John Durham, Ask Not for Whom the Statute of Limitation Tolls …

As he did with Igor Danchenko, John Durham has raised a potential conflict as a way to air his conspiracy theories so he can jack up the frothy right. In this case, he describes an uncharged meeting at which Michael Sussmann, who no longer had anything to do with the DNC, shared an updated version of the Alfa Bank allegations with the CIA on February 9, 2017.

The Indictment further details that on February 9, 2017, the defendant provided an updated set of allegations – including the Russian Bank-1 data and additional allegations relating to Trump – to a second agency of the U.S. government (“Agency-2”). The Government’s evidence at trial will establish that these additional allegations relied, in part, on the purported DNS traffic that Tech Executive-1 and others had assembled pertaining to Trump Tower, Donald Trump’s New York City apartment building, the EOP, and the aforementioned healthcare provider. In his meeting with Agency-2, the defendant provided data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by these entities of internet protocol (“IP”) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider (“Russian Phone Provider-1”). The defendant further claimed that these lookups 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 Special Counsel’s Office has identified no support for these allegations. Indeed, more complete DNS data that the Special Counsel’s Office obtained from a company that assisted Tech Executive-1 in assembling these allegations reflects that such DNS lookups were far from rare in the United States. For example, the more complete data that Tech Executive-1 and his associates gathered – but did not provide to Agency-2 – reflected that between approximately 2014 and 2017, there were a total of more than 3 million lookups of Russian Phone-Provider-1 IP addresses that originated with U.S.-based IP addresses. Fewer than 1,000 of these lookups originated with IP addresses affiliated with Trump Tower. In addition, the more complete data assembled by Tech Executive-1 and his associates reflected that DNS lookups involving the EOP and Russian Phone Provider-1 began at least as early 2014 (i.e., during the Obama administration and years before Trump took office) – another fact which the allegations omitted.

The frothy right is very excited that, among the data that someone heavily involved in cybersecurity like Rodney Joffe would have ready access to, was data that included the White House. They seem less interested that, to disprove the allegations Sussmann presented, Durham effectively (in their frothy minds) conducted the same “spying” on EOP networks of President Obama that Durham insinuates Joffe did of Trump.

Remember: This meeting is not charged. It’s not clear such a meeting with the CIA could be charged. Durham presents zero evidence Sussmann knows anything about the comparative value of this data, either.

That’ll become important in a bit.

The conflicts Durham raises to justify this filing are a bit more interesting than the ones he raised with Danchenko. Latham Watkins used to represent Perkins Coie and Marc Elias in this matter, now they represent just Sussmann, and Elias will be asked to testify about instructions Sussmann got about billing records in his representation of the DNC. Latham represented the DNC. Latham represented Sussmann in December 2017 House Intelligence testimony that significantly undermines Durham’s indictment (and shows that the allegations at the core of this indictment originally came from Kash Patel, who by the time of trial may be charged for his participation in helping Trump attempt a coup). Latham also provided Perkins Coie advice regarding a PR statement that, Durham admits, he’s not been able to pierce the privilege of and he knows those who made the statement had no knowledge that could implicate the statement in a conspiracy. Somebody on Sussmann’s team used to work at the FBI and then worked for the White House. Those are the conflicts — more substantive than the ones Durham raised about Danchenko, but probably nothing that problematic.

Which makes the relative timing of this filing all the more interesting.

With Danchenko, Durham raised the potential conflict, first, at a status hearing less than two weeks after Stuart Sears filed a notice of appearance for Danchenko, and then again, in a filing two weeks after Sears filed, for a less pressing imagined conflict involving different lawyers in Sears’ firm.

With Sussmann, Durham waited for almost five months after indicting Sussmann to raise the conflict, even though all but one element of the imagined conflict would have been immediately apparent to Durham, not least that Latham had previously represented Elias.

That doesn’t seem to reflect any real burning concern about this conflict.

But, as noted, it did give Durham an excuse to float previously unreleased information that may not even come in at trial, given that it’ll have to be presented as 404(b) evidence and it, in fact, as presented, undermines the claim that Sussmann was hiding his ties to Hillary from the Federal government.

If the information doesn’t come in at trial, this may be Durham’s only chance to jack up the frothy right with it.

And that’s interesting because of the date of that CIA meeting: February 9, 2017, five years and two days before Durham filed this belated notice of a conflict.

