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Jim Baker’s Tweet and the Recidivist Foreign Influence Cheater

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In my post on what prosecutors need to prove to win their case against Michael Sussmann, I noted they had to prove that:

  • Sussmann said the lie that they claim he did: that he affirmatively said he was not sharing the Alfa Bank allegations on behalf of a client
  • He said it on September 19, and not just on September 18
  • It was an intentional lie
  • It was material, meaning the alleged lie mattered to the operation of the FBI

I think the government has, in some ways, done best presenting their materiality arguments (but then, that’s the lowest bar). But even there, exhibits submitted at trial show that at least two of the key decision-makers on investigative issues had received a text referencing that this was a DNC report; Andrew DeFilippis speculated with one of the witnesses who received the text that it was a typo for DNS. And it appears, in multiple situations, people just assumed that Sussmann was at the FBI on behalf of the Hillary campaign, and took it into account. That said, Berkowitz got Baker — who was a key player in the Stellar Wind story that Eric Lichtblau held through an election in 2004 — to explain how important, from a national security perspective, it can be to hold certain stories.

And as I’ll show, Sussmann’s team may have something very special in store to make their materiality argument.

Regarding whether his statement that he was not there “on behalf of any client,” I think Sussmann has made a very good case that he meant his comment to Jim Baker on September 18 that he wanted to help the FBI. Both Marc Elias and Robbie Mook testified that sharing advance warning of a story they wanted to come out was the last they would have wanted or approved, because Jim Comey had done so much to damage the campaign. Particularly if Eric Lichtblau testifies, Sussmann will have a powerful story about all the damage that going to the FBI did to the campaign.

As to the other questions, they all go to Baker’s credibility on the stand.

I can’t say how the jury reacted, but I think prosecutors really didn’t do what they needed to do to prove that Sussmann repeated his comment about not meeting with Baker on behalf of any client and, then, hiding it when he helped the FBI kill the story later in the week. And Berkowitz did even more to show the changing nature of Baker’s statements about the meeting over time.

I did two long twitter threads on Sean Berkowitz’ cross-examination of Baker (Thursday night, Friday morning). I think Berkowitz achieved the following:

  • Used Baker to define “lie” as having an intention to deceive.
  • Made it clear that Baker reconstructed his understanding of his face-to-face meeting with Sussmann with the help of a chain of custody log that an FBI agent referring to the process called “doctored.” That’s going to provide Sussmann’s team a great metaphor to explain what Baker’s memory consists of.
  • Got Baker to suggest his memory of what happened on September 19 amounted to “words to that effect” of what has been charged.
  • Got Baker to agree that there’s at least a 25% chance Sussmann told him he had a client on September 21, which would be proof he wasn’t hiding a client.
  • Foregrounded the possibility that Baker could be prosecuted for his many inconsistent statements, including some that were made in 2018 and some that were made months ago. The statute of limitations on Baker’s inconsistent statements won’t expire until 2027.
  • Showed that Baker’s testimony on the stand was inconsistent with things he told Durham even in recent months; and Baker continues to not remember key details both of what happened on September 19 but also much more recently.
  • Showed that Baker’s reconstructed memory shifts at times from “that matter” (collecting the data) to the meeting itself; this is a reconstructed memory that can only come from prosecutors.
  • Demonstrated that Durham withheld at least three documents that could have “refreshed” Baker’s memory to believing Sussmann had told him he had a client.
  • Placed Durham in the room for some of the key sessions — including in Summer 2020, when Barr and Trump were pressuring Durham to show some results in time for the election — when Baker’s memory was “refreshed.”

Those threads were hard to write and I’m sure even more painful for people who are friends of one or both men to read. The story Berkowitz told was how, through the relentless grind of Republican blowhards and the Trump DOJ’s politicized investigations, Baker came to “remember” testimony that could put his friend, Sussmann, someone who had tried to get him a job when he was at a really bad point in his life, in prison.

There was no way out for Sussmann except to destroy his friend. And Berkowitz at least made it seem that Baker had believed there was no way out for him except to “refresh” his memory to match what Durham wanted.

I suspect it likely that Sussmann’s team will point out that Durham is choosing to prosecute just the people whose story doesn’t match the one that Durham wants to tell. It’s not just Baker whose testimony to Durham is inconsistent with provable facts, but Durham is not prosecuting any of the witnesses who are saying what he wants them to.

With all that as background I want to point to something subtle that I suspect will become part of that theme. Ostensibly to address materiality — Baker’s belief, one he shared with Congress in 2018 but contradicted under coaching by Durham on the stand — that if you have a national security tip you need to feel free to come to the FBI. Baker tweeted it out on June 13, 2019.

This would have been posted weeks after Durham was appointed, which — Baker testified — led Baker to expect he’d be under criminal investigation again.

Q. And you, sir, were aware that Mr. Baker was — I mean, Mr. Durham was reappointed as special counsel, correct, in or around 2019?

A. For this matter?

Q. yes.

A. yes.

Q. And when that happened, you were concerned, were you not?

A. Concerned about what?

Q. That Mr. Durham might come and investigate you more?

A. I wasn’t concerned about it. I expected it.

Q. All right. You expected to be investigated further by Mr. Durham. Correct?

A. Correct.

After having laid out how Baker had been investigated by Durham as part of a leak investigation for years, Berkowitz even introduced a text that Baker sent Ben Wittes the day after Durham was appointed saying, “now I get to be investigated for another year or two by John Durham. Lovely.”

But the tweet about going to the FBI wasn’t about Durham and it wasn’t random.

Rather, it was a response to something Trump said in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, between the time Mueller wrapped up his investigation, in part, of Trump’s request, “Russia, are you listening,” in 2016 and the time Trump asked Volodymyr Zelensky, “but first, I would like you to do us a favor.” On the same day Baker encouraged people to go to the FBI if they had evidence, ABC posted an interview in which Trump said,

“It’s not an interference, they have information — I think I’d take it,” Trump said. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI — if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, ‘oh let’s call the FBI.’ The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”

I’m not precisely sure how Sussmann’s team is going to use this tweet, beyond the materiality question, materiality about precisely this situation, whether someone should share information with the FBI after their opponent solicited help from a hostile foreign government.

But it sure seems to be evidence of more than just materiality.

The March 6, 2017 Notes: Proof about Materiality

Update: Read this post on the March 6, 2017 notes before this one.

I want to return to John Durham’s objection to Michael Sussmann’s plan to offer notes from an FBI Agent and notes from a March 6, 2017 meeting as evidence.

The defense also may seek to offer (i) multiple pages of handwritten notes taken by an FBI Headquarters Special Agent concerning his work on the investigation of the Russian Bank-1 allegations, (including notes reflecting information he received from the FBI Chicago case team), and (ii) notes taken by multiple DOJ personnel at a March 6, 2017 briefing by the FBI for the then-Acting Attorney General on various Trump-related investigations, including the Russian Bank-1 allegations. See, e.g., Defense Ex. 353, 370, 410. The notes of two DOJ participants at the March 6, 2017 meeting reflect the use of the word “client” in connection with the Russian Bank-1 allegations.1 The defendant did not include reference to any of these notes – which were taken nearly six months after the defendant’s alleged false statement – in its motions in limine. Moreover, the DOJ personnel who took the notes that the defendant may seek to offer were not present for the defendant’s 2016 meeting with the FBI General Counsel. And while the FBI General Counsel was present for the March 6, 2017 meeting, the Government has not located any notes that he took there.

The Government respectfully submits that the Court should require the defense to proffer a non-hearsay basis for each portion of the aforementioned notes that they intend to offer at trial. The defendant has objected to the Government’s admission of certain notes taken by FBI officials following the defendant’s September 19, 2016 meeting with the FBI General Counsel, and the Government has explained in detail its bases for admitting such notes. Accordingly, the defendant should similarly proffer a legal basis to admit the notes he seeks to offer at trial. Fed. R. Evid. 801(c).

1. The notes of the March 6, 2017 briefing do not appear on the defendant’s Exhibit List, but the Government understands from its recent communications with counsel that they may intend to offer the notes at trial.

As I noted here, attempting to introduce the notes achieves some tactical purpose for Sussmann: presumably, the rules Judge Christopher Cooper adopted in his motions in limine order will apply to these two potential exhibits. So putting these exhibits out there provide a way to hem Durham in on that front.

But they may be more central to Sussmann’s defense. Sussmann may be preparing these exhibits (and one or more witnesses to introduce them) to prove that his alleged lie was not material.

We know a bit about the meeting in question and the potential note-takers.

The DOJ IG Report on Carter Page explains that, after Dana Boente became acting Attorney General after Sally Yates’ firing, he asked for regular briefings because he believed that, “the investigation had not been moving with a sense of urgency,” and that, “it was extraordinarily important to the Department and its reputation that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections were investigated.” DOJ IG may have muddled the scope of these meetings (as they did the scope of Bruce Ohr’s actions), because Boente was obviously talking about all the Russian interference allegations, and Alfa Bank was, as far as we know, always separate from Crossfire Hurricane (and in any case never became part of the Mueller investigation).

On January 30, 2017, Boente became the Acting Attorney General after Yates was removed, and ten days later became the Acting DAG after Jefferson Sessions was confirmed and sworn in as Attorney General. Boente simultaneously served as the Acting Attorney General on the FBI’s Russia related investigations after Sessions recused himself from overseeing matters “arising from the campaigns for President of the United States.” Boente told the OIG that after reading the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) report on Russia’s election influence efforts (described in Chapter Six), he requested a briefing on Crossfire Hurricane. That briefing took place on February 16, and Boente said that he sought regular briefings on the case thereafter because he believed that it was extraordinarily important to the Department and its reputation that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections were investigated. Boente told us that he also was concerned that the investigation lacked cohesion because the individual Crossfire Hurricane cases had been assigned to multiple field offices. In addition, he said that he had the impression that the investigation had not been moving with a sense of urgency-an impression that was based, at least in part, on “not a lot” of criminal legal process being used. To gain more visibility into Crossfire Hurricane, improve coordination, and speed up the investigation, Boente directed ODAG staff to attend weekly or bi-weekly meetings with NSD for Crossfire Hurricane case updates.

Boente’s calendar entries and handwritten notes reflect multiple briefings in March and April 2017. Boente’s handwritten notes of the March meetings reflect that he was briefed on the predication for opening Crossfire Hurricane, the four individual cases, and the status of certain aspects of the Flynn case. [my emphasis]

As noted, these meetings focused on ways to “reenergize” the Russian investigations, including the one into Paul Manafort’s corruption.

Additionally, notes from an FBI briefing for Boente on March 6, 2017, indicate that someone in the meeting stated that Ohr and Swartz had a “discussion of kleptocracy + Russian org. crime” in relation to the Manafort criminal case in an effort to “re-energize [the] CRM case.”

