Inside the Michael Sussmann Trial—Kash Patel Talks ‘October Surprise’; Fusion GPS Employee Testimony; Rodney Joffe
Was the Russia collusion narrative an “October surprise” to damage the Trump 2016 campaign?Why was tech executive Rodney Joffe terminated as an FBI confidential informant? Will he be charged next by special counsel John Durham?We discuss all this and more in this episode on the trial of ex-Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann. Follow EpochTV on social media:Twitter: https://twitter.com/EpochTVusRumble: https://rumble.com/c/EpochTVTruth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@EpochTVGettr: https://gettr.com/user/epochtvFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/EpochTVusGab: https://gab.com/EpochTVTelegram: https://t.me/EpochTV
I feel like I'm saying this every week when we get to sit down.
Of course there's the Sussman trial, which obviously we're going to talk about at some length.
But there's a little something I wanted to mention, which is, you know, you actually, as we're taping, you have a new book out today.
It's a children's book, The Plot Against the King.
Maybe just flash it here for us.
I do.
I am officially a children's book author, Jan.
The Plot Against the King.
We thought it would be really cool to tell the story of Russagate from a children's perspective, and we can talk about it more later.
So I've been thinking a lot about, of course, you know, this whole RussiaGate scandal.
And I've been going back to our poster that you've been signing.
And I just keep being frankly, and if I do say so myself, blown away by how accurate it is and how remarkable the work that Jeff Carlson did.
There was almost nothing in that poster, which isn't currently correct.
It's Jeff Carlson's brainchild.
He's the guru when it comes to the pictograph that has withstood the test of time for Russia Gate.
You know, I hope our audience goes over to Truth Social and follows Jeff Carlson and what have you, but that poster, Jeff had put years of his life into it.
It is my absolute favorite graphic.
I think he's one of the only journalists who's put together something so expansive and nothing in it is factually incorrect.
It's so, you know, hats off to Jeff.
Yeah, and I'll also flag that, you know, Jasper Fockert, our chief editor, also played a significant role at sort of, you know, the visualization of all of it.
But yeah, no, absolutely.
So we have our reporter, John Hahey, basically on the scene, live tweeting.
We're pushing that out through our Epoch Times account on Truth Social as well.
You know, incredible stuff going on.
Let me start with actually reading a headline that we had, one of his articles.
FBI deemed Trump Russia claims false in less than a day, Agent says.
And I'll just mention, I have to mention this.
Agent Scott Hellman is on record, basically under oath, saying, I think the person who drafted the main white paper he's talking about was suffering from a mental disability.
You know, this white paper that was supposed to provide the evidence.
And I want to dive into that, and I want to piggyback on John's tremendous reporting.
It's been invaluable and will continue to be.
But I think, Jan, let's start sequentially just so our audience has an understanding of how this trial has commenced, you know, jury selection openings, then dive into the witnesses and the crux of the matter later in the episode, if you're okay with that.
Well, actually, a lot of people have had questions about what you think about the jury selection.
So why don't you dive into that?
Yeah, so look, the way you select a jury real quick is you bring in a big group of people.
In national profile cases such as this one, you bring in an even bigger group.
I've selected probably 60-some juries in my life when I was doing trial work.
And let's just say you bring in 150 people.
What the judge, the defense, and the prosecution are looking for are a group of 14 to 16 in federal court to sit on that jury.
And what you do is you screen them.
You ask them questions.
You have them fill out lots of paperwork in advance, telling them that if they provide false information, they could themselves find them under prosecution.
And what you want to remove is bias and motivation and politically charged arena, especially in this sort of environment.
So each side gets to strike jurors, as we call it.
And each side gets to strike jurors either for cause, that is they cannot maintain their neutrality and abide by what the law is because they have such deep feelings about X or Y. And for a simple example,
if you were asked to sit as a juror on a murder case and you had a member of your family who was murdered by someone, it might be tough for you to sit in judgment of an individual, even though they're not related to what happened in your family situation, because you had to go through that.
You have to live that.
And that might not be the best juror.
So in this instance, the same translates over.
Of course, it's federal court.
It's in D.C., it's already politically charged.
And the statistics are what they are.
It's overwhelmingly liberal.