As I keep noting, Durham is obviously trying to pull his fevered conspiracy theories into an actual charged conspiracy, one tying together the DNC, Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, and Hillary herself. If he succeeds, these flimsy charges (against both Sussmann and Danchenko) become stronger, but if he doesn’t, he’s going to have a harder time proving motive and materiality at trial.

After charging Sussmann on almost the last possible date before the statute of limitations expired for his claimed lie to the FBI, though, Durham would need something on which to hang a continuing conspiracy to be able to charge the others. One of those events could have been the PR statement issued in 2018, which Durham says is inaccurate.

Privilege logs and redacted emails obtained from Law Firm-1 in this investigation reflect that in the days before the issuance of these statements, Latham attorneys sent, received, and/or were copied on correspondence relating to the drafting and dissemination of the statements. (Much of the substance of those emails was redacted and withheld from the Special Counsel’s Office pursuant to Law Firm-1’s assertion of attorney-client privilege and attorney work product protections). Because the defendant was aware of and/or reviewed these media statements, the Government may seek to offer them as evidence pursuant to Rule 404(b) or other provisions of law to establish that the defendant sought to conceal the Clinton Campaign’s ties to the Russian Bank-1 allegations from the FBI and others.3

3 According to counsel for Law Firm-1, the attorneys at Law Firm-1 and Latham who participated in drafting and/or reviewing these statements were unaware at the time that the defendant had billed work on the Russian Bank-1 allegations to the Clinton Campaign.

Except, as laid out here, none of the Perkins Coie people involved in writing the statement knew how Sussmann had billed his time. And Durham hasn’t found a reason to otherwise pierce the privilege claims that went into the drafting of the statement.

So that’s probably not going to work to establish his continuing conspiracy.

The other event on which Durham might have hung a continuing conspiracy was that February 9 meeting. It involved updated work from Joffe, after all. And Durham claims Sussmann again deliberately hid who his client was rather than (as he now knows Sussmann did for tips from Jofffe that had nothing to do with Donald Trump) just shared a tip anonymously.

But instead of rolling out what Sussmann presented in that February 9 meeting five years and two days ago in a conspiracy indictment, Durham instead packaged it up in a filing pertaining to a potential conflict. This February 9 meeting, it appears, won’t be the hook on which Durham gets to charge a conspiracy.

I’m not saying that Durham won’t be able to pull together his grand conspiracy. He might next point to testimony in Congress (possibly Glenn Simpson’s) to claim that there was some grand cover-up of what he imagines was an attempt to smear Donald Trump. Except, as this filing admits, Sussmann’s sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee shows that when asked — by future coup investigative subject Kash Patel — Sussmann testified consistently with sharing this information on behalf of Joffe, which is what Sussmann’s currently operative story remains. Durham did suggest he thinks he can show Sussmannn misled members of Congress because he claims it was, “knowingly and intentionally misleading insofar as it failed to disclose that the defendant billed work on the Russian Bank-1 allegations to the Clinton Campaign,” except (as with the alleged lie more generally) that’s not what he was asked about.

By all means, John Durham, make Kash Patel a witness at your trial. Give Sussmann an opportunity to ask how Kash came to learn of this meeting in the first place, to say nothing about whether Kash has recently been involved in efforts to overthrow the US government.

Whatever Durham hopes to use to sustain the claim of a continuing conspiracy, this filing seems to concede that the lies Durham claims Sussmann told in that meeting that took place five years and a few days ago will not be charged.

Ask not for whom the statute of limitations toll, John Durham. They toll for you.

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109 replies
  1. I Never Lie and am Always Right says:

    Very interesting post. Thank you!

    It reminds me of the bowling leagues that they had some 900 years ago in Switzerland. Historians discovered that William Tell and his brothers were on one of the teams in this ancient bowling league. But they were never able to discover the identity of the sponsor of their bowling team. Thus, no one knows for whom the Tells Bowled.

    • Alan Charbonneau says:

      A governmental slash and burn of a marijuana farm in Kentucky four years ago had an unintended ecological impact. A flock of terns flew through the cloud of smoke and no tern was left unstoned.

    • TooLoose LeTruck says:

      All of you…

      Stop it!

      Stop it right now! This is out of control now and needs to stop!

