan to our positions against China to Iran to our southern border and whatnot. | |
| Putin's smart enough to know, okay, this isn't Donald Trump's national security apparatus, this is Joe Biden's. | |
| He's testing it, and I think he's testing it to his benefit, because he's dictating to the West. | |
| He's saying, you guys, you, the West, better not allow the Ukraine to join NATO. | |
| That's not a decision that should be dictated by the head of the Russian Federation. | |
| It should be by NATO members and the Ukrainian government, a decision made amongst them to see if they want to and should join NATO. | |
| And so I think it's troubling that you know, that's the demand that's been placed. | |
| And we just saw Secretary Blinken uh at the State Department send over a written sort of uh correspondence that was delivered to the Russian Federation um just within the last uh twelve hours here, and the the content of that letter has not been publicly revealed, but they say they are entering into a strategic diplomatic dialogue with the Russians on everything related to the Ukraine uh vis-a-vis the uh NATO and whether or not they're going to join. | |
| So I don't know the position that this government, our government has taken yet. | |
| Well, so here I'm gonna read a couple of things. | |
| Here's you know, part of this place. | |
| So what the foreign minister Lavrov is saying, uh Russian foreign minister, he's saying if we do not receive a constructive answer from the West on our security demands, Moscow will take appropriate measures. | |
| You know, so very, you know, very ambiguous. | |
| Basically, we will if if you don't give us what we want, we can do anything. | |
| I mean, is that that sounds like the message, right? | |
| I mean, look, that's the Russian propaganda machine at its finest, right? | |
| They're basically saying we've dictated to you the terms, we are now dictating to you the parameters of those terms, and if you don't put that in writing and send it back to us the way we want it, we're gonna do whatever we want. | |
| The difference between a United States and a NATO c ally such as Great Britain or France or what have you and a Russia is Russia doesn't play by the rules. | |
| They don't have a leadership structure in place that is we have to do everything by the law, like the United States. | |
| They have Putin in charge, and he can break the rules whenever he wants. | |
| He's now going to be the head of the Russian Federation for as long as he wants. | |
| He literally had that change made in their uh constitution or their governing documents is just an example. | |
| So he wants to stay in power forever. | |
| And I think this is another way that he gains popularity at home because he's strengthening from their perspective the Russian position at the expense of an American ally and America. | |
| And to him, again, in the propaganda world, that's a huge win. | |
| That's something he couldn't buy if any of he actually went to war. | |
| And I know you asked me this at at the onset of the show, and I should have answered it. | |
| I do not believe Putin is going to invade the Ukraine. | |
| I just don't believe that at all for a number of reasons. | |
| One, the c the sheer cost, the physical cost of him starting an actual war, he's aware, would be monumental, just on the Russian side. | |
| I don't think he's dumb enough to make that ploy. | |
| I think he's smart enough to take that all the way to the one-yard line, the one-inch line, and then pull back after he's gotten what he wants, which are conciliations from the West on diplomatic relations, on whether or not Ukraine joins NATO, and on other things. | |
| Look, he's already won in the national security arena against against Western Europe with Nord Stream 2. | |
| I know we've talked about that before, right? | |
| The Trump administration came in and said, you're not building that pipeline. | |
| And you know, my good friend Rick Rennell was an ambassador of Germany who led the charge to make sure that the Russians did not power Germany and Europe with their um with their gas infrastructure. | |
| We change administrations in the Biden administration lifted the sanctions against the individuals and companies who are building Nord Stream 2, and now North Stream 2 is almost complete. | |
| That's the difference to put it in a security perspective from one administration to another. | |
| So he already won that fight. | |
| Now he's saying, going back to what else do I want? | |
| I want the Ukraine. | |
| How do I win that fight? | |
| I don't think he invades, but I think um he cares about the Russian position, how it looks, and something we haven't talked about is oil and gas. | |
| So here's another thing that I noticed, I'm sure others have noticed this, but you know, Germany, right? | |
| Germany is basically not in this kind of unanimous position versus Russia. | |
| I mean, they I think they I think there was this idea to move weapons and to support the Ukrainians with weapons. | |
| Germany said, sorry, we're not going to participate in this. | |
| I mean, is this uh attempt to test the NATO alliance? | |
| Is it actually, you know, are these countries actually together? | |
| Is it actually, you know, is and this is presumably gonna fray some relationships. | |
| I mean, this is like, you know, a request from the US and other countries, Germany saying, uh-uh, I'm not gonna do it. | |
| Meanwhile, of course, they're doing Nord Stream themselves. | |
