The special counsel tasked with chasing down the origins of the Russia collusion conspiracy perpetrated against candidate and President Donald Trump reportedly has issued more subpoenas in federal court.
A federal grand jury convened by John Durham, the former Connecticut U.S. attorney, issued the subpoenas as a follow-up to the indictment of the Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, according to reports from National Review and CNN.
News of the subpoenas came from “people briefed on the matter.”
The grand jury subpoenas for documents came earlier this month after Durham charged Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann with lying to the FBI in a September 2016 meeting. During that meeting, Sussmann handed over data purporting to show links between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. That tip became part of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election but the FBI ultimately couldn’t find evidence of a link.
In seeking additional documents from Sussmann’s former law firm, Perkins Coie, investigators from the special counsel’s office appear to be sharpening their focus on the Democratic political machinery during the 2016 campaign and efforts to tie Trump to Russia.
Perkins Coie’s clients in 2016 included the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The law firm also hired on the campaign’s behalf a research company that commissioned the dossier from ex-British spy Christopher Steele that alleged that Trump was compromised by Russia.
Durham also appears to be delving deeper into the dealings between Perkins Coie and the man known as “Tech Executive-1,” who used his government contract, apparently with the Department of Defense, to contrive Trump Russia connections.
Techno Fog has been connecting dots between Sussmann’s indictment and the reporting from the New York Times alleging that “Tech Executive-1” is Rodney Joffe, who’s also a Perkins Coie client. Joffe tried to frame Trump with DNS data he allegedly lifted from the Defense Department.
NYT gives an answer on the data used by the Sussmann, et al. Alfa Bank "researchers" – it was from DARPA.
Relevance to criminal inquiry-
What was the classification of that data?
What were the restrictions on its use/dissemination?
[They should be concerned] https://t.co/MicbXBseMb pic.twitter.com/VibLS7IVQA
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) September 30, 2021
Ready to get into the weeds a bit?
Good.
Reporter Chuck Ross of the Washington Free Beacon opined on Twitter that these new subpoenas, which are still under wraps, could explain why another Democrat attorney, Marc Elias, quit Perkins Coie right before Sussman’s indictment prompted his ouster from the same law firm.
Durham subpoenaing Perkins Coie gives more credence to the theories about why @marceelias suddenly left the firm a couple months ago https://t.co/kGGztA6hdu
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) September 30, 2021
Elias is the Clinton lawyer who hired Fusion GPS, which then hired former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, to create “evidence” of the Russia collusion scandal “dossier” and shop it to reporters and intelligence operatives.
Some believe the plan to smear Trump with the fake Russia scandal was hatched to distract from the Hillary Clinton email and server scandal, which was huge in the months leading to the election. Clinton deleted thousands of emails against the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s legal order to preserve them. Clinton destroyed the emails and used a service to “bleach bit” her computers and server.
And don’t forget the alleged DNC server “hack,” which also fueled the Russia collusion story line. Former Perkins Coie attorney Sussmann was also the attorney for the company CrowdStrike, which was brought in by Sussmann to check the DNC servers. The same day the company was hired to look at the DNC servers, CrowdStrike proclaimed the Russians were responsible. The FBI, which was never allowed to look at the computers at the DNC, took their word for it.
At Substack, Techno Fog provides some additional background on what surely looks like a conspiracy.
Finally, there’s the question of what started it all: the hacking of the DNC servers. It was the DNC who called Sussmann after they were hacked. His fingerprints were all over their response. After the DNC told him of the hack, Sussmann called his old friend, CrowdStrike’s Shawn Henry. “The CrowdStrike team concluded that the intruders were Russian government operatives” on that same day. A remarkable turnaround.
Based on what we now know of Sussmann, we must seriously consider if Sussmann called CrowdStrike because he wanted them to create a narrative to fit his client’s political agenda.
After all, CrowdStrike was retained by Perkins Coie and its work was subject to the attorney client privilege, which would generally provide cover for whatever they were doing.
Hillary Clinton was apparently willing to shell out millions and millions to create a deep state-like conspiracy to make Donald Trump look worse and more conniving than she is.
Indeed, the media, intelligence community, DOJ, and FBI were only too happy to help.
In his own handwritten note, former CIA director John Brennan briefed President Obama in July of 2016 about the faked-up Clinton scandal. In the declassified note, Brennan wrote that Hillary Clinton had approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”
Six months later, President Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden were briefed on the Trump campaign spying stemming from the fake Hillary campaign hoax. That Oval Office meeting was used to contrive a way to go after Trump National Security Adviser-designee General Mike Flynn. Joe Biden suggested they charge Flynn with a Logan Act violation.
The indictment referred to "updated allegations" taken to some agency in February 2017. They also found data suggesting Yotaphones–Russian smartphones rarely seen in the US–were being used inside networks for Trump Tower, Spectrum Health, & the White House, and told the CIA./3
— Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) September 30, 2021
The New York Times, which is all of a sudden quite interested in the chicanery of the FBI in this case and in the Capitol riot prosecutions, identified the players referred to in the Sussmann indictment.
For 5 years, the identities of the data experts who identified the odd cyber links and theorized they could be covert Trump-Russia communications have been shrouded. They are April Lorenzen, Rodney Joffe & two Georgia Tech computer scientists, Manos Antonakakis and David Dagon.
This latest set of subpoenas appear to show that Durham has more people in his sights. Indeed, as you can see for yourself, there appear to be many, many targets out there.
Half the country believes there’s no such thing as equal justice under the law anymore. It would be nice to see these high-level conspiracists finally get what they deserve. After all, this all set the table not only for the 2016 election, but for Trump’s impeachments and dirtying him up for the 2020 election.
That’s a hell of a blow to the body politic.
This article has been updated.
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