      Geez… I don’t know which would be better at this point…

      A frontal lobotomy, or a bottle in front of me…

      • Xboxershorts says:

        A young girl of, perhaps 3 years old had been given a little ‘tea set’ as a
        gift, and it was one of her favorite toys.

        One day while Gramma was out, Grampa was given charge of the little girl.
        Grampa was in the living room engrossed in the evening news when she brought
        him a little cup of ‘tea’, which was actually, just water. After several cups of tea
        and lots of praise for such yummy tea, Gramma came home.

        Grampa made her wait in the living room to watch her bring him a cup of
        tea, because it was ‘just the cutest thing!’ Gramma waited, and sure enough,
        here she came down the hall with a cup of tea for Grampa, and she watched him
        drink it up.

        Then gramma said, (as only a gramma would know), “‘Did it ever occur to you
        that the only place she can reach to get water is the toilet?”

  2. Alan says:

    Semi humorous on it’s face, but “tolling of the statute of limitations” actually means the opposite…

    • Badger Robert says:

      When the statutes are paused, they are tolling. A statute does not normally run against a plaintiff who is a minor. When the time expires the statutes have run. That was always my understanding.

      • KarlFromTheEast says:

        Statutes of limitation are tolled during periods when the plaintiff lacks capacity to sue. Not being of age is such a lack of capacity, but there are others, such as insanity. Basically, we don’t punish a person for
        Not suing while they are unable to do so.

          • KarlFromTheEast says:

            I was responding purely to the comment directly above me, referring to a child plaintiff, which makes sense only in a civil context. In the criminal context, our focus would of course be on the defendant, as in the case of a fugitive.

  3. Badger Robert says:

    The Justice Department has information about Mr. Patel. Mr. Patel would like to know about that information. Mr. Durham is willing to use his case to help Mr. Patel.
    The defense is likely to ask for the Patel information for the reason you suggested.
    How long is AG Garland going to allow that type of thing to occur? Isn’t Durham a conduit to Justice information at this point?

    • Njrun says:

      Exactly. Why does DOJ allow itself to be used by this obviously phony charge that is just a way to get loony conspiracies in right-wing media?

      • Rugger9 says:

        There isn’t much that Garland can do to restrict what a Special Counsel can do or where he can dig once appointed. However, if the judge dismisses with prejudice and a sanction or two for Durham’s attempts to mislead the court then Garland would have a much easier time defenestrating Durham. As it is, Durham’s increasingly ridiculous filings make it clear to the court and Sussman that he’s got nothing so Sussman would not be expected to plead out.

        Could Sussman sue Durham for malicious prosecution if he can show deliberate misconduct by Durham and his team? I realize it’s a high bar to get from incompetence to criminality but it would seem to me that the line of gross negligence in the investigation and charges has been crossed. EW has provided the road map that shows this point.

        • bmaz says:

          “Could Sussman sue Durham for malicious prosecution if he can show deliberate misconduct by Durham and his team?”

          Quite unfortunately, no. Prosecutors have absolute immunity, and the only way to pierce that is to establish that they acted as investigators more than prosecutors. That is nearly impossible.

          • timbo says:

            Truly, convincing a Federal judge that Durham was an investigator in the case at hand is almost certainly a higher bar than convincing a jury that Durham is a prosecutor…

          • Rugger9 says:

            It means to throw out of the window, probably related to the German for window (fenster). I picked it up reading about the 30 Years’ War which started with the Defenestration of Prague.

            • Paulumba says:

              The etymology of “defenestrate” is normally derived from the Latin word, “fenestra” meaning “window,” “fenestration” or the arrangement of windows also comes from the same root. I like to include the prefix “de” meaning “down from” when I think of defenestration.

              I hope I used the same name as when I commented before.

          • TooLoose LeTruck says:

            It is indeed a wonderful word…

            I don’t recall where or when I first heard it, but I’ve been familiar with it for many years…

            It rates right up there w/ embuggerance for wonderfulness…

  4. David F says:

    Pardon me for missing a threshold issue. If Sussman is willing to overlook a potential conflict of interest at Latham & Watkins, why would the government or the court care? Latham isn’t representing them.

    • bmaz says:

      Because courts should always be concerned, irrespective of putative waivers. Just because there is a waiver does NOT mean it is truly appropriate.

    • David Nieporent says:

      Because if it turns out that the conflict was unwaivable or wasn’t KIV waived, then Sussman would have grounds to appeal any conviction.