| And that's the thing, right? | |
| So from a German perspective, they've just got or about to get an infusion of one of the biggest pipelines in the world for energy directly from Russia, and they're gonna be buying it just from Russia. | |
| So now that that pipeline is near completion, the Germans don't want to tick off the Russians because they're getting their gas from them for a substantial discount versus how they would have normally got it. | |
| So I think it's not good for the United States to have a Germany, the economic powerhouse of Europe, to go in and basically say, well, we understand what you guys want to do, you, the US, but we're gonna stay out of it for now. | |
| That's not good. | |
| Not to mention I want to remind the fact that in terms of military posturing around the world, you know, as a former chief of staff at DOD, I'm very well aware of the fact that Germany houses over 55,000 US troops on any given day in the year in German on German soil. | |
| Why is that important? | |
| Because we, America, prop up five percent of Germany's GDP with that troop presence. | |
| Think about how much money we are giving the German government to allow our troops to be positioned there. | |
| That's just one place in the world we're doing it. | |
| We tried to change that and drastically reduce those numbers and to an effect we were we were successful, but with the new administration, I think they've sort of let it go back the other way. | |
| And so we're basically paying a government five percent of their GDP, which is billions and billions of dollars, and that government is saying to America in this time of tension, yeah, we're gonna kind of sit this one out. | |
| Not to mention the fact that they are going to capitalize on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline with the Russians at the expense of Western energy. | |
| And who's gonna make money? | |
| Russia. | |
| Um and while we're on the oil and gas thing, look, I'm not your economic expert, but another reason I think Putin is taking this posture with the Ukraine is because what most people forget is that Russia is one of the world's largest oil and gas producers on the planet. | |
| Now, they'll tell you their big companies, Rosneft and Gazprom are all privately owned enterprises, but you and I know, Jan, and our viewership knows that that's just window dressing. | |
| Putin has a substantial stake in personally in each of these companies, and the guys that run these companies have been friends with Putin for 20 plus years. | |
| And these are 50 billion with B plus dollar comp US dollar companies. | |
| So what he's doing is he's putting the global oil and gas prices on display with his flex over the Ukraine because he controls a bunch of that production and where it goes. | |
| We were talking about Germany, it's just one example, but that's not the only place they sell Russian oil and gas. | |
| And what that does is, you know, to our readers, our viewers, excuse me, like go to the gas pump. | |
| It's already getting four or five bucks a gallon. | |
| He can control and fluctuate the amount of oil the and gas prices around the rest of the world based on his posturing with the Ukraine, and he's doing that and he's making money. | |
| You know, I want to talk a little bit about this uh kind of the Russia-China relationship and all of this. | |
| Uh, because you mentioned it a little bit earlier. | |
| Um and I it I actually just remembered there's a poll uh that was done, it was Trafalgar Convention of States poll, and they were just looking at uh, you know, what Americans think about, for example, the US getting involved in Ukraine-Russia if there was some sort of military conflict. | |
| And Americans, according to that poll are saying, we're actually not really interested in being involved in that. | |
| Uh on the other hand, they the same poll they looked at China and Taiwan, and the result was the opposite. | |
| Americans were quite interested in seeing this. | |
| I I I I have I don't have a particular explanation. | |
| It's I thought that was really interesting. | |
| But at the same time, and this is I actually I took some notes here again, you know, this is uh Xi and um and Putin reportedly talking to each other, you know. | |
| Basically, Putin is saying, you know, we're a new model of cooperation has been formed uh between our countries uh on such principles as non-interference in internal affairs, respect for each other's interests and so forth. | |
| But meanwhile, so Xinhua, which is the propaganda mouthpiece for the uh Chinese Communist Party, quotes she is saying, at present, certain international forces under the guise of democracy and human rights are interfering in the in the internal affairs of China and Russia, brutally trampling on international law and recognize and recognized norms and of international relations. | |
| And that's kind of that's that's kind of interesting what they're what they're using here. | |
| Well, I I've I think you and I have been saying it for some time. | |
| Xi Jinping of the C CP and Putin of the Russian Federation operate on a very similar playbook. | |
| What is good for them and their own country and for their ability to stay in power as the head of said country. | |
| They share that belief. | |
| They share their dislike for the United States of America. | |
| They also want to prop up their own countries at the expense of the US and our allies whenever they can. | |
| Taiwan is, I I believe Xi Jinping's version of sort of the Ukraine. | |