And we know who attended the March 6 meeting, because Jeffrey Jensen released highly redacted notes — with a date added — as part of his effort to blow up the Mike Flynn case.

Jim C[rowell, who took the notes]

FBI/McCabe/Baker/Rybicki/Pete/Toscas

Scott/Tash/McCord/Dana/

For the benefit of the frothers who are sure David Laufman was part of this: sorry, he was not.

Laufman did not attend the meetings in January, February, and March 2017 that were attended by Boente, McCord, and other senior Department officials.

The IG Report describes that in addition to Crowell, Boente, Tashina Gauhar, and Scott Schools took notes of these meetings. We also know Strzok was an assiduous note taker, so it’s likely he took notes as well. People like Crowell (who is now a Superior Court judge) or Boente would make powerful witnesses at trial.

And according to Durham’s objection, among the as many as five sets of notes from this meeting that James Baker attended, two say that the word “client” came up in conjunction with the Alfa Bank allegations.

Durham seems to suspect this is an attempt to bolster possible Baker testimony that, after the initial meeting between him and Sussmann, he came to know Sussmann had a client (which would be proof that Sussmann wasn’t hiding that). He did, and within days! That’s one important part of the communications during which Baker got Sussmann and Rodney Joffe’s help to kill the NYT story: as part of that exchange, he learned that Sussmann had to consult with someone before sharing which news outlet was about to publish the Alfa Bank story. For that purpose, according to the common sense rules just adopted by Cooper, one or some of the ten people at the meeting would need to remember Baker referring to a “client,” and one of the two people who noted that in real time has to remember doing so.

But there’s likely another reason Sussmann would want to introduce this information.

Not only did a contemporaneous record reflect that everyone involved learned if they did not already know that there was a client involved in this Alfa Bank allegation, but by then everyone involved also knew that Glenn Simpson worked first for a GOP and then a Democratic client.

Finally, handwritten notes and other documentation reflect that in February and March 2017 it was broadly known among FBI officials working on and supervising the investigation, and shared with senior NSD and ODAG officials, that Simpson (who hired Steele) was himself hired first by a candidate during the Republican primaries and then later by someone related to the Democratic Party.

The things that, Durham insists, would have led the FBI to shy away from this investigation were known by the time of this meeting.

And, I suspect, that’s why Sussmann wants to introduce the FBI Agent’s notes (and yes, it is possible they are Strzok’s). Because the actions taken in the wake of this meeting provide a way of assessing what the FBI would have done — and did do — after such time as they undeniably knew that Sussmann had a client.

Boente wanted more action taken. Ultimately, whatever action was taken led shortly thereafter to the closure of the investigation.

But Durham’s entire prosecution depends on proving that the FBI would have acted differently if they knew Sussmann had a client. So it is perfectly reasonable for Sussmann to introduce evidence about what the FBI said and did after such time as they provably did know that.

 

John Durham Wails about Michael Sussmann Adopting His Own Evidentiary Standards

Last month, I noted that John Durham had forgotten to file a motion in limine to exclude evidence of the rampant hacking Russia did against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But along the way, Durham’s tunnel vision about 2016 led him to forget to exclude the things that do go to Sussmann’s state of mind, such as the very real Russian attack on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s public call for more such attacks.

So while Durham may be excluded from claiming that a private citizen’s attempt to learn about real crimes by a Presidential candidate before he is elected amounts to a criminal conspiracy, it is too late for Durham now to try to exclude evidence about Sussmann’s understanding of Donald Trump’s very real role in a hack of his client.

In a challenge to Michael Sussmann’s trial exhibits last night, Durham has effectively tried to belatedly correct that error.

Meanwhile, in Sussmann’s own challenge to Durham’s exhibits, he labels 121 exhibits as hearsay, 267 as irrelevant, and 143 as prejudicial.

Durham objects to three kinds of evidence, all utterly pertinent to Sussmann’s defense, and all akin to the same kind of evidence Durham has fought to introduce to substantiate a conspiracy theory Durham admits he doesn’t have evidence to prove.

The first are hundreds of emails Sussmann had with the FBI pertaining to hacks of the DNC and Hillary (Durham describes hacking attempts against Hillary as “cybersecurity issues” as if unsuccessful hacks don’t count as hacks).

Durham claims that these should come in primarily to disprove Durham’s assumptions about Sussmann’s billing entries, not to illustrate how reasonable it was to be concerned about a DNS anomaly involving Trump and a Russian bank. Durham — who asked to include a voir dire question assuming as fact that the Hillary campaign “promot[ed …] the Trump/Russia collusion narrative” — doesn’t want the FBI’s investigation of serial hacks targeting Democrats to come in to support the fact that such hacks occurred. And he wants to exclude the sheer volume, arguing (not unfairly) that would be cumulative, but not acknowledging that the volume does speak to Sussmann’s focus during a period when Durham claims Sussmann was instead feverishly conspiring to attack Trump. Finally, Durham claims that Sussmann’s focus on Russian cyberattacks is totally unrelated to his concern about an anomaly seeming to suggest a tie between Trump and Alfa.

First, the defendant’s Exhibit List includes more than approximately 300 email chains between and among the defendant and various FBI personnel reflecting the defendant’s work relating to (i) the hack of the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”), and (ii) cybersecurity issues pertaining to the Hillary for America Campaign (“HFA”). As an initial matter, the Government is not contesting that the defendant worked for both of those entities on cybersecurity issues. The Government also acknowledges that certain emails reflecting the defendant’s work on behalf of HFA on cybersecurity matters are potentially relevant and admissible insofar as the defendant might use those emails to argue that some or all of the billing entries to HFA that the Indictment alleges related to the Russian Bank-1 allegations were, in fact, related to work on other matters for HFA. The Government respectfully submits however, that the Court should carefully analyze each email that the defendant offers at trial to ensure that it is not admitted for its truth but instead is offered for a permissible purpose, such as to prove the defendant’s state of mind or the email’s effect on one or more of its recipients. Fed. R. Evid. 801(c); United States v. Safavian, 435 F. Supp. 2d 36, 45–46 (D.D.C. 2006). In addition, the defendant should not be permitted to offer dozens of emails to establish such basic facts because such voluminous evidence would be cumulative and unduly prejudicial. Fed. R. Evid. 403 (permitting courts to preclude parties from “needlessly presenting cumulative evidence”).

As to the dozens of communications regarding the defendant’s work regarding the DNC hack, these emails are largely irrelevant. The defendant billed his work on that matter to the DNC, not HFA. The Indictment alleges specifically that the defendant billed time on the Russian Bank1 allegations to HFA. These emails therefore do not support any inferences or arguments relating to the defendant’s alleged billed time for the Russian Bank-1 allegations. Instead, they contain extensive detail on collateral issues. See, e.g., Defense Ex. 306 (Email dated September 14, 2016 from FBI Special Agent E. Adrian Hawkins to Michael Sussmann, et al., stating in part, “We just got notified by some industry personnel that some previously unreleased DNC documents were uploaded to Virus Total today. In the files there was a contact list that I attached here with lots of personal emails for people. Rumor is that these files are supposed to be the network share for a guy named [named redacted] who worked IT until April 2011.”)

To the extent the defendant is offering such emails in support of arguments that (i) the defendant was an accomplished cybersecurity lawyer, (ii) the defendant was known and respected at the FBI, or (iii) the defendant was concerned about, and involved in responding to, cyberattacks carried out by the Russian Federation, such arguments are peripheral to the charged offense because they do not concern the Russian Bank-1 allegations or the defendant’s statements to the FBI about those allegations. The defendant’s potential arguments in this regard support, at best, the admission of a limited quantity of these emails to establish basic facts about the defendant’s representation of the DNC. Admitting all or most of these exhibits, however, would be highly cumulative and would waste the jury’s time with highly-detailed evidence concerning a tangential matter (the DNC hack) that is not at issue in this trial. Accordingly, the Government respectfully submits that the Court should admit only a limited number of these emails that are not being offered for their truth. [my emphasis]

It is, of course, rank nonsense to claim that the ongoing hacks targeting Democrats were unrelated to efforts to chase down a DNS anomaly. But Durham’s entire team either claims or genuinely does not understand the connection.

Then, in addition to attempting to exclude the notes of an FBI Agent who investigated the Alfa Bank allegations, Durham wants to exclude notes showing that the word “client” came up at a March 6, 2017 briefing on all the Russian allegations for Dana Boente.

The defense also may seek to offer (i) multiple pages of handwritten notes taken by an FBI Headquarters Special Agent concerning his work on the investigation of the Russian Bank-1 allegations, (including notes reflecting information he received from the FBI Chicago case team), and (ii) notes taken by multiple DOJ personnel at a March 6, 2017 briefing by the FBI for the then-Acting Attorney General on various Trump-related investigations, including the Russian Bank-1 allegations. See, e.g., Defense Ex. 353, 370, 410. The notes of two DOJ participants at the March 6, 2017 meeting reflect the use of the word “client” in connection with the Russian Bank-1 allegations. The defendant did not include reference to any of these notes – which were taken nearly six months after the defendant’s alleged false statement – in its motions in limine. Moreover, the DOJ personnel who took the notes that the defendant may seek to offer were not present for the defendant’s 2016 meeting with the FBI General Counsel. And while the FBI General Counsel was present for the March 6, 2017 meeting, the Government has not located any notes that he took there.

I mean, Durham is not wrong on the evidentiary issue: these notes far post-date Sussmann’s alleged lie (though, ironically, the Jeffrey Jensen team added a date to and relied on what must be one set of these notes in their efforts to blow up the Mike Flynn prosecution). While they may reflect James Baker’s statements reflecting knowledge that Sussmann had a client, they’re hearsay.

But Durham is doing both those same things, presenting hearsay notes to substantiate Baker’s knowledge and claiming that meetings that long post-date Sussmann’s alleged lie may be indicative of what Sussmann and Baker actually said in September 2016. Durham has no grounds to complain about such evidentiary sloppiness, because that’s what his entire case consists of.

Finally, Durham — who started his speaking indictment by focusing on two news articles and not only considers Fusion’s communications with the press to be key evidence in his conspiracy theory but even insinuates that everything certain reporters were doing must have come from the Democrats — complains that Sussmann wants to introduce a slew of newspaper articles from 2016. He’s worried that it’ll elicit a sense of horror among the jury.