  5. WilliamOckham says:

    Now I’m curious as whether Durham doesn’t understand DNS or if he just knows his audience doesn’t. Because those numbers don’t say what he appears to think they say. 2014 to 2017 is 1461 days (2016 was a leap year). 3 million DNS requests to the Russian Phone Provider is a bit over 2000 a day. That would be 20 phones if they used their phones like I do. Maybe that could represent 200 phones. Any way you look at it, that’s an astonishingly rare phone.

    • emptywheel says:

      Someone a bit more familiar with the players than me once told me that Durham is going to get his ass handed to him at trial by technical experts.

        • WilliamOckham says:

          That might be under selling it, tbh. This shit is really egregious. I’m really starting to think that someone might complain to the DOJ IG that Durham has deliberately misrepresented the technical data in this case. And I suspect Horowitz would enjoy that.

          • bmaz says:

            What will the DOJ IG do with that, since they have no jurisdiction over DOJ attorneys? Would have to go to the OPR, which is a roach motel. And, by the way, Horowitz is an unreliable person. Nobody should ever put their faith in David Horowitz, he is a hack.

          • emptywheel says:

            Oh yes. Horowitz would love to kill this, especially before Durham puts one of his investigators on the stand in Danchenko.

      • Njrun says:

        I think Durham doesn’t care about a conviction, since that’s not his purpose.

        In fact, he wins no matter what. Trump’s tweet about this, which he will repeat forever, is the “conviction” he sought.

        Case gets thrown out? Years of tweets about deep state judges.

        Lose at trial? Liberal jury hates Trump.

    • rokkitman says:

      It’s statistical chicanery, right out of the grifter toolbox. Durham’s cited frequencies imply as little as a 1 in 100,000 chance that the special Russian phone use around Trump Tower (alone) was part of a normal distribution. (ie 3 million lookups distributed over a nation of ~300 million cellphones implies a frequency of 100 users per lookup, while 1,000 lookups distributed over 1 or 10 Trump team users = 1 user per 100 to 1,000 lookups, thus 100 x 100 -> 10,000:1 odds and 100 x 1,000 -> 100,000:1). Multiply that factor by Durham’s failure to include the other 3 cited locations in this statistical sleight of hand, and we can decrease those odds who knows how much further.

    • Rugger9 says:

      It has been something I’ve been saying for a while: this is not really about prosecuting Sussman, it is really about publicity so the RWNM has something to froth over. As bmaz noted, it’s a pity that Sussman can’t go after Durham for this but maybe the judge can send Durham back to court ordered remedial training like the one on KS did with Kobach, and suspend his license to practice until he does pass it.

      • Desider says:

        Durham turns 72 next month – I’m not sure how worried he is about his future career. He hasn’t seemed worried about his present one for a while.

    • Peterr says:

      “Now I’m curious as whether Durham doesn’t understand DNS or if he just knows his audience doesn’t.”

      Both of these could also be true.

    • Yohei72 says:

      A plaintive request here for someone to give a plain English explanation for the technologically ignorant on what all this “DNS lookup” stuff is about. I gather the frothers are frothing that it means Dems somehow cyber-spied on Trump and anti-frothers are responding, “LOLWHUT? No.” But I can’t make heads or tails of it beyond that. I can’t be the only one in this position.

      Please and thank you.

      • WilliamOckham says:

        Ok, here’s a simplified version. Take out your smart phone and open the browser and (laboriously) type http://www.emptywheel.net. Before the home page loads, here’s what happens.
        Your phone needs to know where to send that request. Specifically, it needs the Internet Protocol Address associated with that server name. Your phone doesn’t want to store the address of every damn server on the Internet. Instead, it stores the address of one particular server, a Domain Name System (DNS) server.

        So, your phone sends a DNS lookup request to that server. Now, that server doesn’t store the address of every server on the internet either. If you or someone else using that DNS server has asked for that address recently, the DNS server might know the address and send it back to you. However, if it doesn’t have an address for emptywheel.net, it asks its big brother DNS server for the address. Worst case scenario, the request ends up going to one of the root DNS servers. They actually do know how to reach any domain name on the internet.

        During the timeframe under discussion, all DNS lookups happened in the open, unencrypted. And they were recorded by DNS servers. Every time you went to http://www.emptywheel.net, some DNS server logged that your IP address requested the IP address for http://www.emptywheel.net.