And the pool, the jury pool, as we call it, will be overwhelmingly liberal.
But what the judge has to also work on is you can't have no jury.
You have to just make people provide truthful statements.
And they're basically under oath when they're having this back and forth in the courtroom with the prosecutor, the defense attorneys, and the judge.
And you as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney can find cause, a reason to strike a juror.
Judge, this person has had this happen in their past, or they've publicly said X. We don't believe they can be fair or neutral in this case.
And if you do that, then you've met the legal threshold to strike them, remove them from the jury pool.
You can also just use peremptory strikes.
You have a handful of those.
I think it's about three per side in federal court where you don't have to provide a reasoning at all.
You can just strike three jurors on your own.
Each side gets to do that.
And there are some issues.
Jury selection always has its issues in every case, every single one that I ever tried.
Jury selection is also one of the main arenas for appellate courts to review a conviction.
And one of the main reasons criminal convictions are reversed are errors during jury selection, which is why it's so crucial that the judge get it right and the sides lay out their foundation for their strikes correctly.
So I think it's tough.
People are going to have criticisms, you know, so-and-so donated to Hillary's campaign and so-and-so, you know, follows this political agenda versus the other.
But what the judge is doing is rehabilitating the witnesses to say, look, we know you did this.
Can you put that aside?
Can you be neutral?
And the person is testifying under oath.
If it's later found out that they lied or they can't, then they're going to be prosecuted.
So it's never going to be what everyone wants.
I've never picked a jury in my life as a prosecutor or public defender where we got all the jurors we wanted.
No side will ever do that.
And so I think it's less of an issue than people are making it out to be.
And I think that's because it's a paper case, and we can get into that later.
So, you know, having a number of Clinton donors on the jury isn't a problem in your mind.
It's an issue.
And as long as they are able to serve as jurors impartially, which is what the judge is ensuring by asking them those questions under oath, then it's less so.
But the reality is it's Washington, D.C. 98% of this town voted for Hillary Clinton.
So how are you going to find a jury otherwise?
And from the defense's standpoint, they're also looking for not necessarily jurors who have their political leaning, but you need jurors who are going to be able to digest this mountain of information.
And so that's why juries are great.
They come from all different walks of life.
People you probably never run into in your everyday lives are thrown together for a week or two at a time.
Rich, middle-income, lower-income doctors, lawyers, firefighters, cops, homeschool parents, people on retirement, just a wide, wide, wild background.
And that's the whole, I think that's the beauty of the jury system because you get so many people's perspectives.
And once you get them to abide by the law, and in all my cases, we were able to basically get to that point, even in some pretty high-profile matters.
So, yeah, it's an issue publicly.
We'll see if it becomes an issue legally.
That's what's important to me.
Well, and the other thing that, since we're talking about this that comes up that people have been wondering about is, well, of course, you know, Judge Cooper is married to someone who is the lawyer for Lisa Page.
One of our commentators, Brian Cates, actually noted that it seems like back in September when this was being adjudicated that this was actually brought up and that Durham was okay with it.
And I don't have verification on that, but that was his observation.
Yeah, so a quick summary, right?
So Judge Cooper, appointed by President Barack Obama, confirmed by the Senate to be a federal district court judge.
His wife, Amy Jeffress, is representing Lisa Page.
Quick reminder, Lisa Page was the paramour of Peter Strzok at the FBI.
Lisa Page was the general in the general counsel's office.
She helped orchestrate, I think, the Russiagate fraud, and it's been proven so by so many investigations.
So she was called before Congress.
Amy Jeffers was her attorney through that entire process.
She was basically removed from the FBI for her, what I think, corrupt actions, and she may be a possible target of John Durham's investigation.
So there's a lot of issues there.
I understand why the public's all ruffled because, wait a second, you're married to the lady that might represent one of the witnesses or one of John Durham's targets.
Now, what I'll say to the public is this.
John Durham has proven the capability to see through whether or not there's a conflict.
We've talked about it on the past shows.
John Durham has actually raised during these prosecutions, the suspense and the Denchenko prosecutions, that, Judge, there's a potential of conflict with lawyers who are representing the defendants in these cases because of their affiliations or representations in the past to Hillary Clinton or Hillary Clinton World.
So he's highlighted that for the judge.