The Government will not dispute that the DNC was a victim of the aforementioned hack, nor will it dispute that the defendant carried out significant legal work in relation to the hack. The Government similarly will not seek to prove one way or the other whether Donald Trump maintained ties – illicit, unlawful, or otherwise – to Russia, other than to establish facts relating to the FBI’s investigation of the Russian Bank-1 allegations. Permitting the defense to admit the above-listed series of news articles would amount to the ultimate “mini-trial” – of the very sort that will distract and confuse the jury without offering probative evidence. United States v. Ring, 706 F.3d 460, 472 (D.C.Cir.2013) (“Unfair prejudice within its context means an undue tendency to suggest [making a] decision on an improper basis, commonly, though not necessarily, an emotional one.”); see also Carter v. Hewitt, 617 F.2d 961, 972 (3d Cir.1980) (explaining that evidence is unfairly prejudicial “if it appeals to the jury’s sympathies, arouses its sense of horror, provokes its instinct to punish, or otherwise may cause a jury to base its decision on something other than the established propositions in the case.”) (citations omitted). Accordingly, this Court should exclude the above-referenced news articles.

This is the argument that, I noted in real time, Durham should have made last month.

But Durham is also not accounting for how central the articles cited are to Sussmann’s ability to rebut the conspiracy theory Durham wants to tell. The articles show that:

  • Trump’s coziness with Russia, one reason cited in Marc Elias’ declaration for hiring Fusion, was broadly perceived as unusual
  • Trump’s undisclosed financial ties with Russia were a general and persistent concern
  • Public reporting had confirmed the Russian attribution of the DNC hack before Trump asked Russia to hack Hillary some more and the press widely viewed Trump’s “Russia are you listening” comment as a request for more hacks
  • The reporters or outlets Durham wants to make an issue were doing their own reporting on Trump’s Russian ties were doing reporting not seeded by Fusion
  • The corruption scandal implicating Paul Manafort led to his ouster from the campaign during the period researchers were working on the anomaly

Durham complains that “many of [the articles] far predate the defendant’s meeting with the FBI General Counsel,” but only one predates the data collection that Durham has made the central focus of his case and another — Ellen Nakashima’s article reporting the DNC hack — directly kicked off that data collection effort.

These articles explain why it was reasonable, not just for the Democrats’ cybersecurity lawyer who was spending most of his days trying to fight back against a persistent Russian hack, but also for the researchers and Rodney Joffe to try to first look for more Russian hacking (including that victimizing Republicans), and when they found an anomaly, to try to chase it down and even to bring it to the FBI for further investigation. Several threads of these articles — pertaining to Trump’s request that Russia hack Hillary and to Manafort’s corruption — were explicitly invoked in discussions that Durham wants to claim must arise from political malice.

Indeed, as a whole, these articles provide far more reasonable explanations for actions that Durham has claimed, as fact, could only arise out of political malice.

Some of Durham’s complaints are reasonable from an evidentiary standard. But they’re utterly ridiculous given his own wild conspiracy theorizing. And many of these exhibits are utterly necessary to rebut the more outlandish things Durham has been claiming for months.

The Posture of the Michael Sussmann Case

There have been a slew of developments in the Michael Sussmann case, and in advance of two of them, I wanted to lay out what the posture of the case is. One thing that those swooping in for the conspiracy theories seem to miss is that what happens between now and the trial — scheduled to start on May 16, though Durham is trying a number of stunts to delay it — will be dictated by a bunch of rules, and no matter how guilty or innocent or sleazy-but-not-criminal you think Sussmann is (and I think one can make the case for any of the three), the evidence the jury will see will be decided in the next few weeks according to the rules of criminal procedure.

The questions to be decided in the next few weeks are, generally, the following:

  • Whether to penalize Durham for breaking the rules
  • Whether the Alfa Bank DNS anomaly is real and whether the inferences about it are reasonable
  • Whether Judge Christopher Cooper will review privilege claims
  • How much of Durham’s conspiracy theories will be admitted
  • Whether to immunize Rodney Joffe

Whether to penalize Durham for breaking the rules

A question that won’t be decided until after a status conference next Friday, but which dictates the answer to many of the others, will be whether John Durham will be penalized for ignoring deadlines and other rules. To a greater or lesser degree, even after getting an extension on his discovery and CIPA deadlines, Durham blew off the following deadlines without asking for permission:

The identity of his expert testimony and the scope of his testimony: In this case, Durham didn’t blow off a hard deadline imposed by Cooper, but he broke the rules of comity by ignoring repeated requests for a description of his use of expert testimony and, thus far, providing only cursory description of what his expert, Special Agent David Martin, will testify to. Durham has tacitly admitted he didn’t provide this in timely fashion; his defense of Martin stated, “the Government intends to provide defense with a supplemental disclosure regarding his training and experience with DNS and TOR.” That description is what should have been provided to Sussmann months ago, so he could find a better expert — and with all due respect to the investigative expertise of Martin, there are far better qualified experts out there.

According to Durham’s filing, Martin has not tried to replicate the DNS anomaly, nor does it appear he plans to, which is the basis every other expert has used to test theories about the anomaly. Further, as Durham describes it, Martin will explain the sources of DNS data generally, not the DNS data available to the various researchers who worked on the anomaly. This latter point is a big tell, because Durham has made all sorts of misleading claims about the sources of the data.

There will, undoubtedly, be some kind of expert to explain what DNS and Tor are; Cooper has said he needs that information himself. But Cooper would be in his right to use Durham’s late notice to limit Martin’s testimony to those topics. Some of this is likely to get decided in a hearing today, so Sussmann can get an expert of his own accordingly.

404(b) notice for two claims: Durham submitted one 404(b) notice (of evidence he’d like to submit but which may not be direct evidence of a crime) in timely fashion, on March 18. It was very cursory, but it listed 4 topics he wanted to introduce:

  • Sussmann’s February 9, 2017 meeting at the CIA
  • Perkins Coie’s 2018 statements to the press about Sussmann’s meeting with James Baker
  • Sussmann’s 2017 testimony about the meeting to HPSCI
  • Durham’s now disproven accusation that Sussmann got rid of texts he was required to keep under Perkins Coie’s retention policy

But then, five days later, Durham submitted what he called a “supplement.” That expanded the description — and with the expanded description, expanded the scope — of the four topics he had already noticed, and then added two more:

  • The origins of the data
  • Evidence about whether the inferences researchers made about the data were reliable

Those last two topics failed to meet Cooper’s deadline, and he could reject their admission on that basis alone.

Communications over which Sussmann’s clients claimed privilege: Sussmann’s opposition to Durham’s effort to pierce privilege lists three rules Durham broke when he told Sussmann a month before trial he wanted to pierce privileged communications:

  • A failure to meet either Durham’s original discovery deadline or his expanded one
  • A failure to go through Beryl Howell as part of the (secret) grand jury investigation
  • Use of a grand jury to get evidence on an already-charged indictment

Normally, such privilege fights take place over the course of months (like the thus far four months that January 6 Committee has been trying to get John Eastman’s documents over which he has made weaker privilege claims or the year that SDNY spent doing a privilege review of Rudy Giuliani’s devices). Here, Durham attempted to pull a stunt to find a way to do this at the last minute. Cooper even called him out for that stunt, noting that this effort requires a motion to compel, not the motion in limine Durham claimed he was going to use. And Cooper called him out (after putting Durham on notice in response to his inflammatory conflicts motion earlier this year), before being presented with the other ways Durham has abused process in an attempt to pierce privilege claims on the eve of trial. While the third of these is less serious than the other two (Durham will claim he was investigating additional crimes), Cooper could deny Durham’s entire effort based on these rule violations.

Whether the anomaly is real and whether the inferences about it are reasonable

Sussmann has argued that the only thing that matters to the false statement charge against him is his own state of mind of whether the anomaly was real and the inferences in the white papers he shared were reasonable. Durham is using a variety of late-hour tactics to insinuate both the anomaly itself and the inferences drawn from it were a set-up designed to impugn Trump. Importantly, he appears to want to do so not by calling the various researchers who found the inferences reasonable, but instead to talk about what other people looking at other (and usually, far less) data thought of it. He is attempting to do this in three ways:

  • Introducing hearsay documents to which Sussmann was not a party
  • Asking his late-notice expert to talk about the topic without having done the research to address it
  • Calling FBI and CIA witnesses, who also did not replicate the claims, to ask their opinions about it

One way Durham could get to this is by calling Rodney Joffe. He’s literally the only one who would know whether he, Joffe, believed the data were reliable and asked Sussmann to share it believing it represented a national security threat, or whether he knew it was a cock-up and cared more about getting Donald Trump investigated. Joffe is also far more expert than Special Agent Martin. But to do that, Durham would have to immunize Joffe, and he is refusing to do that.

Sussmann has raised really good reasons why the way Durham wants to present the question of the reliability of the data is not only irrelevant to his own state of mind, but also violates rules of criminal procedure. Cooper could reject at least some of these efforts based on those rules. And he could put real limits on these claims at a hearing today.

Whether Cooper will review privilege claims

Right now, Durham has only asked Cooper to review privilege claims behind a bunch of documents he wants to enter, though if Cooper were to do that, it would delay the trial considerably (which may be part of Durham’s intent). If Cooper did review the documents, then there’d be a separate fight about whether the documents are admissible in this trial.

But given the explanations in the court filings, most of the communications in question are totally irrelevant to the false statement charge against Sussmann. Many would count as hearsay, inadmissible unless Cooper accepts Durham’s claims that this amounts to a (legal) conspiracy. Just four — communications with Fusion’s Laura Seago — involve Rodney Joffe, the one person who could speak to Sussmann’s own understanding of the reliability of the data. And many if not most of the documents post-date the date of Sussmann’s meeting with James Baker. So in addition to Durham’s rampant rule violations in making this request, Cooper could reject the effort (at least with respect to most of the documents) based on procedural reasons.

How much of Durham’s conspiracy theories will be admitted

Under the guise of proving a motive wholly incompatible with the now proven willingness on the part of Sussmann and Joffe to help the FBI kill the NYT story, Durham wants to treat the Democrats’ parallel efforts (the Steele dossier and the Alfa Bank anomalies) as one giant conspiracy.

He has not alleged that the conspiracy, if true, amounts to a crime. Indeed, he has ignored that many of the suspicions that he points to as proof of maliciousness — suspicions that Paul Manafort was laundering money from Oligarchs close to Putin, suspicions that family members of Alfa Bank Oligarchs were helping Manafort launder those relations, suspicions that Trump had secret communications directly with the Kremlin — all turned out to be 100% true.

Durham’s ability to make this argument at all really pivots on Joffe’s claims about his relationship with Fusion; he says it was not one of common interest but instead consulting work through Sussmann. That’s undoubtedly the sketchiest claim in this entire house of cards (and because of Joffe’s key role, may be one that Cooper tests).