        And, of course, all those requests, if someone put them together, made for a really interesting database. So, IIRC, the Defense Department gave Georgia Tech a grant to collect and analyze all those records. There were also other private entities that put together similar databases. Back then (2014-2017), all of this stuff was out in the open. None of it was considered secret. (That is actually a bit of problem and, nowadays, you can use a DNS server that accepts your requests over an encrypted channel and doesn’t log your IP or anything else about the request).

        I hope that helps. Let me know if anything needs to be clarified.

      • P J Evans says:

        I’m not entirely tech-ignorant, but AFAICT it’s all “LOLWUT” stuff to keep the RWNJs frothing at the mouth. Especially when they start going on about acid-washing servers and the like – I know at that point they’ve never seen one and have no clue what they’re talking about.

      • Troutwaxer says:

        DNS stands for Domain Name Service. As you may know, your computer (and every other computer connected to the network) has what’s called an IP Address. (Internet Protocol Address.) That’s a number something like 192.168.1.23.

        Some computers also have a domain name. This is the computer’s “English” (or French, Russian, Chinese, etc.,) name. “Google.com” is a domain name. So is “www.emptywheel.net.” Every domain name is attached to an IP Address, just like everyone’s name is attached to a street address or phone number. Really important domain names, like “google.com” have multiple IP Addresses, just like big businesses have multiple phone numbers/addresses.

        A Domain Name Service (DNS) is like a phone book. If you ask it “where is google.com” it will give you an IP Address where google.com can be found. DNS servers contain all the Domain Name/IP Address mappings. Generally when a device, such as a cell phone, is given its own IP Address, it’s also given the IP Address of a DNS server. The important thing to remember is that this process is usually automatic. If you have an AT&T cell phone it will contact AT&T when it’s turned on and say “please give me an IP Address so I can be on the Internet.” AT&T’s routers will reply, saying something like “Your IP Address is 192.168.37.4. Your Gateway (to the Internet) is 192.168.37.1. Your DNS addresses are 234.123.19.2 and 234.123.18.2. Note that DNS service is so important that your device is typically given two IP Addresses for DNS service. Generally DNS services keep a log of what information they’ve given out and what IP Address requested that information.

        It is possible to pick your own DNS server, but this is pretty unusual for ordinary users and indicates either a degree of paranoia or the need to keep something secret. There are also specialized Domain Name services which, for example, don’t give out IP Addresses associated with pornography. (These can be very useful for people with children.)

        Note that this does not mean, with absolute certainty, that the Trump organization is doing something nefarious with their phones. But it is suspicious. I’d need to know a lot more to have an opinion of anyone’s guilt or innocence.

      • Zinsky says:

        Thank you William and Troutwaxer for bringing the discussion to the DNS servers and the original “pinging” of the Trump Org servers by the Alfa Bank and Spectrum Health servers. I hope everyone interested references the original Dexter Filkins story in the New Yorker here:

        https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign

        As noted in the New Yorker article, as far back as February 2016, a cybersecurity expert dubbed “Max” was concerned about the unusual DNS lookup activity between these servers and approached the FBI with these concerns. How does this compare to the timing of the Sussman meetings with Baker? Sussman was far from the only one who thought this activity was suspicious, as the article notes. I think this is important contextual information. I also would like to understand more about who on the Trump team was using Russian-made phones, why and what the call traffic was on those phones between, say, January and December of 2016.

        • Dopey-o says:

          I would really like to read a front page post by William and Troutwaxxer, explaining this story.

          I see references to DNS lookups, infiltrating Trump servers, and hacking White House / EOP computers. I know it’s baffle-gab, but they seem the most qualified to explain what’s going on, and why the spin is (deliberately?) misleading.

          ETA: Xboxershorts would also have a valuable perspective to contribute.

    • Xboxershorts says:

      And these anomalous DNS queries weren’t your run of the mill DNS queries from a carrier’s internal recursive DNS trying to find your choice of porn website either.

      These were uncached queries that are directed to the ROOT Name Servers.

      You ONLY query the ROOT name servers when your carrier’s recursive DNS servers don’t have a saved record of the internet host you’re trying to get to. The ROOT name servers are special and were never intended to actually provide regular Internet Host lookups. The ROOT name servers only tell you who the responsible Domain is and what their registered NAME servers are. After hitting the ROOT name server and getting an answer, a recursive DNS server will then query the Domain’s listed DNS servers, which the ROOT server provides, for the host you’re looking for. These HOST level records normally last a week (configurabole lifetime) and are saved (cached) by recursive DNS servers for their (configured) lifetime.

