As it is, the court seems to have conscientiously attempted to wade through a thicket of unusual and complex legal issues in order to focus the trial on what should be at issue based on the crime that Durham actually charged whether the alleged misrepresentation by Sussmann actually occurred and, if so, whether it had a material effect on the FBI, as Durham has claimed. Three years later, the team led by the special counsel, John H. Durham, on Monday will open the first trial in a case their investigation developed, bringing before a jury the claims and counterclaims that surrounded the 2016 presidential campaign. The Department of Justice would ordinarily never bring such a baseless case.. Heres another piece to the puzzle that starts to make this look even more strange. Durhams investigation suffered a significant setback in the spring when a Washington, DC, jury acquitted Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann. John Durham speaks to reporters on the steps of U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn., on April 25, 2006. Why don't you write about the others. To support the emptywheel site, choose the option below that works best for you. By JOSH GERSTEIN. An observant Catholic and avid Red Sox fan. Thanks for contacting us. Intubation in town (ah-ah-ah), Rudy Heres How (and When) To Watch President Trump At CPAC! If youre keeping score, that would be throughout (a) most of the FISC-authorized surveillance; (b) the Mueller investigation, which somehow failed to detect or at least to report that Danchenko misled the bureau; and (c) Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitzs investigations of the FBIs misconduct in the Trump investigation in the reports of which there is no indication that Horowitz was told Danchenko was on the bureau payroll and available to be interviewed. You can tell me this guy is a private guy and likes to keep a low profile, but Im sorry I just dont buy that not one single video of the man exists, not even b-roll of him walking into a courthouse or something. The big picture: So far, the only criminal conviction produced by Durham's investigation was against a low-level former FBI lawyer, who was sentenced to 12 months' probation after pleading guilty to altering an email used to obtain a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Bob Child/Associated Press At the same hearing, a defense. IE 11 is not supported. They love our country., We caught them all, Trump said. Hes won it in the court of conservative public opinion. Considering Challenging Biden In Democrat Primary. Could be. After that, today comes this video from yet another YouTube channel that basically just ripped off Eric D. Kirks video and made it more crappy: Read the comments, so many people are thinking this is surely Durham: A reader sent me this report, which I have NOT been able to independently verify. Were still waiting for a report from a man named Durham who Ive never spoken to and never met. 1:22-cv-00734)). Ive never met him. That we had to file a federal lawsuit to get basic budget information about this historic investigation speaks volumes. (Read "The U.S. Prison for Iraq's Worst."). I actually think this is a major story just waiting to blow up. on behalf of the campaign or Mr. Joffe. I continue to find that extremely strange! Last week, in a jaw-dropping court submission, Durham revealed that the FBI signed up Danchenko as an informant and paid him for almost three years from March 2017 through October 2020 . Mr. Durhams team is expected to object to any such constraint. Never spoke to him. And Durham is gearing up for his last trial: the prosecution of Igor Danchenko, the principal source for the discredited Steele dossier. Read our full Disclosure. The filing was silent on when data collection ended and what time period the data covered; it did not say the collection took place through February 2017 and thus during the Trump presidency. According to the DOJ press release, Durham recommended that a full criminal investigation be . Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) February 26, 2021. (Hartford Courant, January 28, 2001), "He's Fitzgerald with a sense of humor." Dont you be so crude and feckless The result is particularly ironic since many of these same people vocally criticized the coverage of the Mueller investigation on the theory that the media was cherry-picking information and credulously accepting the claims of prosecutors and sympathetic pundits, but they have adopted the same methodology that they once railed against a combination of pseudo-forensic readings of court filings and public documents, politically provocative narratives constructed from largely contextless scraps of information, and a strong, seemingly indestructible confirmation bias against their political adversaries. Durham, 59, is no stranger to top-level governmental investigations. Hi , Frank! Election Law Update, Heavy Lifting Ne NYC Cleans Voter Rolls Thanks To Judicial Watch. White Students Forced to Pledge Allegiance to BLM, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Though its come to represent much more in the public imagination, the actual charge is quite narrow. official that he was not acting on behalf of any client. The budget also indicates there was one direct position, 11 Reimbursable Detailees and three Non-Reimbursable Investigative Staff, for a total of 15 personnel. Since Durhams appointment, however, a clear dynamic has dominated his investigation namely, a palpable desire among right-wing operatives, commentators and media outlets to use Durhams work, no