But even if Cooper finds Joffe’s claims suspect, even if there were a coordinated effort to understand a now-proven effort by Russia to exploit various real relationships with people close to Trump and a now-proven effort to repeatedly hack Hillary, including in response to Trump’s request, it’s not clear that any of that matters to the single false statement charge against Sussmann.

From the very first, I observed that Durham obviously wanted to build a conspiracy charge against the Democrats, and that his case against Sussmann would be stronger if he did. That’s all still true (though evidence submitted thus far make me less convinced the conspiracy is what Durham thinks it is, and more convinced that if he were to charge it, we’d finally get the trial of Donald Trump for 2016 we deserve). But because Putin’s invasion of Ukraine led Durham to lose his trusty Alfa Bank partners in this effort, Durham is left trying to stick a bunch of procedurally square pegs in round holes, and doing so having missed deadlines to do it in proper fashion.

Durham may be legally entitled to get an interlocutory appeal on some of the decisions Cooper is likely to make in the next two weeks. That would delay the trial, something he has been trying to do from day one. But that would also require the assent of Lisa Monaco, and if his appeal was obviously abusive — as an appeal based off his own failure to follow the rules would be — he might not get that chance.

Even if you’re 100% sure there was a conspiracy here, even if you’re 100% sure Durham could find some unlikely hook on which to make that conspiracy criminal, that doesn’t mean he’ll be able to obtain — much less present — the evidence to make his case. Normally, prosecutors take that into account before charging people. Durham rather flamboyantly did not.

And for all the people who’ve spent three years falsely claiming that the Mueller Report showed no evidence that Trump conspired with Russia, you should think a lot more about how much more evidence of a conspiracy Mueller was able to show than Durham has, with an extra year to gather the evidence. Because all that evidence might become admissible if Durham continues to chase his own conspiracy theories.

Whether to immunize Rodney Joffe

As made clear above, some of these questions would be simplified if Joffe were called as a witness. Sussmann says that Joffe is a necessary witness to his defense, and Durham’s claims that he might still charge Joffe are just an abusive attempt to prevent Joffe from providing exculpatory testimony. Durham claims he hasn’t offered use immunity in a discriminatory way (he has given it to David Dagon and may give it to someone at Fusion), and claims that retaining Joffe as a subject of the investigation even after a five year statute of limitation on his actions has expired is not abusive. In a fairly ridiculous passage, Durham further claims that Joffe’s testimony would not be that helpful — but he ignores that Joffe would testify about his joint decision, with Sussmann, to help the FBI kill the NYT story.

Finally, the defendant fails to plausibly allege – nor could he – that the Government here has “deliberately denied immunity for the purpose of withholding exculpatory evidence and gaining a tactical advantage through such manipulation.” Ebbers, 458 F. 3d at 119 (internal citation and quotations omitted). The defendant’s motion proffers that Tech Executive-1 would offer exculpatory testimony regarding his attorney-client relationship with the defendant, including that Tech Executive-1 agreed that the defendant should convey the Russian Bank-1 allegations to help the government, not to “benefit” Tech Executive-1. But that testimony would – if true – arguably contradict and potentially incriminate the defendant based on his sworn testimony to Congress in December 2017, in which he expressly stated that he provided the allegations to the FBI on behalf of an un-named client (namely, Tech Executive-1). And in any event, even if the defendant and his client did not seek specifically to “benefit” Tech Executive-1 through his actions, that still would not render his statement to the FBI General Counsel true. Regardless of who benefited or might have benefited from the defendant’s meeting, the fact still remains that the defendant conducted that meeting on behalf of (i) Tech Executive-1 (who assembled the allegations and requested that the defendant disseminate them) and (ii) the Clinton Campaign (which the defendant billed for some or all of his work). The proffered testimony is therefore not exculpatory, and certainly not sufficiently exculpatory to render the Government’s decision not to seek immunity for Tech Executive-1 misconduct or an abuse.6 The defendant therefore has not met his burden of demonstrating, among other things, that the evidence provided by an immunized witness would tend to show he is “not guilty.” Ebbers, 458 F.3d at 119.

6 The defendant’s further proffer that Tech Executive-1 would testify that (i) the defendant contacted Tech Executive-1 about sharing the name of a newspaper with the FBI General Counsel, (ii) Tech Executive-1 and his associates believed in good faith the Russian Bank-1 allegations, and (iii) Tech Executive-1 was not acting at the direction of the Clinton Campaign, are far from exculpatory. Indeed, even assuming that all of those things were true, the defendant still would have materially misled the FBI in stating that he was not acting on behalf of any client when, in fact, he was acting at Tech Executive-1’s direction and billing the Clinton Campaign.

Thus far, Cooper has not done the one thing I would imagine he’d do if he’s considering this seriously — to order Durham to provide an ex parte description of what Durham really thinks Joffe is still at risk for.

But even on its face, Durham’s claim that Joffe would not be helpful is particularly problematic given that many of Durham’s evidentiary difficulties would be made easier if Joffe could be called to testify (for example, about documents he was party to but Sussmann was not).

If Cooper were to decide to make Durham choose to immunize Joffe or drop the prosecution — a decision that would not come before next Friday — all the other decisions would fall into place much more easily.

Update: Added Joffe immunity discussion.

Update: No fireworks at the hearing on a tech expert. Andrew DeFilippis did repeatedly misstate the FBI conclusion and did repeatedly backtrack on DOJ’s claim they don’t want to make the veracity of the claimed tie between Trump and Alfa an issue. He also admitted there’s no evidence in the email headers and billing records to prove his case, which is why he wants to talk about the creation of the data. Sean Berkowitz called the third white paper, created by Fusion, the equivalent of a WikiPedia page. There was also a reference to a meeting between Marc Elias and Joffe where the former allegedly talked about pushing the Trump-Russian line.

The most interesting details is that Durham has withdrawn the CIA guy who concluded the data was human created from their witness list; that’s also a conclusion he says the FBI doesn’t necessarily share. In any case, the conclusion sounds like it is about the same complaints others had about missing columns in the CSV tables.

Update, 4/25: Judge Cooper has issued an initial ruling on Durham’s expert witness. It limits what Durham presents to the FBI investigation (excluding much of the CIA investigation he has recently been floating), and does not permit the expert to address whether the data actually did represent communications between Trump and Alfa Bank unless Sussmann either affirmatively claims it did or unless Durham introduced proof that Sussmann knew the data was dodgy.

Finally, the Court takes a moment to explain what could open the door to further evidence about the accuracy of the data Mr. Sussmann provided to the FBI. As the defense concedes, such evidence might be relevant if the government could separately establish “what Mr. Sussmann knew” about the data’s accuracy. Data Mot. at 3. If Sussmann knew the data was suspect, evidence about faults in the data could possibly speak to “his state of mind” at the time of his meeting with Mr. Baker, id., including his motive to conceal the origins of the data. By contrast, Sussmann would not open the door to further evidence about the accuracy of the data simply by seeking to establish that he reasonably believed the data were accurate and relied on his associates’ representations that they were. Such a defense theory could allow the government to introduce evidence tending to show that his belief was not reasonable—for instance, facially obvious shortcomings in the data, or information received by Sussmann indicating relevant deficiencies.

Ultimately, Cooper is treating this (as appropriate given the precedents in DC) as a question of Sussmann’s state of mind.

Importantly, this is what Cooper says about Durham blowing his deadline (which in this case was a deadline of comity, not trial schedule): he’s going to let it slide, in part because Sussmann does not object to the narrowed scope of what the expert will present.

Mr. Sussmann also urges the Court to exclude the expert testimony on the ground that the government’s notice was untimely and insufficiently specific. See Expert Mot. at 6–10; Fed. R. Crim. P. 16(a)(1)(G). Because the Court will limit Special Agent Martin’s testimony largely to general explanations of the type of technical data that has always been part of the core of this case—much of which Mr. Sussmann does not object to—any allegedly insufficient or belated notice did not prejudice him. See United States v. Mohammed, No. 06-cr-357, 2008 WL 5552330, at *3 (D.D.C. May 6, 2008) (finding that disclosure nine days before trial did not prejudice defendant in part because its subject was “hardly a surprise”) (citing United States v. Martinez, 476 F.3d 961, 967 (D.C. Cir. 2007)).

This suggests Cooper may be less willing to let other deadlines slide, such as the all-important 404(b) one.

Deadlines for recent and coming days:

March 31: Status hearing at which Cooper catches Durham trying to do a motion to compel as a motion in limine

April 4: Sussmann submits MIL to exclude privileged documents, MIL to exclude hearsay FBI records, and Durham’s theories of conspiracy; Sussmann moves to immunize Rodney Joffe or dismiss the case; Durham omnibus MIL to do everything Sussmann objects to, plus include 404(b) broadly defined

April 6: Government moves to compel privileged documents

April 8: Sussmann moves to exclude government expert

April 11: Judge Christopher Cooper sets April 27 hearing for motions (making it clear he won’t dismiss case)

April 13: Cooper denies Sussmann’s motion to dismiss case

April 14: Sealed CIPA 6 hearing (for Durham to argue for substitutions)

April 15: Exchange of case-in-chief exhibits and exhibit lists by both parties

April 15: Production of trial witness list by the Special Counsel to the Defendant

April 15: Sussmann submits omnibus MIL response and opposition to government expert; Durham submits omnibus MIL response and defense of expert witness

April 18: Sussmann response to Durham’s bid to compel privileged documents

April 19: Motions to intervene by privilege holders: Hillary for America, Rodney Joffe, Perkins Coie, Fusion; subpoena to Hillary and DNC witnesses

April 20: At request of Sussmann, Cooper schedules hearing to address how much of Durham’s treatment of validity of claims (expert witness and accuracy of data); Cooper reiterates April 27 hearing for other topics

April 25: Government reply on motion to compel due

April 27: Motions hearing — specific topics TBD

April 29: Production of trial witness list by the Defendant to the Special Counsel

May 4: Hearing on privilege issues

May 5: Objections to case-in-chief exhibits due

May 9: Proposed jury instructions and verdict form due

May 9: Pre-trial conference and CIPA Section 6 hearing (if necessary)

May 10: Placeholder for further hearing (if necessary)

May 11: Administration of jury questionnaire

May 16: Jury selection

“professional embarassment” [sic]: Michael Sussmann Catches John Durham Accusing First and Investigating Later, Again

There’s one more important detail from the John Durham related filings submitted Friday that’s worth noting. Michael Sussman has caught Durham making accusations before he investigated them first.

Again.

As Sussmann shows, when Durham submitted his original (timely) 404(b) notice on March 18, he said he was going to submit proof that Sussmann had failed to preserve texts he sent on his personal phone.