      And…No one, and I mean NO ONE, has ever tried to explicitly explain what the content of this lookup traffic was. So…How the fuck can Durham try to paint this as a Clinton setup?
      Did the HRC campaign somehow trick Trump Tower into deleting it’s DNS cache forcing the Trump org mail server to then query the ROOT name server for that Russian domain?

      Yes, Durham is going to get FUCKED OVER if he takes this to trial. He will be embarrassed. And it can’t happen soon enough.

      But…FOX news is already pushing the Durham fabrication. So, I guess, mission accomplished? Is it the case Durham would sacrifice his reputation just to put some pure partisan poop flinging content into the media stream? His reputation meant that little to him?

      • Yohei72 says:

        I’m seeing mouth-breathers onTwitter claiming that the Clinton campaign hacked into the Trump Tower servers and put fake info on it to frame Trump. This is how far the game of telephone has already taken Durham’s claims. Mission accomplished.

        One guy was telling me that the statute of limitations hasn’t expired because there’s an ongoing criminal conspiracy against Trump. What does this conspiracy consist of? He literally said every time Clinton accuses Trump of colluding with Russia, she’s acting in furtherance of the conspiracy to frame him. You read that right – making accusations against Trump is a criminal action. You cannot make up this shit.

        • Zinsky says:

          All of the usual right-wing purveyors of lies have already transmuted DNS lookups into “hacking”. Daily Caller, Breitbart, Drudge, Rense – they are all claiming that Sussman “hacked” Trump Tower servers and planted Russian digital artifacts on them to frame Trump. Breathtakingly phony spin on a simple set of queries that anyone with an Internet connection can perform. However, the alternate narrative is now rock-solid in Cuckooland and will be there for ever and ever!

  6. Rugger9 says:

    Excellent humor above, much appreciated. However, how long until the judge decides that this legal grasping at straws is not proving anything and just dismisses the case?

    Perhaps Clinesmith can challenge his plea deal as well like Flynn did.

      • Phil says:

        Do you think he wants to?

        It would almost be worth it to see Durham’s case destroyed in court to the point Durham drops the case rather than continue with the beatings.

  7. Frank Anon says:

    I just don’t understand what is in this for Durham anymore. He was well regarded in Connecticut until the Nora Dannehy dust-up, she went to work as the GC for the Governor and Durham just stayed put pressing these obviously thin cases, but for what? Is he actually a believer, is he compromised, is it just he likes an endless easy job? Does he think he’s AG in the next Trump Administration? Its just so curious

    • J Yo says:

      Love it or hate it, Trump casts a spell. 75 million votes?! And Durham is chugging the kool aid. The GOP bias reinforcement network is so popular it has become entirely self sufficient. Durham will be a HERO in MAGAville where the career awards are waiting and all the yachts, private jets and socializing he’ll ever need.

    • Theresa N says:

      Is it because Durham is in the Opus Dei cult with like-minded crackpot Barr? They are just being true servants of their cult master?

      • Krisy Gosney says:

        That would be my guess. Trump openly courted the Chistianists and Christian Nationalist and they have been actively loyal to him.

        • Ginevra diBenci says:

          There is considerable overlap between rightwing Catholicism and the Federalist Society; see Leonard Leo, the man who chose the current SCOTUS. (See Katherine Stewart and Randall Balmer for more, as well as Anne Nelson’s Shadow Network.) They don’t have to be Opus Dei to lean hard into the kind of repressive authoritarian Catholicism practiced by Viktor Orban in Hungary; Mike Pence has expressed his own admiration for Orban’s success at banning abortion.

      • Ken Muldrew says:

        In Ottawa, there was an injunction to stop truckers from blaring their horns so they erected a stage and put a Nickleback tribute band on. We’re talking barbarian tactics here!

          • Rugger9 says:

            Wasn’t that Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band? Check out their hit album Trout Mask Replica. It’s a pre-tribute for Nickelback that somehow (if one believes Wiki) is inspirational. No report on how many pitchers / mushrooms / dots / reefers were indulged in before rendering their verdicts.

            • Leoghann says:

              Funny that Captain Beefheart should come up in a thread about John “Bullxxxx” Durham. Don Van Vliet (Beefheart) was also known as a consummate asshole.