| Um it's not directly analogous, but I think he's been increasing the Chinese and the CCP position at the expense of Taiwan, and Putin's doing the same thing with the Ukraine. | |
| And now, and look, Afghanistan's just one example of where they actually combine literally combined forces when America withdrew, and now Afghan and China, excuse me, Chinese and Russians are in Afghanistan already exploiting the mineral wealth of Afghanistan for whose benefit? | |
| China and Russia. | |
| And who loses? | |
| America, because we were driven out of Afghanistan with a plan with an exit plan that I completely disagree with, and we've talked about in the past why, but it makes us look bad, it makes them look good, it makes Russia wealthier, makes China wealthier. | |
| And Putin, I'm not saying Putin and Xi Jinping are gonna be best friends, but they're smart enough to know that if they can get together and work against a United States of America, they're gonna do it. | |
| And here's the kicker, right? | |
| They're gonna apparently they're gonna have a meeting at the Olympics. | |
| I didn't know that. | |
| Putin's going to Beijing. | |
| That's unbelievable. | |
| No, I mean, I mean, just think about it. | |
| Uh the leader of the CCP who allows genocide on multiple forums in his country, and a Putin who does some pretty horrific things, i.e. | |
| Navalny, we haven't heard where that guy is since he got sent to Siberia in some time, are getting together, violating human rights on a gross, growth scale. | |
| And now they're gonna get together in China on the literally the world's largest stage, the winter Olympics, and do what? | |
| I don't know. | |
| But it can't be good for America. | |
| I mean, bottom line is you don't believe that Russia is gonna invade Ukraine. | |
| You believe it's gonna go to the one-yard or one-inch line and just kind of see how much benefit Putin can get out of it before he steps back. | |
| But you know, at the same time, can the West afford to take that chance? | |
| You know, that's actually probably the toughest question I've been asked on it. | |
| If a Russia were to invade a Ukraine, can the West take that chance? | |
| Probably not. | |
| But you have it goes up, it touches on what you brought up earlier. | |
| The American appetite to get into a yet another war overseas, at least as it goes with Russia and the Ukraine, I don't think the American populace supports that. | |
| I don't think, especially after Afghanistan, um, and I can certainly understand why, the American public wants to enter into a war of any kind, a conflict, whatever word you want to use, boots on the ground, aerial bomb strikes, what have you, against another sovereign nation, and cause more American soldiers to be killed overseas. | |
| So that's the difficult decision, and I personally would prefer us not to engage in that conflict, find a diplomatic resolution, but I'm not sure we get everything we want in this uh landscape. | |
| I think unfortunately, Putin's probably gonna win the day because he set up the chess table to his liking with his positions of strength, and we just are sort of reacting. | |
| We the Americans in the West are sort of continuously reacting, sending, they make demands, and then we send a letter. | |
| We, America's just another vignette, and we'll we can leave this. | |
| But our State Department actually told our embassy in the Ukraine to send all non-essential personnel home, which I found tremendously offensive. | |
| That's the last thing we're supposed to do as a government is pull back our emissaries, pull back our diplomatic and our State Department officials and other officials that are serving in the embassy. | |
| It's not the first thing we should do. | |
| To me, that's a knee-jerk reaction, and we're giving Putin the upper hand by saying, look, the U.S. is leaving the Ukraine. | |
| So in his head, he's thinking, more good propaganda for me. | |
| I've kicked the Americans out. | |
| And that's not exactly true, but that's the position our government has taken in the Ukraine. | |
| Step one, take the diplomats out. | |
| That's the last thing you do. | |
| So I don't know what's next. | |
| Um I just don't believe that Putin will end up invading, invading in a war fashion the Ukraine. | |
| Um I think he's getting a lot of what he wants, and it's going to be a really interesting next couple of weeks to see where it lands. | |
| Well, okay, so speaking of reacting, we have uh John Durham uh reacting very in a really interesting way, I think, um, to the defense, basically. | |
| And so he's got this pleading. | |
| Why don't you lay it out for us? | |
| I mean, it's just I I have to use the word, my favorite word. | |
| It's so fascinating. | |
| I agree. | |
| To watch this guy operate, isn't it? | |
| Yeah. | |
| And he's, and I think, you know, you and I have talked about in our show a number of times in the past, he's doing his work extremely methodically, and also he doesn't leak. | |
| So on the rare instance when John Durham files something that's publicly available, you know, you and I sort of jump at it, and I think many of our viewers uh do too, but they he just doesn't publicize it. | |
| The 25th uh of this month, John Durham issued a 20-page pleading in the Michael Sussman case, which is a criminal indictment where he has brought charges against Michael Sussman, who, the former head lawyer for the DNC and Hillary campaign, is charged with lying to the FBI. | |