matter how thin or nebulous the underlying evidence may be, to try to vindicate the theory that Trump was grievously victimized by the Democratic Party in an effort to defeat him and later hobble his presidency. Michael Sussmann, a lawyer whose firm represented the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, was acquitted of a felony charge of lying to the FBI on Tuesday. Ill keep watching the comments below and see if anyone can find a video. A federal judge late Thursday ordered Fusion GPS, the research firm tapped by Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign to gin up dirt on former President Trump, to turn over nearly two dozen emails to . Durhams investigation indicates that Danchenko lied to the FBI multiple times, falsehoods that should have been easy for the nations flagship federal investigative agency to run down. But rather than showing wrongdoing by the F.B.I., it is a case that portrays the bureau as a victim. Cybersecurity expert Rob Graham told NBC News that what Joffe appeared to have been doing was a search for domain names and addresses to which a computer had tried to connect. **PLEASE READ IN FULL..new update added at the bottom**. In the filing Friday, prosecutors said Tech Executive-1 gave Sussmann data about communications between computer servers at the EOP, two Trump-owned buildings in New York and an unrelated medical firm with Russian-made cellphones near the White House. Judicial Watch: Fighting for Clean Elections. | POLITICO. We would maybe have ended this thing a lot sooner had he been there originally. The suspicions, which involved internet traffic with Russias Alfa-Bank, were later determined to be unfounded. . Jeff Head has no business being an umpire. But news reports indicate that editors were not ready to run that article, which was being written by the reporter Eric Lichtblau, although the paper published one mentioning Alfa Bank six weeks later. It is one of the great dirty tricks in modern political history: The 2016 Democratic presidential campaign colluded with the incumbent Democratic administrations law enforcement and intelligence apparatus to portray their partisan opposition, Donald Trump, as a Kremlin mole, then made the smear stick to the point of forcing Trump to govern for over two years under the cloud of a special-counsel investigation. The only conviction that Durham has obtained was from a low-level FBI lawyer who altered an internal email while working on an application to surveil adviser Carter Page. Mr. Joffe, who was already a client of Mr. Sussmanns, brought the matter to him, and Mr. Sussmann relayed those suspicions to reporters and the F.B.I. The case was met with broad skepticism among liberal legal commentators who noted that, at least on the face of the indictment, it was far from clear that Sussmann had made the misrepresentation at issue. [Emphasis supplied for previously redacted numbers], Special Counsel Durham has spent millions in tax dollars to investigate the worst government corruption scandal in American history the abuse of Trump to little good end, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. We value your opinions, and would love to see you add to the discussion! Allegedly, he was on the team of prosecutors for the Whitey Bulger case, yet, you will not find his name mentioned anywhere from 2013 when the case was prosecuted. Things picked up last fall. He also told Mr. Elias about it, and Clinton campaign officials were apparently aware that he was trying to get reporters to write about it. Non-reimbursable costs totaled $2,334,911, for costs such as travel ($457,207), rent ($306,350), and Other Contractual Services ($1,297,054). While the bureau used inane, unverified information from Steele and Danchenko to suggest to a court that the president of the United States might be a Russian asset, the FBI had intelligence indicating that Danchenko himself might actually have been a Russian asset. Ive been asking for 3 days and so far no one has risen to the challenge. The filing doesnot specify whether any of the data collection occurred while Trump was in office. FITTON: Heavy Lifting Needed By Congress on Corruption! And not the face he is reportedly staying on as Special Counsel. 600.8(a)(1). The Department of Justice initially produced budget records responsive to the Judicial Watch lawsuit on June 3, 2022, but redacted the actual budget numbers. In May 2019, Attorney General William Barr tapped Connecticut's U.S. Attorney John Durham to look into issues related to the origins of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation. Almost five years to the day since the start of the Mueller investigation itself, the views of political observers concerning the 2016 election and the Trump-Russia investigation seem impervious to change. Never spoke to him. I dont publish conspiracy theories on this website, but I do publish real journalism. A tech executive exploited his access to computer data at the White House to find derogatory information about President Donald Trump, a special counsel appointed during the Trump administration said in a court filing Friday. At a press conference in October 2000, I asked Durham if he would pursue other compromised FBI agents. Ok, were talking John Durham right now but maybe not for the reason you think. Against that backdrop, much of the pretrial jostling has centered on how far afield prosecutors may roam from the core accusation. Wes Durham, Jordan Cornette . On Watch: CROSSFIRE HURRICANE Targeting of Trump from A to Z. The disclosure about Joffe, who has not been charged, came in