And I find it impossible to believe that John Durham did not evaluate this possible conflict of interest.
And a prosecutor has not only a duty to evaluate conflicts of interest, but also make the strategic call based on the law whether or not to bring that to the judge's attention.
And Judge Cooper, from his vantage point, he has got to know that that was a possible conflict of interest.
And so we might just not have seen the adjudication of that matter publicly, but it's been thought of for sure by John Durham and his side and for sure by Judge Cooper and his side.
And, you know, I actually, when I was the terrorism prosecutor at Maine Justice, I was the lead prosecutor for the Benghazi prosecutions at headquarters, not in trial.
But I appeared before Judge Cooper for those prosecutions while I was overseeing that case.
So I actually have been in front of Judge Cooper myself some years ago.
And, you know, so far, he's shown himself to be, I think, pretty correct in all his rulings pre-trial.
And I think we'll just have to see how the trial goes, Jan.
You know, if there's, if there, for our audience, you and I both know this, if there's a need or a cause to show a conflict or a possible misstep by this judge, we're going to let everyone know.
So let's jump back to what happened during the trial.
And so I'm going to bring us back to this, to this headline, right?
The FBI knew that these Trump-Russia, the Alpha Bank relationship was false within a day.
And again, as Agent Scott Hellman testified, he thought that the person who had put together the white paper that had been passed on was suffering from a mental disability.
It struck me because it's just such an unexpected thing for someone to say under oath.
Yeah, to the jury.
You know, now, so sequentially, you know, we've got jury selection.
We have a juror pool.
We have a jury of 14 to 16 people.
And then the prosecution goes first and the prosecution puts on witnesses.
It's what we call putting on our case in chief.
And some of the first string of witnesses, this FBI agent probably most notably, came up there and told the jury under oath what he thought about what I think is one of the crux issues of this case.
Was the Alphabank information fake or real?
Because that goes to the veracity of whether or not Michael Sussman lied to the FBI.
It goes to his credibility.
The defendant who's charged, you have to present to the jury not just the charged matter, but any evidence that you can show that affects that individual's credibility.
In this case, Michael Sussman is charged with lying to the FBI.
Are there other instances where he lied?
Well, this is some pretty damning testimony right out of the gate.
You know, John Durham's going big upfront, and he's saying the matter that Michael Sussman orchestrated by going out and getting TechExec and Rodney Jaffe and meeting with Eugene GPS and company and putting together this Alphabank Trump server connection was a total fraud, according to the under oath testimony of the FBI agent.
And not only was it a fraud, he's saying it took them, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, less than one day to come to that conclusion, which means there was no way that information had any validity to begin with.
So the kicker for me, Jan, is that meeting that Michael Sussman had with his friend, James Baker, the general counsel of the FBI, to submit this Alphabank information was in September of 2016.
And I remind our audience, that's before the first FISA warrant was applied for.
So if the FBI knew that the information was bogus, why did they use it to advance this investigation?
And I'd like to make a distinction between when I say they, I'm talking about the corrupt leaders at the FBI, James Comey, Andy McCabe, Peter Strzx of the world, versus these individuals who are doing the everyday work.
Because I still think, and people might be shocked to hear me say this, but I still think there are a great many FBI agents at the Bureau.
I work with them on a daily basis who aren't corrupted by politics and who aren't misled.
And I don't know about this individual who testified for the FBI, but he's getting up there and he's just telling everyone the truth.
This is what happened.
And it's pretty damning because he's not a known name.
And that's what makes it even more powerful.
The jury's like, whoa.
So now the jury's evaluating, wait a second, did Michael Sussman know the entire time that this information was bogus?
Peddled it anyway?
And he's charged with lying to the FBI about who his client was?
It all ties together.
It's a nice setup by John Durham.
Well, what about just the fact that Hellman thinks that the person writing this was crazy?
So, you know, when you try cases, you can never predict exactly how they're going to go.
You can prepare a witness for testimony, which in this case, I'm sure the prosecution has done.
You can prepare for cross-examination to question the witness's credibility and veracity, but you never know what they're fully going to say.
Because once you're in federal court, in front of a jury, and sworn in, under oath, and there's a judge presiding over your case, you get what these, from a prosecution standpoint, I call sometimes you get a gem that you weren't expecting.