        • Rugger9 says:

          I was teaching a stats class a few years back and was asked about the how to determine significance in different data sets when one set’s standard deviation was much larger than the other. As the example I noted how it’s hard to pick out Mozart (much more ordered) when Nickelback was also playing (much more chaotic) which actually clicked for the class. For our site’s nerds (and assuming both data sets are normally distributed which has to be proved in my class) this affects the degrees of freedom used to determine the critical value for deciding significance.

          • praxEs says:

            Nerd here. I love your musical example.

            The issue that would first concern me is the likelihood that the sample with the larger variance contained sufficiently extreme outliers that it’s skewness artificially dragged the mean in one direction or the other, possibly because the sample is just plain too small.

            My approach would have involved some combination of winsorizing or trimming depending on the extremity of the scores in the more skewed distribution and conventions in that field of study. Alternatively, one might reduce the level of measurement in the scores in each sample and choose a nonparametric test. Of course, less information reducing transformations might be employed like log for interval or better level data.

            My most colorful attempt to demonstrate the importance of these considerations, and their solutions, was to distribute to students slices of raison bread from two different bread makers and then plot the two distributions. BTW Pepperidge Farm was the undisputed champion for mean number of raisons and sometimes showed a smaller SD than bread makers that averaged far fewer raisons per slice.

            • Rugger9 says:

              It’s better when a data set’s normality can be rejected to go to Mann-Whitney which sets up nicely on Excel. That procedure basically tests medians and for highly skewed data is preferred to tests that have normal distribution as a prerequisite.

        • Marinela says:

          There were not that many people “protesting”, but they are able to cause so much damage in lost revenue.
          Who is going to pay for the lost money?
          There is no free lunch. Somebody is going to pay for it. This means we all pay.

          And for what? They don’t have a clear message. What is that they are changing by this ridiculous protest?
          As a society, why do we need to pay for people acting up?
          First amendment guarantees your right to free speech, but not force somebody else to pay for your idiocy.

          At least some of the media explained the lost revenue issue.

          • Ken Muldrew says:

            In Ottawa, the people organizing and coordinating the protest are a mix of insurrectionists not too different from the Jan. 6 crowd. There is your delusional element (Free men on the land types), white supremacists, as well as your Bannon-style chaos mongers.

            Most of the demonstrators are useful idiots who are there to demand an end to vaccine passports and masking rules (as well as a laundry list of unrelated demands that just come flowing out once the social stigma of being deplorable is no longer in play).

            A society can be fairly judged by how well it treats its most vulnerable members. That a significant chunk of us (Canadians) have chosen to make common cause with Nazis and insurrectionists because the lives of the elderly and immunocompromised aren’t worth a moderate degree of personal inconvenience is something that we are going to have to deal with. It would be nice to just dismiss them as a minority but now that they have declared themselves, there is no going back to polite toleration. Some hard days lie ahead.

            • Marinela says:

              When you have few dozen protesters imposing their will on millions it is not about free speech anymore.
              Having the press presence in numbers to be the same as protesters it is also ridiculous.
              They are targeting liberal controlled cities. Why not impose a curfew to leaving the bridge and follow up with arrests for the useful idiots. The ring leaders are going to leave and let the idiots take the fall. These people are not heroes.

        • Molly Pitcher says:

          https://www.thedailybeast.com/barry-manilows-greatest-hits-played-on-loop-to-get-rid-of-anti-vax-protesters-in-new-zealand

          “New Zealand authorities blasted out Barry Manilow’s greatest hits in a bid to disperse anti-vaccine protesters camped out for days in front of the country’s parliament building. The protesters remain, however. According to local media reports, Parliament Speaker Trevor Mallard made the decision to play Manilow on loop after the protests in Wellington went on for several days. The protesters, who have been camped out in front of the parliament building to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates, were also subjected to “Macarena.” Mallard had reportedly resorted to blaring a playlist of the 25 most hated songs in the world after the protesters were unfazed by water sprinklers being used against them.”

          • TooLoose LeTruck says:

            Barry Manilow… and Macarena?

            Gawd… sounds like what must play on an endless loop in Satan’s waiting room…

            How many of the protesters died from trying to gouge their own ears out?

            • Rugger9 says:

              I had a friend get stuck on the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland for about 40 minutes and the theme song blared all the way through. It took all of his SERE training to make it.