IV. The Defendant’s Failure to Preserve Firm Records During the Relevant Time Period

All Perkins Coie attorneys are required to maintain and preserve all firm records and communications that might exist on the attorney’s personal devices. This past week the government learned that, in connection with his departure from Perkins Coie, the defendant was required to turn over all communications constituting firm records that were contained on his personal devices. The evidence at trial will show that the earliest text messages turned over by the defendant date from November 25, 2016. There are extensive gaps in time for which no text messages were provided. The government is in possession of relevant text messages that the defendant exchanged during these time periods, including highly probative messages between the defendant and then-FBI General Counsel Baker.

Durham repeated and expanded the allegation in what he called his “supplemental” 404(b) notice, submitted late on March 23, which was actually an attempt to expand the scope of his initial notice and add two more items to it. In the interim five days, this allegation became proof — in the Durham team’s conspiracy-addled and typo-riddled brains — that Sussmann was intentionally trying to hide the text he sent James Baker setting up his September 19, 2016 meeting that Durham hadn’t found in time to charge Sussmann for lying on September 18, not September 19.

VI. The Defendant’s Failure to Preserve Firm Records During the Relevant Time Period

The defendant’s failure to preserve relevant law firm records and/or provide them to Law Firm-1 upon his departure is similarly relevant to prove the defendant’s “motive,” “knowledge,” “intent,” and “plan.” The defendant’s failure to provide these records to his employer prevented Law Firm-1 from learning about specific, highly relevant communications – including a September 18, 2016 text message containing substantially the same false statement as the one alleged in the Indictment. The defendant’s failure to preserve and provide such records supports the inference that the defendant had “knowledge” that his electronic communiations [sic] would incriminate him and, therefore, acted intentionally to conceal them. Such evidence also tends to support the inference that the defendant harbored a specific “motive” to conceal his communications, namely, to avoid criminal liability or professional embarassment. [sic] When combined with other evidence, these failures by the defendant also support an inference that the defendant intentionally executed a “plan” over time to conceal the involvement of particular clients in his work, and to prevent the discovery of evidence reflecting his own false statements on that subject.

Durham didn’t find that September 18 text until this year, as part of a two step process to find evidence pertaining to his star witness he hadn’t even sought before indicting Sussmann. In the first step, Durham finally got around to collecting evidence from Michael Horowitz and only then learned that DOJ IG had a Baker phone that Durham had been told about years ago but forgot about.

But it gets worse! As Sussmann revealed in his original 404(b) response that only got docketed on Friday, after discovering two of Baker’s FBI phones more than three months after he charged Sussmann, Durham only then asked Baker to check the cloud for his own text messages involving Sussmann. Among the things Baker provided in response were texts that showed Sussmann indicating to Baker in the days after their meeting that he had to check with someone — Rodney Joffe — before helping Baker kill the NYT story.

Finally, the Special Counsel seeks to introduce evidence that he recently received from Mr. Baker. Specifically, on March 4, 2022, Mr. Baker apparently retrieved from his personal phone copies of text messages that he had sent and received with Mr. Sussmann between 2016 and 2020. According to the Special Counsel, the text messages had been stored on the cloud and Mr. Baker had not thought to produce them earlier. (Apparently, though Mr. Baker is a key witness in the case, the Special Counsel never saw fit to serve him with a subpoena.) Those text messages include, among other things, texts indicating that Mr. Sussmann asked to meet with Mr. Baker in September 2016 not on behalf of a client but to help the Bureau; texts indicating that Mr. Sussmann told Mr. Baker he had to check with someone (i.e., his client) before giving him the name of the newspaper that was about to publish an article regarding the links between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization; and other texts, including a copy of a tweet that then-President Trump posted regarding Mr. Sussmann. The Special Counsel argues that Mr. Sussmann failed to preserve these text messages in violation of Perkins Coie policy and that this purported violation of the policy gives rise to an inference that Mr. Sussmann intended to obstruct justice. See Original Notice at 2-3.

In other words, almost six months after charging Sussmann, Durham got around to obtaining proof that, in fact, Sussmann was not hiding the existence of a client, not to mention that the explanation he provided HPSCI in 2018 — that he wanted to give the FBI options, one of which (killing the NYT story) they took — was absolutely true.

He also obtained proof that the guy who hired Durham has been gunning for Sussmann for years — and that his star witness knew about it.

So, in response to the “professional embarassment” [sic] of having to admit that Durham had never subpoenaed his own star witness who — years earlier — a Durham-related investigator had deemed unreliable, Durham instead accused Sussmann of obstructing justice by getting a new phone. Crazier still, he leveled that accusation without first obtaining Perkins Coie’s retention policy before accusing Sussmann.

In response to the accusation, Sussmann himself subpoenaed the policy, which showed that the policy only applied to email and specifically excluded communications about scheduling a meeting like the September 18 text in question.

Sixth and finally, the Special Counsel seeks to introduce evidence that Mr. Sussmann purportedly failed to preserve certain text messages that he exchanged with Mr. Baker using his personal device, as was purportedly required by Perkins Coie record retention policies. As the Special Counsel is aware, Mr. Sussmann had not retained the text messages in question—which contain exculpatory information—because he replaced the personal cellphone he used to send them and does not store his personal text messages on the cloud. Nevertheless, the Special Counsel argues that this was a violation of Perkins Coie policy. However, when asked to identify or produce which specific Perkins Coie policies addressed Mr. Sussmann’s retention of these text messages, the Special Counsel was unable to do so. Instead, the Special Counsel disclosed that he did not have copies of the relevant firm policies when he made the allegation.

Subsequently, the defense issued a subpoena to Perkins Coie; obtained the relevant policies; and confirmed that none of those policies addressed text messages, let alone required their preservation. Instead, those policies—which govern the “retention and destruction” of client records—make clear that only significant client communications must be retained, and that electronic communications concerning scheduling do not satisfy the relevant definition of “significant communication.”

[snip]

The policy explicitly provides that emails regarding scheduling, for example, do not rise to the level of a “significant communication” and would not, therefore, trigger the policy’s retention requirements. Id. Thus even if the policy applied to text messages—and it did not—the policy would not have required Mr. Sussmann to preserve copies of his text messages with Mr. Baker.

[snip]

[T]he Special Counsel’s willingness to level this explosive allegation without even bothering to first obtain copies of the relevant Perkins Coie policies they accuse Mr. Sussmann of violating— policies that, on their face, do not require the preservation of the texts at issue—is nothing short of shocking.

As Sussmann noted in his Friday submission, effectively Durham forced Sussmann and Judge Christopher Cooper to then conduct the investigative steps that Durham should have taken before making baseless accusations to cover up his own investigative failures.

Second, in both his Original and Supplemental Rule 404(b) notices, the Special Counsel leveled unjust and baseless allegations of obstruction of justice against Mr. Sussmann—and he did so, it seems, without doing even the bare modicum of diligence that any reasonable prosecutor would do. In particular, the Special Counsel claimed that Mr. Sussmann failed to preserve certain text messages in violation of his former law firm’s (i.e., Perkins Coie’s) internal policy, and that this purported violation gave rise to an inference that Mr. Sussmann intended to obstruct justice. However, the Special Counsel leveled those incendiary allegations without even bothering to obtain copies of the relevant Perkins Coie policies that Mr. Sussmann supposedly violated. As the Special Counsel did not have the policies in question, the defense had no choice but to request that this Court issue a time-sensitive subpoena pursuant to Rule 17 to obtain the polices directly from Perkins Coie. See Ex. C at 24. As expected, none of the policies that Perkins Coie produced required the preservation of any of the text messages in question, contrary to the Special Counsel’s baseless claims. Id. Mr. Sussmann should not have had to waste his or the Court’s time because the Special Counsel took an accuse-first, gather-evidence-later approach.

By context, it appears that Durham has dropped his plan to accuse Sussmann of obstructing an investigation because — within weeks of an election in which his client was persistently hacked by Russia — he replaced his cell phone. (Note, Roger Stone also replaced a cell phone with highly relevant evidence on it in the days after the 2016 election — such as how much of the plan to pardon Julian Assange took place in advance of Assange releasing the John Podesta emails — and as far as I know, Durham’s predecessor as Special Counsel never considered charging him for obtaining a new phone.)

What remains of this incident, then, is just the “professional embarassment” [sic] of getting caught making accusations without adequately investigating those accusations first, as well as exculpatory texts that prove Sussmann was not hiding the existence of a client from the FBI.

This is not the first time that Durham has risked “professional embarassment” [sic] by making accusations before investigating them. Including the Baker-related failures laid out here, here are some of the investigative steps Durham did not take before accusing Sussmann of lying to cover up a plot involving Hillary Clinton to manufacture dirt on Donald Trump:

  • Interviewing a full-time Clinton campaign staffer before accusing Sussmann of coordinating with the campaign
  • Looking for the records proving that Sussmann and Rodney Joffe helped the FBI kill the NYT story until after he charged Sussmann
  • Learning how closely the FBI worked with Rodney Joffe on DNS-related issues
  • Finding the January 31, 2017 CIA meeting record at which Sussmann clearly explained he was sharing an allegation at the request of a client
  • Asking DOJ IG for evidence of the investigation on related topics that found no evidence Sussmann committed a crime
  • Discovering a similar tip that Sussmann had anonymously shared with DOJ IG on behalf of Joffe
  • Obtaining two James Baker phones, one of which Durham had been informed about years earlier
  • Subpoenaing Baker for exculpatory texts involving Sussmann he stored on the cloud

I suspect there is far more, including never checking DOJ records to learn that someone totally unrelated to the Democrats was pushing the NYT story more aggressively than Sussmann in the period in question, to say nothing of all the evidence showing that April Lorenzen’s suspicions that Trump’s campaign manager was money laundering payments from oligarchs close to Putin were absolutely correct.

As of Wednesday, Durham’s investigation entered its 36th month. The “professional embarassment” [sic] has been going on so long, it’s hard to even capture it all anymore (but here’s a more accessible version). What’s clear is that every time he finds exculpatory information he should have obtained before charging Sussmann, he doubles down on his conspiracy theories — an approach that’s bound to lead to more “professional embarassment” [sic] down the line.

Update: Clarified that according to the documents filed Friday, Durham only obtained the September 18, 2016 text on March 4. Also fixed my own “embarassing” [sic] typo in the table below.

John Durham Is Likely to Supersede the Michael Sussmann Indictment

On Monday, both John Durham and Michael Sussmann submitted their motions in limine, which are filings to argue about what can be admitted at trial. They address a range of issues that I’ll cover in several posts:

Sussmann:

Durham wants to:

  • Admit witnesses’ contemporaneous notes of conversations with the FBI General Counsel
  • Admit emails referenced in the Indictment and other, similar emails (see this post)
  • Admit certain acts and statements (including the defendant’s February 2017 meeting with a government agency, his December 2017 Congressional testimony, and his former employer’s October 2018 statements to the media) as direct evidence or, alternatively, pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)
  • Exclude evidence and preclude argument concerning allegations of political bias on the part of the Special Counsel (addressed in this post)
  • Admit an October 31, 2016 tweet by the Clinton Campaign

I will link my discussions in serial fashion.