| In that case, basically what happens is there's been no public anything of any kind since he's been indicted. | |
| You know, we talked about that earlier, the conflict counsel case in the in the Danchenko matter. | |
| That's really been the only public pleadings that John Durham has filed in either of the ongoing criminal prosecutions he's bringing related to Russia stuff. | |
| So what happened here? | |
| Basically, what happens once a defendant is charged is he's entitled to all this stuff called discovery. | |
| Fancy for evidence. | |
| And the U.S. Constitution in due process mandates that everything that the government has in its possession must be turned over to defense as it relates to the charged offense, so that the defendant can sh decide do I want to plead guilty? | |
| Do I want to go to trial? | |
| What kind of defense do I want to put up at trial? | |
| What witnesses do I need? | |
| What evidence do I need to look at? | |
| What experts do I need to hire? | |
| Whole host of things. | |
| But the defense can't do that, and rightly so, unless they're provided with all the ammunition information that the government has. | |
| The government's saying, you did ex-conduct, we think this is why you did it. | |
| Here's all the information related to that. | |
| So it's just called discovery, and it's an ongoing process. | |
| The complication here with this Michael Sussman indictment are a couple of fold. | |
| One, ninety-nine percent of federal prosecutions don't delve into the classified information realm. | |
| They just don't have to, right? | |
| Bank robberies, fraud cases, civil cases, they have nothing to do with classified information. | |
| This case, the suspend case, is heavily involved in classified information. | |
| So John Durham has to take extensive measures to split the classified and unclassified discovery, then go through extensive measures to basically allow that to be delivered to defense counsel in the lawful appropriate fashion. | |
| And that is a monumental lift. | |
| I used to do that a lot as a terrorism prosecutor. | |
| We would have to bring a lot of classified information into federal court. | |
| You can't do that unless you've had it declassified. | |
| So that's a problem. | |
| What the defense counsel did was, and I think on this one, I think they overreached. | |
| They issued offensive pleadings themselves, the defense counsel, that is, to say, we're not getting everything in discovery from you, John Durham and special counsel and we want X, we want Y, we want Z. So normally what happens is there's an exchange between defense attorneys and prosecutors, and they come to some sort of agreement. | |
| If they can't, they go to the court to have the court decide. | |
| What John Durham smartly did was again, he issued a 20-page pleading where he laid out his entire criminal case against Sussman, and he also put the world on notice that Michael Sussman is still under criminal investigation outside of this indictment, which I thought was like the most intriguing piece of this, uh, one of the most intriguing pieces of this pleading. | |
| So he's telling the world, he's like, well, just because you're charged with one count of lying doesn't mean I, John Durham done investigating you. | |
| You, the defense, have now asked for X, Y, Z, and all these other things. | |
| Well, he, John Durham told the court, I can't meet the deadline set by the court because the defense keeps asking me for this stuff. | |
| More and more information, more and more information. | |
| So he, John Durham has to go back out and look for it. | |
| And rightly so. | |
| So what I think is going to happen is there's going to be an extension of this discovery timeline, and I think they're going to produce more information than the defense actually ever would want it to have seen. | |
| What I also found fascinating was, and I encourage people to go look at the the pleading, it's public, who John Durham has interviewed and put in the grand jury has finally been made public in this pleading. | |
| He has interviewed some of the most senior individuals in a grand jury at the FBI. | |
| He has interviewed former general counsel of the FBI. | |
| He has interviewed the chairman of the law firm that represented the Hillary Clinton and DMC campaigns. | |
| He has interviewed a number of tech individuals that are related to the whole Alpha Bank server stuff, which we've talked about, which is a crux of the Michael Sussman indictment. | |
| No one, I didn't know. | |
| I figured and assumed he was interviewed some of these folks, but the expansive list of individuals he's interviewed creates, what does it do? | |
| It creates more discovery. | |
| Okay? | |
| Because there's these things called the Jenks Act and other types of discovery, and all that means is if you Yan are on trial and the government brings in a witness and the witness testifies for six hours. | |
| The Jenks Act requires the government, once that individual is done testifying, to produce every statement the government has of that individual to the defense. | |
| And so they've got to produce all this additional testimony, or even if it's an informal interview that was done by law enforcement outside of the grand jury, all of these statements that are in the government's possession from said witnesses have to be turned over. | |
| And by my estimation, John Durham has interviewed some 24 to 36 individuals in the Sussman indictment alone. | |