a filing in the court case of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer whom Durhams office indicted in September in connection with allegations of lying about his relationship with the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Yet, far from alerting the FISC judges that there was significant reason to disbelieve the information from Steele about Trump who was by then the incumbent president the FBI continued to rely on that suspect information in sworn surveillance applications in April and June 2017, based on which the FISC granted additional spying warrants. Whatever the outcome of the trial, the possibility that political observers on the right will modify their preconceptions about Trumps supposed victimization or the purportedly nefarious scheming of Clinton operatives seems increasingly remote. Judicial Watch challenged the withheld information, and the DOJ now has re-released the documents without the redactions. And in fact, going to the F.B.I. That last one should be grabbing our attention. SICK: Here Is That Perverted Sex Ed Video Teaching First Graders To Masturbate, Pfizer Makes Stunning Admission On COVID-19 Jab Clinical Trials. Msg&data rates may apply. If you love what we do, please consider a $1/month donation to keep us live! (Its been like that since J Edgar died.). Too late to straighten right out (ah-ah-ah) Its safe again and were having a lot of fun over there. And please, if you do nothing else, read this.. Progressives' hateful push for hard-left New York Court of A university finally stands up to woke virtue signaling, Biden's WHO pandemic treaty would kill Americans in the name of 'equity', Canadian teacher with size-Z prosthetic breasts placed on paid leave, What's next for Buster Murdaugh after dad's murder conviction, life sentence, Murdaugh son collapsed outside court after sitting stone-faced through dad's 6-week murder trial: source, Kellyanne Conway and George Conway to divorce. Mr. Baker has testified that the F.B.I. . Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham, left, is seen May 14, 2002, in this artist's drawing, during the questioning of convicted mob hitman Kevin J. This man reportedly ran the historic Whitey Bulger trial, and no video from that time period either. According to prosecutors, Sussmann gave the data to an unnamed federal agency at a meeting on Feb. 9, 2017, 20 days into the Trump administration, and said the data demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.. The same restrictions pertain to a U.S. president. Mr. Berkowitz noted that Mr. Sussmann had told Mr. Baker that he believed The New York Times planned to publish an article on the Alfa Bank suspicions, which was why he was reaching out. Sussmanns attorneys told the court, This is not the first time in this case that the Special Counsel has sought to include allegations about uncharged conduct in public filings and done so using inflammatory and prejudicial rhetoric., In a statement, a spokesperson for Joffe said, Contrary to the allegations in [the special counsels] recentfiling, Mr. Joffe is an apolitical internet security expert with decades of service to the U.S. Government who has never worked fora political party, and who legally provided access to DNS data obtained from a private client that separately was providing DNS services to the Executive Office of the President (EOP)., Joffes spokesperson said that under the terms of his contract, the data could be accessed to identify and analyze any security breaches or threats., As a result of the hacks of EOP and [Democratic National Committee] servers in 2015 and 2016, respectively, there were serious and legitimate national security concerns about Russian attempts to infiltrate the 2016 election, the spokesperson said. Under international law, this bilateral executive agreement obligated the U.S. to protect the information. And that the Garland DOJ is still hiding documents adds to the scandal.. | The press-shy Connecticut prosecutor was tapped by Attorney General Eric Holder on Aug. 24 to. Graduated from Colgate University in 1972 with a degree in political science. Upon identifying DNS queries from Russian-made Yota phones in proximity to the Trump campaign and the EOP, respected cyber-security researchers were deeply concerned about the anomalies they found in the data and prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the CIA.. Classification is but one of the many authorities this president has abused. Judicial Watch challenged the withheld information, and the DOJ now has re-released the documents without the redactions. SICK: Here Is That Perverted Sex Ed Video Teaching First Graders To Masturbate, Pfizer Makes Stunning Admission On COVID-19 Jab Clinical Trials. That allegation led to a four-month FBI inquiry into a possible internet backchannel between the Trump Organization and the Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank. Zelensky Exposed (Literally): This Is The Guy We Are Sending Billions To? 600.8(a)(1). Reply HELP for help, STOP to end. Contributions are received from The case against Sussmann was curious from the start, because it was apparent that Durhams team was less interested in a discrete misrepresentation to the FBI during a single meeting than it was in the broader and arguably unseemly opposition research work of the Clinton campaign, its lawyers and the investigative firm Fusion GPS. Notes of a March 2017 F.B.I. And I do publish conspiracy facts when it looks like all the evidence is actually pointing at a conclusion. to share the material, Mr. Sussmann reached out to James