And now, if I were the prosecutor, I'd be using that statement over and over and over again.
You can say, I have the Federal Bureau of Investigation testified under oath that the only person that could come up and perpetuate this fraud is someone who had a mental disability.
That's a pretty powerful statement to a jury examining whether or not the defendant lied to the FBI.
And it's powerful.
Well, and so let's kind of just go over, you know, what we've learned or what the case that the prosecution is making.
And I mean, basically, this is another headline that we've had, I'll paraphrase, is just that it's an October surprise, basically, that was being created by the Clinton campaign.
That's really what this is all about.
You know, Jan, that's a pretty creative move by John Durham's prosecution team.
And we should remind our audience that John Durham himself isn't actually one of the trial prosecutors.
He's in the courtroom in the back, but his team is trying the case.
He has a team of three or four prosecutors trying the case.
And what you do is, as a federal prosecutor, you need a theme.
We always, you know, when we train, we're like, how do we relate this information to the jury?
And how do we make them remember things we want them to remember?
And one of the neat ways is a theme.
And they rolled out a theme in the beginning.
And I think it goes something like this.
This case involves a look, a leap, and a lie.
Pretty creative.
It's a nice theme.
Jury's going to be like, oh, that resonates.
And then what do you do next?
You buttress that theme with phraseology that they're going to remember.
And look, a lot of people remember this quote-unquote October surprise because it has significance in history as to when it actually happened.
The prosecution is saying the October surprise was the false peddling of information attempting to connect Donald Trump to Russia is the October surprise.
And why did they say that?
Remember, Michael Sussman's meeting with the FBI, September of 2016.
The first FISA warrant goes up on the Trump campaign in Trump World at the very end of September of 2016.
So just after the meeting into October, the October surprise.
It's pretty creative.
And just to remind our audiences, I'll read this out from John Hughie's reporting.
The case involves a look, a leap, and a lie, according to Shaw.
The look was meeting with Steele to look into what he had.
The leap was reaching out to friendly media outlets to publish the allegations.
And when that didn't happen, Sussman went to the FBI.
And lied.
And lied.
Exactly.
And John Haugy has been doing this amazing live tweeting of the trial and so forth.
So one of the things that really jumped out at me, which came towards the end of the day, I want to read it out here.
And this is what John Haugy says.
He says, Berkowitz asked if former Clinton campaign strategist Robbie Mook could testify Friday, not next week, so he could leave Saturday for a 10-day vacation in Spain.
And the prosecution objected because this is what could be called popping in a witness.
What do you think about this?
Is it a strategy on the test?
To me, this is the litmus test for this judge.
If he allows some charade like this to happen, it's just outrageous to me.
Because when you prepare for a federal trial, the defense has known that Robbie Mook was going to be a witness for them for some time.
And they submit that witness list to the defense, to the prosecution, to the judge.
And you're telling the judge these people are available.
You have all these pretrial hearings where you say, are your witnesses available?
Where's everybody?
Because you're bringing them in literally from all over the country and sometimes all over the world.
I've flown in witnesses from literally overseas for federal prosecutions.
So you have to get your stuff in order.
You have to get your rack and stack right.
And it's incumbent upon the defense when they said judge, when they stand up in federal court and say, we are ready for trial, they have to be ready.
And this isn't an emergency medical situation, which I've had happen mid-trial.
That's something different.
If a witness or federal agent has a heart attack or there's a tragic death in their family, then understandably so, that's something that can pause or delay a trial even mid-trial.
And I've been through that.
But this is, one of our witnesses wants to take a vacation to Spain?
No, absolutely not.
A, why didn't you know that that was happening beforehand?
And B, Robbie Mook can take a vacation to Spain when this trial's over.
This is not something that a federal judge should permit.
And I have to come down pretty hard on Judge Cooper if he doesn't on this one.
Because what happens is you as a prosecution, by law, have the right to put on your case in chief in its entirety, not have it paused to cower to the defense witnesses' list of order because they're going on vacation.
The law says the prosecution goes first.
Then the defense, if they choose to put on a defense, goes second.
And to me, from a legal standpoint, that's at the heart of the matter.
The defense doesn't have to make a decision on whether or not to put on a case at all.