In his motions in limine submitted Monday, John Durham included a text Michael Sussmann sent to James Baker that he belatedly discovered on the Baker phone he never bothered to look for.

Jim – it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. Do you have availibilty for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own – not on behalf of a client or company – want to help the Bureau. Thanks. (emphasis added).

The text seems really damning — and both Charlie Savage and the frothers have treated it as such.

But it creates one real problem and may not help as much as they assume.

That’s true, first of all, because Durham accused Michael Sussmann of lying to James Baker on September 19. He did not accuse him of lying on September 18. Every single witness Durham is relying on to prove this lie either doesn’t remember Baker relaying that Sussmann had claimed at the meeting not to be representing a client (as is the case for Bill Priestap and Trisha Anderson), or has given wildly conflicting testimony about it (as is the case for Baker). Durham can’t rule out that Sussmann did not repeat that claim at the meeting on September 19. And, indeed, that might explain why Baker’s testimony conflicted so wildly and also might explain why Priestap’s notes recording “said not doing this for any client” (note the apparent strike-out; h/t ML) appears to have been written after the fact.

Indeed the Priestap and Anderson notes Durham is fighting to rely on support an inference that the meeting emphasized the motive Sussmann said he had — to help the FBI. Both prominently focus on the upcoming NYT story, which is what Sussmann explained, in sworn testimony to HPSCI, he went to warn Baker about: that there would be an upcoming story that might be awkward for the FBI.

Q And when did that conversation occur on or about?

A Middle of September 2016.

Q And what did Mr. Baker advise you to do?

A Advise me to do?

Q Yeah. Or what was what did he – how did he respond to the information that you conveyed to him?

A He said thank you.

Q Did he offer any follow-on

A No.

Q engagements, or did he promise that he would pass it on?

A But to be clear, I told him I didn’t want any. I mean, I was sharing information, and I remember telling him at the outset that I was meeting with him specifically, because any information involving a political candidate, but particularly information of this sort involving potential relationship or activity with a foreign government was highly volatile and controversial. And I thought and I remember telling him that it would be a not-so-nice thing ~ I probably used a word more stronger than “not so nice” – to dump some information like this on a case agent and create some sort of a problem. And I was coming to him mostly because I wanted him to be able to decide whether or not to act or not to act, or to share or not to share, with information I was bringing him to insulate or protect the Bureau or — I don’t know. just thought he would know best what to do or not to do, including nothing at the time.

And if I could just go on, I know for my time as a prosecutor at the Department of Justice, there are guidelines about when you act on things and when close to an election you wait sort of until after the election. And I didn’t know what the appropriate thing was, but I didn’t want to put the Bureau or him in an uncomfortable situation by, as I said, going to a case agent or sort of dumping it in the wrong place. So I met with him briefly and

Q Did you meet — was it a personal meeting or a phone call?

A Personal meeting.

Q At the FBI?

A At the FBI. And if I could just continue to answer your question, and soI told him this information, but didn’t want any follow-up, didn’t ~ in other words, I wasn’t looking for the FBI to do anything. I had no ask. I had no requests. And I remember saying, I’m not you don’t need to follow up with me. I just feel like I have left this in the right hands, and he said, yes.

And FBI availed themselves of the help Sussmann offered, asking and getting him to share Eric Lichtblau’s name, thereby giving the FBI an opportunity to kill the story that Sussmann had directly seeded.

Q The conversations you had with the journalists, the ~

A Oh, excuse me. I did not recall a sort of minor conversation that I had with Mr. Baker, which I don’t think it was necessarily related to the question you ‘asked me, but I just wanted to tell you about a phone call that I had with him 2 days after I met with him, just because I had forgotten it When I met with him, I shared with him this information, and I told him that there was also a news organization that has or had the information. And he called me 2 days later on my mobile phone and asked me for the name of the journalist or publication, because the Bureau was going to ask the public — was going to ask the journalist or the publication to hold their story and not publish it, and said that like it was urgent and the request came from the top of the Bureau. So anyway, it was, you know, a 5-minute, if that, phone conversation just for that purpose.

Q Thats good to know. Was that information the same information that you talked to Mr. Baker about?

A Yes

Q Okay. So the FBI then — so, at some point, the FBI was very concerned about that actually appearing in the New York Times. Is that correct?

A Yes, yes. My understanding is they —

Q Did he explain why they were so concerned?

A No. He just didn’t want — just didn’t want it to be revealed publicly.

All the discussions about materiality should include the decision that FBI made: not just to open an investigation or not, but also to intervene and kill a damaging story about Trump.

This is one reason that April Lorenzen’s largely independent efforts to push this story (which Durham treats as part of the same conspiracy) are important. Because Sussmann’s efforts actually had the opposite effect of what Durham claims he wanted, a big story to sway the election.

Durham has an easy fix to his first problem though: He can simply supersede the indictment.

If I were him, especially if I were as much of a douchebag as he has been, I’d wait until after Christopher Cooper rules on the motions in limine to supersede, tailoring the charges that Durham will have to prove to those decisions.

Indeed, that may be one reason Sussmann cheekily submitted a redlined indictment as it would appear without all Durham’s conspiracy theorizing: to get Cooper to rule in on what a reasonable indictment would look like.

In any case, because that text creates temporal problems with the most compelling evidence that Durham has, I expect he’ll supersede the indictment before trial.

Update: Charlie Savage noted to me, persuasively, that the statute of limitation has expired on charging Sussmann with lying on September 18. I still would not be surprised if Durham attempted to fix this error by superseding, perhaps by adopting “on or about” language. But if Durham can’t include September 18 in his indictment, he may have a real problem.

Update: A reader notes that Durham’s filing claims that U.K. Person-1 — Christopher Steele — is referred to in the indictment.

For example, in the summer of 2016, the defendant met in Law Firm-1’s offices with the author of a now well-known dossier regarding Trump (referred to in the Indictment as “U.K. Person-1”) and personnel from the U.S. Investigative Firm.

He’s not in the known Sussmann indictment, as Sussmann notes in his counterpart filing.

The Special Counsel also indicated during a telephone conference on March 11, 2022 that he intends to introduce evidence and argument pertaining to reports and information that Christopher Steele separately provided to the FBI—i.e., the so-called “Steele Dossier.” Not only that, but the Special Counsel also produced witness statements for Mr. Steele pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3500, presumably because the Special Counsel seeks to call Mr. Steele as a witness at trial. However, the Indictment contains no reference to Mr. Steele or the inflammatory Steele Dossier. The Indictment similarly contains no allegations—nor is there any evidence of—Mr. Sussmann’s knowledge, awareness, or involvement in any of Mr. Steele’s efforts to provide information to the government.

I wonder if Durham asked to file the conspiracy charges he’s been pursuing between March 18 and March 23, but was denied, after which he filed his delayed 404(b) notice pertaining to Steele and Joffe.

Durham Says It’s Not His Fault His Former Boss Called for the Death of His Defendant

John Durham didn’t have much to say after being called out for making baseless accusations that their source Kash Patel lied about, leading the former President to suggest Michael Sussmann should be killed.

They’re not responsible for the death threats, the attorney who filed a notice of appearance in the wake of Friday’s stunt, Brittain Shaw, insists.

If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government’s Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information.

She said this even while acknowledging it might be prudent to take measures against death threats in the future.

That said, to the extent the Government’s future filings contain information that legitimately gives rise to privacy issues or other concerns that might overcome the presumption of public access to judicial documents – such as the disclosure of witness identities, the safety of individuals, or ongoing law enforcement or national security concerns – the Government will make such filings under seal. United States v. Hubbard, 650 F. 2d 293, 317-323 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (setting forth factors for considering whether the presumption of public access is overridden, including (1) the need for public access to the documents at issue; (2) the extent of previous public access to the documents; (3) the fact that someone has objected to disclosure, and the identity of that person; (4) the strength of any property and privacy interests asserted; (5) the possibility of prejudice to those opposing disclosure; and (6) the purposes for which the documents were introduced during the judicial proceedings.) The Government respectfully submits that no such issues or concerns are implicated here. [my emphasis]

The former President implied the defendant and a witness should be killed. But it’s not Durham’s fault and so he doesn’t have to deal with the fact that it happened!!

This is factually specious. Kash Patel, who was among the first to make egregiously false claims, is not a “third party.” He is the originator of this inquiry, and he knew well his statements to be false. Donald Trump, who suggested Sussmann and others should be killed, is not a “third party.” He was Durham’s boss and his demands for prosecutions are what led to Durham being appointed Special Counsel in the first place.

Plus, Durham’s team have already made the identities of some grand jury witnesses public in discovery filings.

The claim that the architects of this mob are neutral “third parties” is all the more pathetic given the excuse Shaw provides for including the false insinuation that Rodney Joffe spied on Trump’s White House rather than tried to keep the White House safe from hackers at the time it happened to be occupied by Barack Obama.

The reason they mentioned the White House, you see (Shaw claims), is because of one of the conflicts they raised.

The Government included two paragraphs of limited additional factual detail in its Motion for valid and straightforward reasons. First, those paragraphs reflect conduct that is intertwined with, and part of, events that are central to proving the defendant’s alleged criminal conduct. Second, the Government included these paragraphs to apprise the Court of the factual basis for one of the potential conflicts described in the Government’s Motion, namely, that a member of the defense team was working for the Executive Office of the President of the United States (“EOP”) during relevant events that involved the EOP. [my emphasis]

Shaw here argues that events in February 2017 are “intertwined” with an alleged crime that took place five months earlier.

She also suggests that the reason they raised the White House is because one of Sussmann’s team members worked there (Charlie Savage has now IDed the lawyer as Michael Bosworth).

I mean, so did Kash Patel, a central player in the false claims that led to the former President calling for death.

Here’s what the actual conflict memo said about that purported conflict.

Based on its review of documents in its investigation and other information, the Special Counsel’s Office also has learned that one of the members of the defendant’s current defense team (“Defense Team Member-1”) previously worked as Special Counsel to the then-FBI Director from 2013 to 2014. In connection with that work, Defense Team Member-1 developed professional and/or personal relationships with several individuals who later were involved with and/or knowledgeable of the FBI’s investigation of the Russian Bank-1 allegations. For example, Defense Team Member-1 appears to have developed a professional relationship with the former FBI General Counsel to whom the defendant made his alleged false statement and who will likely be a central witness at trial.4 While it is unlikely that these past interactions and activities will give rise to an actual conflict of interest, the Government respectfully requests in an abundance of caution that the Court inquire with the defense concerning whether Defense Team Member-1’s relationships with persons and entities who might be witnesses in this case could give rise to a potential conflict or appearance issue and, if so, whether the defendant waives any such conflict.