  8. Barb says:

    OT question: Did Pence really freeze the clock on Jan 7th to reflect that it was still Jan 6th when they certified electors?

    “Trump tried to keep the #Jan6thRiot going till past midnight to force the 12th Amendment to kick in. Mike Pence actually froze the clock in the congressional chambers, so that technically it wasn’t Jan 7th when they finally affirmed the electors.” Audio: https://twitter.com/Greg_Palast/status/1492676398418440193

  9. Grant G says:

    Good clean read….Durham working overtime trying to connect very speculative dots….My guess, none of Durham’s latest allegations see a courtroom floor.

    Cheers

  10. Badger Robert says:

    As Ms. Wheeler notes, its not easy to see how any of this gets admitted into evidence, or how Patel even testifies, if the defense files the required motions.
    Its prejudicial affect of introducing collateral matters would have to be outweighed by some material significance. It does not add anything to show that anyone relied on Sussman’s answers or that if affected any decision.
    Would the court grant most of limitations requested by the defense just to make a manageable trial?

  11. Ken_L says:

    Demonstrating their mastery of the facts of the situation, Trump Republicans on their websites are crowing gleefully that they finally have proof the FBI spied on poor persecuted President Trump.

  12. greengiant says:

    Why do I think of FBI stinger ANON cell phones.
    Durham front running Russian cell phones in the WH cause most sensitive information about EOP security leaked?

  13. Leoghann says:

    Sure, Durham’s shaky statistics about DNS lookups give his filing a techy ring, and leave real techies muttering to themselves. But the other part of his statistical claims, the fact that the Trump White House had so few lookups in comparison to the US, is used to support a logical assumption that’s truly ridiculous. It doesn’t matter if there were 1,000 lookups, or 100. What matters is if even one or two of those was actually for a message that was part of traitorous behavior.

  14. YancyFaith says:

    Sundance’s guests in TheTreeHouseOfNoKnowledge are calling their plumbers to remove the bricks they passed after reading the emptywheel tweet.

  15. Troutwaxer says:

    Something else which should be clearly noted here is that 3,000,000 DNS lookups are a drop in the bucket. Your computer/phone/tablet performs a DNS lookup every time it goes to a new website. I suspect that means billions of DNS lookups every day in the U.S. alone.

    Also, I note that the lie Durham is pushing as “criminal” is that Sussman told the FBI that he was not representing the Clinton campaign. Does Durham have any materials which show that Sussman billed anyone for his visit to the FBI office? If there is no specific bill which covers those hours (or that event) how does Durham expect to prove this? Also, does anyone know of any exculpatory evidence. For example, did Sussman send Hillary an email saying, “I won’t be available on such-and-such a day?” It seems obvious to me that Person A can work for Person B, but report a possible crime due to Person A’s specific concerns rather than at Person B’s urging.

  16. Savage Librarian says:

    Dump

    I’d like to curse the ones
    who played along,
    and made the country
    fall down on its knees.

    [CHORUS] Who put the dump
    In the chumpy dumpy trump?
    Who put the ban
    in the ban on bannon ding dong?

    Who put the bop
    in the bop kash bop kash bop?
    Who put the dip
    in the rudy da dip da dip?

    Who made us curse,
    and made things so much worse
    for rule of law
    and for democracy? [end of CHORUS]

    Even if absurd:
    Dump data dump
    of chumpy dumpy trump,
    Every act concealed a right wing part.

    And when we heard them slingin’:
    Land on supplant a righthand, uh,
    plant a sting on,
    We knew we’d halt their fascist art.

    [CHORUS: Who put the dump in…]

    Every time they throw a Stone,
    Couldn’t we, shouldn’t we, wouldn’t we,
    hookity, shookity, bookity boo,
    Let all our nation’s people know?

    And when we hear their rants to:
    Dip da dip da dip,
    Dip da dip da dip,
    There’s another thing they’ll undergo.

    [CHORUS: Who put the dump in…]

    https://youtu.be/lXmsLe8t_gg

    “Who Put The Bomp – Barry Mann”

    • Ginevra diBenci says:

      On the one hand, SL, I laud your verve and originality. On the other, I tip my hat to your technical virtuosity. But now I need a third hand, for your versatility in taking on (and taking down) this genre.

      What is the sound of three hands clapping? This.

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