| And I think that's not just because he's prosecuting Michael Sussman for one kind of lying. | |
| I think it goes to the most important part of the pleading, which he told the judge, I'm still investigating this defendant for other conduct, other criminal conduct, which I just think is a huge revelation in the John Durham investigation. | |
| And leads me to believe that you and I were right all along that he's working methodically, he doesn't leak, and this stuff just takes time. | |
| But so, but why is it such a huge revelation? | |
| I guess that that's the crux of the question as we finish up. | |
| Why is it such a revelation that he has this these other this other criminal investigation against Sussman? | |
| Because I think, at least for our viewers, I think most people were asking, what's John Durham doing? | |
| Well, now I know, I can tell you guys, John Durham's put 26, 7, 8, 9, 30 people in a grand jury. | |
| Step one. | |
| John Durham is, and you can read the details. | |
| He's he's about to turn over 500,000 pages of classified and unclassified discovery. | |
| That is a massive amount of pleadings, paperwork for one count lying to the FBI case. | |
| What is John Durham doing? | |
| He's also informed us, he's not done. | |
| He said, I'm not only not done with Michael Sussman in terms of criminal culpability and other charges, I'm looking at all these other people. | |
| And during my investigation of all these other people, and coupled with the defense's own pleading for more discovery, I gotta keep going, Judge. | |
| I need more time. | |
| So it's a tactical move. | |
| I think the defense has to make to a certain degree to make sure they get all their discovery obligations, but I also think it's a tactical blunder because it allowed John Durham to come in and say, okay, I now have to tell the world what I'm doing. | |
| And he did in pretty in no uncertain terms. | |
| Now, I don't know where exactly that's gonna go, but what that tells me as a former federal prosecutor is that's all work he did from months and months ago up until just the date of this pleading. | |
| That doesn't tell me all the other work he's doing on the Denchenko case as a result of the Klein Smith prosecution. | |
| Doesn't tell me what he's doing there. | |
| The other revealing fact was, and I didn't even know this Myself. | |
| The FBI has this group called the Investigative Division or whatever it's called. | |
| They have been conducting their own internal investigation of the origins of Crossfire Hurricane. | |
| And John Durham told the world that A, that that's happening. | |
| And B, the FBI's own internal investigation is not being completed yet. | |
| So he might have more discovery obligations as a result of the FBI's own interviews of the James Comey's, Lisa Page's Peter Strox of the world. | |
| So totally separate investigation I didn't know about. | |
| John Durham might use in his prosecution. | |
| So there's a lot to lot to dig into there. | |
| And um I I really encourage people to go read this uh this 19, 20 page pleading. | |
| I do want to get one thing in though about this. | |
| Harwitz, everyone remembers Harowitz was the office of the inspector general, did the big report that showed that the FBI uh basically committed 17 errors in the Pfizer's applications and a whole host of other abuses of power. | |
| Turns out, as a result of the defense informing John Durham in this case about certain meetings they they, the defense had with the Office of the Inspector General. | |
| John Durham had to go back to the Inspector General and find out information he wasn't privy to. | |
| He put that in his pleading. | |
| So even John Durham is finding out new information from the Inspector General whose report was completed almost two years ago, a year and a half ago or so. | |
| And now he, John Durham's going back to the Inspector General and interviewing people in the office of the Inspector General as to the origins of the Russia probe and if to see if there's any more criminal culpability from that branch of the investigation. | |
| So I just think it's fascinating. | |
| So this is really leave no story unturned. | |
| Basically, any little opening he gets, he starts digging. | |
| I mean, that's what's happening, right? | |
| I mean, I think that's what you as long as it's lawful and ethical, that's what you would want a prosecutor to do. | |
| And I think he's doing in that fashion. | |
| I don't think many people are going to be covering it because they don't like the fact that John Durham has just listed so many counsels for the DNC and Hillary campaign, the former general counsel to the FBI, FBI officials who are assistant directors, deputy directors, and all these other folks. | |
| He also listed individuals from other government agencies that he's interviewed under oath. | |
| Why is he doing that? | |
| Why is he involving the intelligence community? | |
| This is just fascinating to me, as I'm stealing your word because it's it's the best one. | |
| Well, you know, more to come. | |
| I absolutely, and we'll be, you know, we'll we'll see. | |
| We'll see what else comes out and we'll be digging in further. | |
| So I think it's time for our shout-out. | |
| This week's shout-out goes to Joan Sadler. | |
| Thanks so much for your support of Cash's Corner. | |
| We appreciate yours and everybody else's commentary. | |
| Jan and I read through it every week with the team and we adjust our programming based on it. | |
| So we thank you for your continued support of the show. |