Remember, the burden of proof is on the prosecution.
So not only would you be messing up the law, and I think almost violating it, you'd be as the defense saying, we are putting on a case.
And what they can do, which I don't think is fair or appropriate, is the defense can come in halfway through the prosecution's case and say, oh, we're going to respond to these things and seed these things in the jury.
That's not how trials work.
It's just not.
So to me, this can be very telling.
I appreciate that Judge Cooper said, I'll take it into consideration.
It's right.
You don't have to rule on it right away.
But no, vacations and siestas to Spain do not permit the defense to interject into a case in chief for the prosecution in the Department of Justice.
That's a circus.
So another thing that actually really jumped out at me was a comment about Joffee, basically a character most of us didn't know about until somewhat recently.
And, you know, he's, of course, this tech executive that was basically doing all this data collection.
And, you know, he is actually was terminated for cause.
The relationship with the FBI was terminated for cause.
And that is, again, I think, new information.
Like, it kind of helps us.
I'm trying to, I'm struggling with the ramifications of this, frankly.
Yeah.
Maybe the most important thing we're going to talk about today.
First of all, it shows that Joffee had a relationship with the FBI as a source.
Why wasn't I and Devin Nunes given that information when we subpoenaed it back five years ago in a Russia gate?
Let's put that aside, my personal vendetta side against this corrupt crew that ran this Russia Gate hoax.
This witness or possible subject and or witness, Joffey, has now been shown to have had a relationship that he was paid by the FBI.
If so, how much?
How long?
You as a prosecutor are entitled to know all that information before putting on your case in chief.
Now, I'm sure that was disclosed to John Durham, which is why it's coming out now.
And it'll be interesting to see whether or not he actually shows up.
And these are some of the reasons why he might not.
Remember, we were talking about it last week.
Why isn't he going to show up?
Is he going to take the fifth?
Let me hit pause and go back to Christopher Steele, you know, the world's worst intelligence agent.
Christopher Steele was a source for the FBI.
He was a source for the FBI when he was collecting the Russia Gate Steele dossier information and putting it together.
He was a source for the FBI when he submitted that information to the FBI.
And he was a source when the FBI went to get the very first FISA court surveillance warrant on Trump on the Trump campaign.
But if you remember, Jan, because of my investigation, we found out through FBI documentation and the source code documentation that Christopher Steele lied while being a source of the FBI and leaked information to the media without telling the FBI.
That is the cardinal rule of when you are an FBI source.
You cannot tell anyone, especially the media, that you're an FBI source.
That's the whole point.
You can't get terminated as a source from the FBI unless you break one of the cardinal rules.
So now my question is, what did Joffe do?
Did he lie to the FBI?
Did he break the contractual agreement?
Did he go to the media?
We know he's been talking to the media at that time.
So there's a lot of questions that need to be answered about this.
And it's very telling as to why John Durham has previously said Rodney Joffey is a current target of my overarching criminal investigation.
Well, no, and exactly.
So is, again, the question comes up is, are you expecting a case against an indictment against Joffey?
I am, yeah.
So let's take a quick look at what John Hahey has actually putting up as we speak, as we're recording right now when he's at the courthouse.
So yeah, John's been doing a fantastic job reporting, and I'm piggybacking off that reporting, doing live reporting myself on TruthSocial at Cash, and I'll continue to do so, but I'm relying heavily on John and Epoch.
The key takeaways for now, before we get to John's quick update, the rest of the week is going to be basically a lot of what we call foundational witness testimony from John Durham.
It's not the cool, sexy stuff you see on, you know, Matt Locke and Perry Mason.
I know I'm aging myself, but it's, we have to get documents into evidence.
We have to make submissions.
We have to meet evidentiary standards.
So it's a lot of rote, repetitive work for prosecutions.
But there are going to be some zesty witnesses, I think.
The likes of Mark Elias and a Fusion GPS witness and other federal agents are going to come in and have to testify.
And hopefully even Robbie Mook and Hillary Clinton lawyers and things like that.
One of the most telling ones to date for us is this lady named Siago, the Fusion GPS employee.
And she was on the witness stand and testified under oath about her work at Fusion GPS on the opposition research project related to Alphabank and Trump Tower.