A. Baker, then the agencys top lawyer. This case represents the opposite of everything the Department of Justice is supposed to stand for. Long time lurker, occasional poster, with the exact same comment that the long-timers here are tired of hearing: All FBI agents should carry a portable electronic device with them to all interviews that they KNOW will lead to a 302. of budget records from the U.S Department of Justice (DOJ) concerning the operations of the Office of Special Counsel John Durham that show its fiscal year 2022 budget was over $8.5 million. And not the face he is reportedly staying on as Special Counsel. Whats funny is they often place a whole bank of microphones in his face to plant the idea in your head that the guy is speaking a lot and holding lots of press conferences (yet none exist): Yet, despite all those photos, I cant find a single video of the man actually speaking. to serve as Special Counsel for the Department of Justice on October 19, 2020: The Department of Justice initially produced budget records responsive to the Judicial Watch lawsuit on June 3, 2022. Durhams team, however, has so far failed to persuade anyone to serve as this kind of witness. Douglass Mackey Allegedly Aimed to Depress Black Turnout in Pennsylvania, Release the Kraken: Fox News Revolving Sidney Powell Conspiracy Theory Door. No, Im saying not one single video of the man exists online! Theres more. United States Attorney John H. Durham has kept such a low profile while handling some of the country's most infamous criminal investigations that he once made New Republic magazine's list of. Trump and his allies said the disclosure was proof that Trump was under surveillance while he was in office. Durham was appointed as Special Counsel in October. Im not talking about videos about a certain topic or recent videos or videos of his personal life. Sign up for our free email newsletter, and we'll make sure to keep you in the loop. It was also unrelated to former special counsel. According to prosecutors, during a Sept. 19,2016,meeting betweenSussmannand the FBIs general counsel at the time, James Baker, Sussmann told Baker about suspicions relating to alleged secret communications between the Trump campaign and Russia. The defense argues that Mr. Sussmann was not acting on their behalf at the meeting. Defense lawyers have also argued that even if Mr. Sussmann lied, it would have been immaterial because the F.B.I. But once he fixes on a target, the veteran lawyer usually catches his prey. Steal $20 Mil in U.S. COVID Relief Funds. Im happy to be proven wrong, Im not saying this is some huge, massive conspiracyunless it is? The big picture: So far, the only criminal conviction produced by Durham's investigation was against a low-level former FBI lawyer, who was sentenced to 12 months' probation after pleading guilty to altering an email used to obtain a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The Alfa Bank allegations and the Steele dossier were largely tangential to the official investigation into whether there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. A spokesperson for special counsel Durhams office said the office declines to comment beyond the court filings and any response will be in future filings with the court. tried to ask The Times to slow down on publishing. NATIONAL POLL: Should Fauci Be Prosecuted For LYING To Congress? John Durham was appointed special counsel in 2019 to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation in the wake of the Mueller report. Please share your thoughts about this article below. The first case developed by the special counsel, John Durham, involves a lawyer who is accused of lying when he shared a tip with the F.B.I. All rights reserved. The judges rulings were thoughtful and well-reasoned, which managed to obscure just how unusual it is for prosecutors to be so thoroughly constrained from presenting the case that they want. The Justice Management Division has completed its review under 28 C.F.R. Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor. Monitoring such traffic reveals only that one computer or server is trying to reach another, he said, not the contents of a persons screen or messages. I posted that challenge in my Telegram Channel earlier tonight and so far no one has been able to find a real video of the man speaking. Ankush Khardori, an attorney and former federal prosecutor, is a Politico Magazine contributing editor. A year ago, John Durham was investigating who leaked the fact that Mike Flynn had secretly worked with Russia to undermine sanctions that served, in part, to punish Russia for helping Trump get elected. The press-shy Connecticut prosecutor was tapped by Attorney General Eric Holder on Aug. 24 to investigate alleged mistreatment of terror suspects by CIA interrogators and contractors. A man who has led such a long and storied public career, and its as if he doesnt actually exist. Fridays court filing was made as part of an inquiry about whether the law firm Latham & Watkins had a conflict of interest in serving as counsel to Sussmann because it also represented other parties with interests in the case. This may seem counterintuitive, since the judges decision to prevent him from airing his ambitious theory of a Clinton-orchestrated conspiracy should have diminished confidence in his work and in his various assertions. You been drinking brew for breakfast A strong conspiracy case usually involves the testimony of a key insider who can verify the governments theory and narrate events from within the group explaining how various, ostensibly