4 Following his employment at the FBI, Defense Team Member-1 worked from 2014 to early 2017 as an attorney in the EOP which, as noted above, was involved in certain factual issues that the Government expects will be relevant at trial and any sentencing proceedings. Latham has represented to the Government that while employed at the EOP, Defense Team Member-1 had no role in the aforementioned events or arrangements involving Tech Executive-1, Internet Company1, and/or allegations involving the purported use of Russian-made phones. The Government similarly has not seen evidence to suggest that Defense Team Member-1 had any role in, or direct knowledge of, the Russian Bank-1 allegations or the FBI’s ensuing investigation. [my emphasis]

It’s the tie to Jim Comey and through him to James Baker, not the subsequent job at the White House, that Durham’s team presented as a potential conflict — and even then, Durham’s team admits this is not likely a conflict. By this standard, several members of the prosecutorial team, not to mention the guy from whom this allegation came from, Kash Patel, have a conflict. John Durham was hired by Donald Trump; that’s a more serious conflict than anything his team spins up as one.

The White House will not be called to the stand at Sussmann’s trial. None of this is actually about the White House. As Andrew DeFilippis noted in his filing making wild claims of conflict, the White House job was not one of those conflicts. Indeed, this is yet another marker of Durham’s dishonesty. This team member, as described, was a victim of Rodney Joffe’s purportedly vicious efforts to make sure the Obama White House was not hacked. The team member only has an adversarial relationship if one believes that protecting against hacks is an adversarial stance. But that’s not how they describe the purported conflict which even they admit is not one.

Which is a pretty big hint their understanding of conflicts here is whacked beyond all reason.

Even in a terse four page motion (which I guess is one way she’s an improvement over DeFilippis), Shaw still had room for bullshit.

Having given a transparently bogus excuse for raising the White House, she then says that raising it in a conflict memo is cool because Durham plans to later raise these issues in a motion in limine (pre-trial motions about what can and cannot be presented during the trial).

In light of the above, there is no basis to strike any portion of the Government’s Motion. Indeed, the Government intends to file motions in limine in which it will further discuss these and other pertinent facts to explain why they constitute relevant and admissible evidence at trial. Pursuant to caselaw and common practice in this and other districts, the filing of documents containing reference to such evidence on the public docket is appropriate and proper, even in highprofile cases where the potential exists that such facts could garner media attention. See, e.g., United States v. Stone, 19 Cr. 18 (D.D.C. October 21, 2019) (ABJ), Minute Order (addressing the Government’s publicly-filed motion in limine seeking to admit video clip from the movie “Godfather II” that defendant sent to an associate and permitting admission of a transcript of the video); United States v. Craig, 19 Cr. 125 (D.D.C. July 10, 2019) (ABJ), Minute Order (addressing Government’s publicly-filed Rule 404(b) motion to offer evidence of defendant’s efforts to assist Paul Manafort’s relative in obtaining employment); United States v. Martoma, S1 12 Cr. 973, 2014 WL 164181 (S.D.N.Y. January 9, 2014) (denying defendant’s motion for sealing and courtroom closure relating to motions in limine concerning evidence of defendant’s expulsion from law school and forgery of law school transcript);1 see also Johnson v. Greater SE Cmty. Hosp. Corp., 951 F. 2d 1268, 1277 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (holding that there is a “strong presumption in favor of public access to judicial proceedings”). Moreover, any potential prejudice or jury taint arising from such media attention can effectively and appropriately be addressed through the voir dire process during jury selection.

1 The publicly-filed evidentiary motions and judicial rulings in each of the above-cited cases received significant media attention. See, e.g., Prosecutors Can’t Show Godfather II Clip at Roger Stone Trial, Judge Rules, CNN, October 21, 2019 (https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/21/politics/godfather-ii-roger-stone/index.html; Greg Craig Pushed to Hire Manfort’s Relative at Skadden, Prosecutors Say, POLITICO, May 10, 2019 (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/10/greg-craig-hire-manaforts-relative-1317600); SAC’s Martoma Tried to Cover Up Fraud at Harvard, Documents Show, REUTERS, January 9, 2014 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sac-martoma-harvard/sacs-martoma-tried-to-cover-up-fraudat-harvard-documents-show-idUSBREA081C720140109).

Roger Stone Roger Stone Roger Stone and Mueller, she throws in for good measure.

This is a fairly bald admission that the time to raise these issues, pretending they were relevant, would be the later 404(b) fight (over whether evidence of related conduct can be admitted at trial to help prove the case), not now, on a totally separate issue. That this might be a relevant issue later (which is itself admission that these topics are not direct evidence about Sussmann’s alleged lie and must first demonstrate relevance to even be admitted at trial) is not an excuse to use them in untimely and off-purpose fashion.

And yet that’s Durham’s excuse for saying a bunch of things that predictably led to calls for death.

According to John Durham’s logic of conflicts, he is the one with an unwaivable conflict. The guy who hired him to this job is the same guy suggesting, based off Durham’s filing, that the guy he is prosecuting should be executed.

Updated for clarity.

Update: Corrected Bosworth’s last name.

Indict First Interview Later: Durham’s Belated Efforts to Substantiate His Claims that Michael Sussmann Coordinated with Hillary

Among the accusations John Durham made when he charged Michael Sussmann with a single false statement count in September 2021 was that Sussmann had coordinated with the Hillary Campaign.

SUSSMANN, [Rodney Joffe], and [Perkins Coie] had coordinated, and were continuing to coordinate, with representatives and agents of the Clinton Campaign with regard to the data and written materials that SUSSMANN gave to the FBI and the media.

Coordinating with a client is not a crime. Working with a client to share suspicious data with the FBI is also not a crime. Indeed, Sussmann spent a great deal of his time in 2016 doing just that after the Hillary Campaign and several other Democratic Party committees were hacked by Russia.

The allegation that Sussmann “coordinated” with a client is included as one of three materiality claims regarding Sussmann’s alleged lie. To prove Sussmann is guilty, Durham has to prove not just that Sussmann made a willfully false claim to James Baker in a meeting on September 19, 2016, but that it mattered. One way Durham claims he will do that is, first, by proving that this effort was coordinated with the Hillary campaign and then establishing that,

it was relevant to the FBI whether the conveyor of these allegations (SUSSMANN) was providing them as an ordinary citizen merely passing along information, or whether he was instead doing so as a paid advocate for clients with a political or business agenda. Had SUSSMANN truthfully disclosed that he was representing specific clients, it might have prompted the FBI General Counsel to ask SUSSMANN for the identity of such clients, which in turn might have prompted further questions.

One of the first things Sussmann did after being charged was ask — first, informally, and then, via a Motion for a Bill of Particularswith whom on the Hillary Campaign he coordinated.

Fifth and finally, the Indictment conceals the actual identity of certain individuals and entities alleged to have witnessed and otherwise been involved in the conduct giving rise to the false statement charge, including the names of the agents and representatives of the campaign on whose behalf Mr. Sussmann was allegedly working. Id. ¶ 6. The entire animating theory of the Special Counsel’s Indictment is that, in meeting with the FBI and the other government agency, Mr. Sussmann was secretly working on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for president (the “Clinton Campaign”). The Special Counsel should be required to identify with which agents and representatives of the Clinton Campaign Mr. Sussmann was allegedly working so that Mr. Sussmann can adequately prepare his defense.

Counsel for Mr. Sussmann previously asked the Special Counsel to provide the detail and particulars identified above, but the Special Counsel declined to do so. The Special Counsel should not be permitted, on the one hand, to allege that Mr. Sussmann was working on behalf of the Clinton Campaign, but on the other hand, decline to identify the specific individuals with whom he was purportedly working.

7 The Special Counsel has identified virtually all of the other anonymous individuals and entities referred to in the Indictment (except, as noted above, the Agency-2 employees).

That motion was filed on October 6. In a response filed on October 20, Durham refused to provide the names of those on the Clinton Campaign with whom Sussmann coordinated, but instead pointed to these paragraphs of the indictment, only one of which even names people from the campaign, and none of which describes Sussmann speaking directly to anyone from the campaign.

d. In or around the same time period [mid-August 2016], SUSSMANN, [Marc Elias], and personnel from [Fusion GPS] began exchanging emails with the subject line, “Connecting you all by email.”

[snip]

g. Later in or about August 2016, [Rodney Joffe] exchanged emails with personnel from [Fusion GPS].

[snip]

e. On or about September 15, 2016, [Elias] exchanged emails with the Clinton Campaign’s campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor concerning the [Alfa Bank] allegations that SUSSMANN had recently shared with [Franklin Foer]. [Elias] billed his time for this correspondence to the Clinton Campaign with the billing entry, “email correspondence with [Jake Sullivan], [name of campaign manager], [name of communications director] re: [Alfa Bank] Article.” [emphasis added by Durham]

On October 20, over a month after indicting Sussmann, Durham was still refusing to name any Clinton Campaign personnel with whom Sussmann had coordinated directly.

That’s why this detail in Sussmann’s response to Durham’s conflict motion matters so much:

[T]he Special Counsel has alleged that Mr. Sussmann met with the FBI on behalf of the Clinton Campaign, but it was not until November 2021—two months after Mr. Sussmann was indicted—that the Special Counsel bothered to interview any individual who worked full-time for that Campaign to determine if that allegation was true.

When Durham refused to answer Sussmann’s requests, in September and October,  to tell him with whom on the Clinton campaign he had been coordinating, Durham still had never interviewed a single Clinton staffer. He first did so in November.

The discovery update submitted on January 25 reveals that that single Clinton staffer remained the sole Clinton staffer Durham had interviewed to that date.

Yesterday, Durham added a securities fraud prosecutor to his team, suggesting he’s going to try to change the theory of his case (I suspect, by suggesting Sussmann’s billing practices show he was trying to hide Rodney Joffe’s role).

But as I’ll lay out, there’s tons of instances of this, where Durham demonstrably failed to do basic investigative work before charging Sussmann five years after a claimed lie.

Update: Sussmann has filed his motion to dismiss. It is entirely a challenge to the materiality of his alleged lie. Motions to dismiss rarely work. He’s got good lawyers and he’s making a solid argument. Of note, he points out that Durham has never claimed that the tip wasn’t true or that Sussmann should have known it was not.

John Durham Chose to Meet with John Ratcliffe Rather than Witnesses Necessary to His Investigation

The evidence continues to mount that John Durham has done an epically incompetent investigation. I’ll pull together all that evidence later this week.