And what was shocking for me to hear from her is basically her testimony is taking down Fusion GPS and their credibility.
I mean, as if they had any left.
But the jury probably doesn't know the whole backstory like you and I do.
So it's very powerful to them to hear the following.
And what she basically said in sum, and we can put up John's reporting, is when I was working on the opposition research project related to Alphabank, I and my know that my bosses, Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritch,
went to the home of Franklin Foer, one of the most discredited journalists in all of America, if not the world, with the Trump Alpha Bank Russia story that they were paid for to dig up, that she was a part of.
And he put that story out the next day.
Just think about that, Jan.
Go back in time.
The Clinton campaign hired Perkins Cooey, who is Mark Elias and Sussman, the guy on trial right now.
They went out and hired Fusion GPS to do not just the Steele dossier dirt project, but on track two, in a parallel effort, as we had said before, before anyone did on this show, they were running two simultaneous operations to take down Trump and based on false information.
The second one being the Alphabank Trump server.
And she is now saying that Fusion GPS was taking this false information that Michael Sussman was also peddling to the FBI and making sure it got into the media.
Why is that important, John?
Remember that the FBI, in their FISA application to the federal court to first go up on President Trump's campaign and spy on him, said we, the FBI, are corroborating the Steele reporting and its information because the media is reporting about it.
And we caught them.
We caught them.
They knew that the media was reporting about it because they knew Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS were leaking to the media.
Now we've caught Fusion GPS with their own employee admitting the same scam on the Alphabank Trump Russia server hoax.
And she said with specificity the date it happened, who it was, and that it was put out the next day.
Wildly, wildly telling information.
this is looking worse and worse for Sussman.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And I'm thinking back to that reporting by Jeff and Hans, Jeff Carlson and Hans Monkey about kind of the two tracks that were being followed.
It's hard to fathom.
Hard to fathom.
Look, truth is stranger than fiction, right?
I mean, this is literally if you got some of the best science fiction fiction authors in the world together, could you have come up with this sordid tale?
And I just don't think they could have even collectively done it.
So what do you expect is going to happen now?
I mean, we know, like you said, there's going to be a lot of evidence being kind of entered into the record.
Mark Elias is already testifying.
You didn't find anything of particular note yet in that testimony.
Is there anything that's going to come of that?
You know, what do you expect people to be working on?
You know, the defense will do their cross-examinations of these witnesses and try to stand up their defense.
Their defense is, which they've locked themselves into because of their strategic blunders to date, is our client didn't lie.
Our client Sussman did not lie.
And if he did, he was in this attorney-client relationship thing.
And, you know, give him a pass because you feel bad for him.
And so they're basically cross-examining these folks and they're saying, oh, yeah, I had a, you know, there was an attorney-client privilege relationship and it was done in anticipation of litigation.
It's a bit of a sideshow by the defense.
But to me, as a public defender, I can understand why they're doing that.
They want to highlight the quote-unquote good work of Michael Sussman and his crew and not have the jury focus on the hard reality that they were pushing a false narrative in the biggest takedown of a presidential candidate, his campaign and ultimately his presidency.
And they'll continue to poke holes.
The prosecution will foot on witnesses, I believe, through this week and into next week.
And then the defense will have their opportunity to put on their case in chief, which you and I, Sneak Preview, will be covering live from the courthouse next week.
So Cash, I think it's time for our shout-out.
Yeah, Jan.
This week's shout-out goes to Anne-Marie.
Thanks so much for your kind and generous words on the Epoch Times Cash's Cornerboard.
We encourage everybody to drop comments there.
And you can follow us at Truth Social with our play-by-play of the rest of the trial as it progresses.
And Cash, you know, I have to say it, congratulations on having the number one children's book on Amazon right now.
Thanks so much, Jan.
The Plot Against the King was an extremely fun project by my team.
We hope everybody goes over to theplotagainsteking.com and grabs a copy.
But in short, we thought we owe it to our youth to educate them on one of the greatest, most important consequential stories of the last 20, 30 years.
So we set it in medieval times, and we have a king named Donald, we have a knight named Devin, and we have characters like Hillary Quinton and Keeper Comey to take our kids and the youth through this adventure and show them the importance of reporting on the truth.
