It looks like the FBI top brass kept Hillary Clinton’s campaign identity a secret when it pushed her disinformation to Chicago-based FBI agents investigating ties between Trump and Russia’s Alfa-Bank. That’s according to FBI agents who testified during the Michael Sussmann trial, which is in its final days in a Washington, D.C. courtroom. The FBI told agents that the Department of Justice had brought the information used in the probe. That was a lie. Michael Sussmann, a former DOJ prosecutor now working for the Perkins Coie law firm, brought the information.
Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI about representing clients when he brought “evidence” purporting to show a connection between the Trump organization and the key Kremlin-connected bank through a super-secret server at Trump Tower. Sussmann turned over what we now know was disinformation to the FBI general counsel. Four days later, the FBI Chicago field office opened up an investigation at the behest of their Washington, D.C. bosses.
Not only was the whole thing a hoax, but it was also a classic case of projection and distraction by Hillary Clinton.
As you know by now, it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who had the super-secret private server on which she kept her professional and personal emails — including the 30,000 bleach-bit destroyed ones which had been under a preservation order. Hillary’s team also consorted with Russians — you could even say colluded — to conjure up her disinformation to peddle to the media, the CIA, and the FBI in order to smear Trump before the 2016 election. Indeed, besides Christopher Steele using Russian sources to slap together memos that he called a “dossier,” the Clinton camp used a sub source working for the Brookings Institution who’d been investigated for suspicion of being a Russian spy. Igor Danchenko was indicted in 2021 by Durham’s team for lying to the FBI.
Hillary and her team concocted the fake Trump-Russia connection to distract voters and ruin the man she later called a “corrupt human tornado” who knew that the election “wasn’t on the level.”
The Chicago FBI agents figured out quickly that the data was overblown and the possibility of Trump’s organization communicating with the bank server was nearly impossible because of firewalls.
It turns out that the “connection” was a hotel and hospitality marketing firm sending out spam emails. Trump runs hotels, as you may have noticed.
Because the information was so hinky, “didn’t pass analytical merit,” and didn’t show “a covert communications system,” agents prevailed on their boss to ask the 7th Floor at the FBI headquarters if they could be read in on who provided the flash drives, white papers, and other documents purporting the link. The brass who claimed the information came from the DOJ and said as much in the official referral to investigators. The Sept. 24, 2016 referral never mentions Michael Sussmann.
Agent Ryan Gaynor served as the liaison between Chicago agents and the home office in the beltway. He testified that, had he known that the provenance of the information was Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer, it could have “impacted the way I viewed the close hold.”
Assistant Special Counsel Andrew J. DeFilippis introduced emails demonstrating how the agents desperately wanted to know who had tossed this turd into the lap of the FBI and expected them to polish it.
In one Oct. 3, 2016, email, agent [Curtis] Heide wrote to Gaynor, “We really want to interview the source of all this information. Any way we can track down who this guy is and how we’re getting this information?”
Supervisory Special Agent Daniel Wierzbicki followed up: “An interview with the source of information … may allow us to understand the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of the white paper.”
Request denied.
The New York Post reports that Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Allison Sands testified that “she believed Heide had told her the referral came from the Department of Justice.” Sussmann’s attorney used the admission as an opening asking “Sands about whether Heide had lied to her — or if someone had lied to him about the source of the material.” This may have been news to the Durham team too. Sussmann’s attorney Michael Bosworth seized on the new information, asking, “You haven’t been interviewed in that [Durham] investigation?” Sands said she hadn’t.
Somebody lied. Someone kept the information from the FBI agents tasked with investigating these fake links between Trump and Russians. The person in charge of the investigation was Peter Strozk working for Bill Priestap, both high-level FBI brass.
Sussmann’s trial is expected to wrap up by Friday.
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