But one that I find hilarious and shocking can’t wait.

A piece written by the Fox News propagandist who played a key role in magnifying Kash Patel’s false claims over the weekend credulously continues the Murdoch effort to jack up the frothers by claiming that — rather than letting statutes of limitation expire with no charges — Durham has instead sped up his investigation. Fox also cites a single source claiming that Durham’s investigation has been run very professionally.

Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation has “accelerated,” and more people are “cooperating” and coming before the federal grand jury than has previously been reported, a source familiar with the probe told Fox News.

The source told Fox News Monday that Durham has run his investigation “very professionally,” and, unlike Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, his activities, and witness information and cooperation status are rarely, if ever, leaked.

Fox unsurprisingly doesn’t cite the part of a recent filing that makes it clear that April Lorenzen doesn’t think it has been run professionally.

In fact, this piece demonstrates that no one who would actually know whether Durham’s investigation has been conducted professionally would talk to them:

Durham’s Feb. 11 filing says that the “FBI General Counsel” will “likely be a central witness at trial.”

Baker did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

Durham also provided grand jury testimony from “the above-referenced former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence.” It is unclear to which official Durham is referring, but the title could be a reference to Bill Priestap, who served as the FBI’s assistant director for counterintelligence from 2015 to 2018.

Priestap did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

Durham also lists “a former FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence.” It is unclear to whom Durham is referring.

[snip]

Strzok, who was part of the original FBI investigation into whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, and later in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, was fired from the FBI in 2018 after months of scrutiny regarding anti-Trump text messages exchanged with former FBI General Counsel Lisa Page. Their anti-Trump text messages were uncovered by the Justice Department inspector general.

Fox News was unable to reach Strzok for comment.

[snip]

Elias’ law firm, Perkins Coie, is the firm that the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign funded the anti-Trump dossier through. The unverified dossier was authored by ex-British Intelligence agent Christopher Steele and commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

A spokesperson for Elias did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment. [my emphasis]

But somebody who would speak with Fox News is John Ratcliffe, the former AUSA who misrepresented his record to get elected but who nevertheless got to be Director of National Intelligence for a short period because Ric Grenell was so much more unsuited to hold the position.

As DNI, Ratcliffe made false claims about Chinese intervention in the election as a way to downplay Russia’s ongoing efforts to help Trump. Ratcliffe is currently spending a lot of time denying that his politicized views (and delay of) a mandated election interference report played some role in January 6 conspiracy theories.

We now know that Ratcliffe should be happy to make those denials to the January 6 Committee directly and under oath — because he has apparently been very happy to chat with Durham’s investigators.

Meanwhile, this week, sources told Fox News that former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe met with Durham on multiple occasions and told him there was evidence in intelligence to support the indictments of “multiple people” in his investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.

Ratcliffe’s meetings with Durham are significant (beyond suggesting he may be the single source who told Fox News this isn’t a shitshow investigation) because, days before Billy Barr made Durham a Special Counsel, Ratcliffe unmasked Hillary’s identity in foreign intercepts and burned collection on Russian internal intelligence analysis in order to release a report trying to insinuate that Hillary’s fairly unsurprising decision to tie Trump to Russia is what led the FBI to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia.

At issue is a report from John Ratcliffe, sent on September 29, 2020, explaining that,

In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.

The following week, presumably in an attempt to dredge up some kind of attack out of an absurd attack, Ratcliffe released the underlying reports that, he claimed in his original report, show the following:

According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”

On 07 September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forward an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding “U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.”

By releasing the exhibits, Ratcliffe should raise real questions about his credibility. For example, I’m not at all sure this date, from Brennan’s notes, reads July 26 and not July 28, a critical difference for a ton of reasons.

The FBI report has a slew of boilerplate making it clear how sensitive this report was (for obvious reasons; effectively it shows that the CIA had some kind of visibility into Russian intelligence analysis), which makes it clear how utterly unprecedented this desperate declassification is. Former CIA lawyer Brian Greer discusses that in this Lawfare post.

Plus, Ratcliffe left out an unbelievably important part of the report: the role of Guccifer 2.0 in the Russian report. Intelligence collected in late July 2016 claimed that Hillary was going to work her alleged smear around neither the GRU (which had already been identified as the perpetrator of the DNC hack) nor WikiLeaks (which had released the DNC files, to overt celebration by the Trump campaign), but Guccifer 2.0, who looked to be a minor cut-out in late July 2016 (when this intelligence was collected), but who looked a lot more important once Roger Stone’s overt and covert communications with Guccifer 2.0 became public weeks later.

The report suggests Hillary magically predicted that days after this plot, President Trump’s rat-fucker would start a year’s long campaign running interference for Guccifer 2.0. Not only did Hillary successfully go back and trick George Papadopoulos into drunkenly bragging about Russian dangles in May 2016, then, Hillary also instantaneously tricked Stone into writing propaganda for Guccifer 2.0 days later.

The report never made any sense. As I noted at the time, to be true, it would require Hillary to have gone back in time to trick the Coffee Boy to learn of and pass on Russia’s plans. Worse still, the claim suggested that Roger Stone — whom FBI has evidence was in contact with the Guccifer 2.0 persona starting in spring 2016 — started parroting the same line the Russians were pushing, even before the FBI learned of it. In other words, read in conjunction with the actual evidence about 2016, the intelligence report on Russia actually suggested that Stone’s ties to Russian intelligence may have been far more direct than imagined.

But John Ratcliffe was too stupid to understand that, and everything we’ve seen about John Durham suggests he is too. That Durham has been repeatedly interviewing Ratcliffe suggests he buys Ratcliffe’s theory that this should have undermined the very real reason to investigate Trump. It also explains why, on the Sussmann indictment, Durham was so squishy about the July 2016 timeline: he needs this report to be more important than the fact that Trump stood up in public and asked Russia to hack some more (which is what led the researchers to look twice at this anomalous data).

Nevertheless, it appears that rather than interviewing witnesses who would be necessary to vet the charges he filed against Michael Sussmann, such as a single Hillary staffer, Durham has, instead, just kept going back to serial liars like Ratcliffe to renew his own conspiracy theories.

Ah well, this disclosure gives Michael Sussmann cause to subpoena Ratcliffe, just like this stunt has given him reason to subpoena Kash Patel. It’s increasingly clear that these addle-brained Republicans fed these conspiracies into Durham’s investigation, and now are magnifying them as Durham’s investigation gets exposed as incompetent, without disclosing that they’re the ones who provided the conspiracy theories in the first place.

By Popular Demand: John Durham Claims His Memory Is More Skewed than James Baker’s

I’ve already written three posts about last week’s remarkable filings (one, two) by John Durham. First I showed that John Durham didn’t even know about a prior anonymous tip Michael Sussmann shared with DOJ (in this case, the Inspector General) on behalf of Rodney Joffe, showing that four months after Durham indicted Sussmann, he still has no understanding of the normal relationship between Sussmann, Joffe, and DOJ. Then I marveled that Durham would take a junket to Italy to get Joseph Mifsud’s dated phones but never walk across DOJ to get the James Baker phones he had forgotten that DOJ IG had. Finally, I offered a possible explanation for Durham’s confession that April Lorenzen thinks his lawyers have been bullying her.

But in spite of the multiple ways I’ve covered these serial confessions of some weaknesses to Durham’s case, I’ve gotten multiple requests for something else: A comparison of how Durham now describes his own frail memory with what he claims about Baker’s.

As I laid out here, Durham is forced to deal with the fact that his single witness against Sussmann gave sworn testimony that materially conflicts with the allegations against Sussmann. To do so, Durham will (and already has) argued that Baker’s descriptions of the a September 2016 meeting he had with Sussmann closer to the date of the meeting are less reliable than the ones after more time passed.

As an initial matter, the defendant’s motion provides a skewed portrayal of the purported Brady evidence at issue by cherry-picking excerpts from the substantial discovery the Government has already provided to the defense. The defendant, for example, alleges that FBI General Counsel James Baker “contradict[ed] the Special Counsel’s allegation that Mr. Sussmann affirmatively [said] he was not meeting with him on behalf of any clients” in (i) a 2019 interview with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General, and (ii) a 2020 interview with the Special Counsel team. (Mot. at 3). But as the defendant is aware from discovery, both of those interviews occurred years after the events in question, and Mr. Baker made these statements before he had the opportunity to refresh his recollection with contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous notes that have been provided to the defense in discovery. Indeed, the defendant’s motion entirely ignores law enforcement reports of Mr. Baker’s subsequent three interviews with the Special Counsel’s Office in which he affirmed and then re-affirmed his now-clear recollection of the defendant’s false statement.

Durham is actually soft-pedaling the extent of the problem. He’s saying that Baker’s memory in two separate appearances in 2018 (two years after the meeting), an appearance in 2019 (three years after the meeting), and the first meeting with Durham in 2020 (almost four years after the meeting) is less reliable than four later interviews, conducted under threat of prosecution, with Durham’s team.

Whatever: According to Durham — at least when it comes to key witnesses whose testimony you need to say a certain thing to fit your conspiracy theory — refreshed memory is better than memory closer to the events.

But here’s what Durham says — when trying to correct an earlier incorrect statement — about his own memory:

Paragraph 10(a)(ii) states: “[I]n early January 2022, the Special Counsel’s Office learned for the first time that the OIG currently possesses two FBI cellphones of the former FBI General Counsel to whom the defendant made his alleged false statement, along with forensic reports analyzing those cellphones.” Id. The Government wishes to provide some additional context for this statement.

After reviewing the Special Counsel’s Office’s public filing, the DOJ Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) brought to our attention based on a review of its own records that, approximately four years ago, on February 9, 2018, in connection with another criminal investigation being led by then-Acting U.S. Attorney Durham, an OIG Special Agent who was providing some support to that investigation informed an Assistant United Attorney working with Mr. Durham that the OIG had requested custody of a number of FBI cellphones. OIG records reflect that among the phones requested was one of the two aforementioned cellphones of the thenFBI General Counsel. OIG records further reflect that on February 12, 2018, the OIG Special Agent had a conference call with members of the investigative team, including Mr. Durham, during which the cellphones likely were discussed. OIG records also reflect that the OIG subsequently obtained the then-FBI General Counsel’s cellphone on or about February 15, 2018. Special Counsel Durham has no current recollection of that conference call, nor does Special Counsel Durham currently recall knowing about the OIG’s possession of the former FBI General Counsel’s cellphones before January 2022. [my emphasis]

For witnesses under threat of prosecution, Durham says, refreshed memory is better than the original.

For Special Counsels caught in a false statement, however, that kind of refreshment is useless for reminding someone of inconvenient facts.