distinct pieces of evidence fit into a coherent whole and how the disparate actions of participants served a singular objective. But the prosecutors curiously portrayed the FBI as the victim of Sussmanns machinations when the proof suggested that the bureau was not fooled at all and seemed more like a willing participant in building the Trump/Russia political narrative. No video of the trial, not a single press conference or interview or questions from reporters. But he suggested that the defense would contend that Mr. Sussmann did not believe he was taking the matter to the F.B.I. Three days ago, I asked my Telegram Channel to see if anyone in there could find a video actually showing John Durham moving, talkingbeing a real person. is above the law! That summer, as suspicions escalated about Mr. Trumps relationship with Moscow, a group of data scientists identified odd internet data that appeared to link servers for the Trump Organization to Alfa Bank. (Read "Officials Defend CIA's Use of Contractors."). It needs to be called out as such. When it comes to perpetuating that narrative, whether or not the jury ultimately rules in his favor, Durham has effectively already won. Durhams prosecutors presented abundant evidence that Sussmann had falsely told the FBI that he was not working for the Clinton campaign when he peddled spurious information about a supposed Trump-Putin communications back channel. I mean, no offense Erik D. Kirk but its not actually very funny. But if authenticated, isnt this highly unusual? (function() { var qs,js,q,s,d=document, gi=d.getElementById, ce=d.createElement, gt=d.getElementsByTagName, id="typef_orm", b="https://embed.typeform.com/"; if(!gi.call(d,id)) { js=ce.call(d,"script"); js.id=id; js.src=b+"embed.js"; q=gt.call(d,"script")[0]; q.parentNode.insertBefore(js,q) } })(). FITTON: #TwitterFiles EXPOSE FBI & CIA Election Interference! One person sent even sent me this, I think they knew it was a joke.because its from SNL: Ill check the comments below and see if anyone finds a real video. The brief was nominally about whether Sussmanns law firm may have had a conflict of interest in representing Sussmann a very tenuous claim that was eventually resolved in favor of Sussmanns lawyers. in part on behalf of the Clinton campaign. Did the FBI end up finding out that Danchenko was not really a Russian asset? AP Photo/Jon Elswick, The trial beginning this week was supposed to be the culmination of an otherwise spotty and languorous investigation, now entering its fourth year. If the investigation has revealed anything of note, it is just how secondary the law has come to be in politically-charged prosecutions like this one. A lawyer for Mr. Lichtblau has asked the judge to limit questioning to his discussions with Mr. Sussmann, avoiding other confidential sources and journalistic matters. In fact, it kind of looks like its meant to be a serious take or to confuse people? "You have Bull Durham, who is supposed to be the toughest," Trump said over the telephone during the show. And the more you look, the more weird you realize it is. Judge Christopher Cooper of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, an Obama appointee, has imposed some limits on what Mr. Durhams team may present to the jury. This is largely due to a series of rulings in recent weeks from the presiding judge as part of standard pre-trial litigation about what evidence will be permitted at trial. If you love what we do, please consider a $1/month donation to keep us live! The man who busted Whitey Bulger, the man who was appointed by Barr, the man who many thought was going to take down the Deep State.and not a single video exists. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered remarks at the 2022 New York State Democratic Convention in New York City amid the Special Counsel John Durham probe controversy. In the eight months since Sussmanns indictment, the case has traveled an unusual path even by the standards of politically high-profile prosecutions. Something potentially much more interesting. The real question is, who invented him and why? His bio also says he is a visual effects specialist, which I found very interesting. The supplemental response includes an unredacted June 30, 2021, memo from Assistant Attorney General Lee Lofthus to Attorney General Garland with the subject line Fiscal Year 2022 Special Counsels Office Budget Request, showing a previously withheld estimated budget of $8,627,629. But instead, the notion that Durham has been improperly muzzled by a Democrat-appointed judge however fallacious it may be seems primed to have the opposite effect among many of his supporters. Getty Images offers exclusive rights-ready and premium royalty-free analog, HD, and 4K video of the highest quality. "I've never met him. Find professional John Durham videos and stock footage available for license in film, television, advertising and corporate uses. (Boston Globe, January 7, 2008), "He kind of has blinders on in the sense that he doesn't worry about the politics and all the other stuff that might be swirling around, and I think that's really what makes him so successful." Working with Rodney Joffe, a technology executive and cybersecurity expert, they theorized that it might be a covert communications channel. They were spying on the sitting president of the United States, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News on Sunday. "I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case," he added. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, at a news conference in Washington, D.C., on July 21.