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“The Bell Can Never Be Unrung” … The Many Times Durham’s Prosecutors Flouted Judge Cooper’s Orders

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The jury in the Michael Sussmann case will return to work this morning. They deliberated for some period on Friday (I’m not sure whether how long they deliberated has been reported). But the jury was unable to get questions answered or a verdict accepted after Judge Christopher Cooper left for the long holiday at 2:30PM. Even if the jury ends up finding Jim Baker’s testimony unreliable — which would likely be the quickest way to come to a verdict one way or another — I would expect it to take the jury a bit of time to sort through the centrality of his testimony to the charges.

So while we wait, I want to catalog how Durham’s team blew off just about every adverse decision Cooper made against them.

1. Delayed Request for Privileged Material

As I laid out in this post, Cooper ruled that a bunch of the emails over which the Democrats had originally claimed privilege were not. But because Durham waited so long to request a review of the privileged documents, Cooper ruled Durham could not use the emails at trial.

In cross-examination of Fusion’s tech person, Laura Seago, DeFilippis used the content of one of those emails that apparently discussed hiding her Fusion affiliation from Tea Leaves. (I laid out this exchange in this post.)

MR. DeFILIPPIS: So we have an issue with regard to Ms. Seago’s testimony. The government followed carefully Your Honor’s order with regard to the Fusion emails that were determined not to be privileged but that the government had moved on.

As Your Honor may recall, there was an email in there in which Ms. Seago talks very explicitly about seeking to approach someone associated with the Alfa-Bank matter and concealing her affiliation with Fusion in the email. When we asked her broadly whether she ever did that, she definitively said no when I, you know, revisited it with her. So it raises the prospect that she may be giving false testimony.

And so we were — you know, I considered trying to refresh her with that, but I didn’t understand that to be in line with Your Honor’s ruling. So the government is — we’d like to consider whether we should be — we’d like Your Honor to consider whether we should be able to at least recall her and refresh her with that document?

THE COURT: I don’t remember that question, but the subject matter was concealing Fusion or her identities in conversations with the press. If I recall correctly, that email related to “tea leaves,” correct?

After repeatedly asking Seago whether she had hidden her affiliation from the media, he asked about this email, catching Seago in a gotcha (though both Judge Cooper and Sussmann lawyer Sean Berkowitz took the question, as Seago seemed to, to relate to outreach to the press).

After setting his perjury trap, DeFilippis immediately tried to recall Seago onto the stand to delve into the content of this email. In this case, Judge Cooper ruled that DeFilippis had waived his opportunity to do so.

THE COURT: Well, I think the time to have asked the Court whether using the document to refresh was consistent with the order was before she was tendered and dismissed. So I think you waived your opportunity. All right? So we’re going to move on.

2. Non-Expert Expert Testimony

One of the most contentious arguments leading up to trial was Durham’s belated attempt to use an expert witness, ostensibly to discuss the technical complexities of DNS and Tor at the heart of the case (topics which prosecutors had witnesses explain over and over in as much detail as their nominal expert witness David Martin did), to address the accuracy of the research on the DNS anomaly.

This was an attempt to lead the jury to believe the anomaly was fabricated by Rodney Joffe and the researchers, in spite of the fact that Durham obtained plenty of evidence it was not.

On April 25, Judge Cooper ruled that Durham could have an expert discuss the technicalities of the data, but could only raise the accuracy if Sussmann did so himself.

Then on May 6, Durham attempted to expand that ruling by asking the expert to address materiality. In discussions the morning of opening arguments that focused entirely on the testimony of non-DNS expert Scott Hellman, not the nominal expert on DNS David Martin, Cooper prohibited Martin’s discussion of spoofing. (I describe these discussions here.)

Ironically, this was all supposed to be about visibility, the import of understanding how much DNS traffic a researcher could access to the quality of that researcher’s work. In Hellman’s own analysis — for which he fairly demonstrably did not review the data that Sussmann shared with the FBI very closely —  he showed no curiosity about the issue.

Searched “…global nonpublic DNS activity…” (unclear how this was done) and discovered there are (4) primary IP addresses that have resolved to the name “mail1.trump-email.com”. Two of these belong to DNS servers at Russian Alfa Bank. [my emphasis]

Nevertheless, DeFilippis used this nested set of witnesses as an opportunity to get Hellman — who admitted he had only a basic understanding of DNS, who didn’t review the data very closely, and who formed his initial conclusion in about a day — to comment on the methodology of the researchers.

Q. And what, if anything, did you conclude about whether you believed the authors of the paper or author of the paper was fairly and neutrally conducting an analysis? Did you have an opinion either way?

MR. BERKOWITZ: Objection, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Basis?

MR. BERKOWITZ: Objection on foundation. He asked him his opinion. He’s not qualified as an expert for that.

THE COURT: I’ll overrule it.

A. Sorry, can you please repeat the question?

Q. Sure. Did you draw a conclusion one way or the other as to whether the authors of this paper seemed to be applying a sound methodology or whether, to the contrary, they were trying to reach a particular result? Did you —

A. Based upon the conclusions they drew and the assumptions that they made, I did not feel like they were objective in the conclusions that they came to.

Q. And any particular reasons or support for that?

A. Just the assumption you would have to make was so far reaching, it didn’t — it just didn’t make any sense.

This is precisely the kind of opinion that Cooper had prohibited from an actual expert, admitted from someone whose own shoddy analysis became a recurrent theme for the defense.

3. Hearsay Clinton Tweet

DeFilippis’ efforts to get excluded information introduced was still more brazen with hearsay materials.

On May 7, Judge Cooper issued his initial ruling on which parts of Durham’s conspiracy theory could be admitted at trial. In general, Cooper permitted the introduction of Fusion GPS emails with the press about the Alfa Bank allegations, all of which post-date Sussmann’s alleged lie. He excluded all but one of the emails between Rodney Joffe and the researchers (more on the exception below).

Cooper equivocated wildly about a tweet sent out under Hillary Clinton’s name in response to the Franklin Foer story on the anomaly. In a hearing on April 27, he excluded it as hearsay.

THE COURT: All right. The Clinton Campaign Tweet, the Court will exclude that as hearsay. To the extent that the government believes that it offers some connection to the campaign and an attorney-client relationship, it’s likely duplicative of other evidence, so the Tweet will not come in.

In a pre-trial hearing on May 9 (after he had issued his order on motions in limine), Cooper explained he was revisiting the decision.

But I guess my question, as I have thought more about this, given the sort of two competing theories of the case and two narratives laid out in the Court’s ruling on the motion in limine, is whether it is relevant not for the truth, but to show the campaign’s connection to the alleged public relations effort to play stories regarding the Alfa-Bank data with the press and that therefore it is sort of context for the Government’s motive theory, that Mr. Sussmann sought to conceal that effort, as well as the campaign’s general connection to that effort.

After Sussmann lawyer Sean Berkowitz explained that the defense would not contest that the campaign wanted a story out there, Cooper opined that would make the tweet cumulative.

Well, if that’s going to be the case, and he’s not contesting that he was representing the campaign in connection with that effort, isn’t the tweet cumulative? It’s icing on the cake. Right?

DeFilippis claimed that without the tweet they would have no evidence about how the campaign worked the press on this issue (even though both Marc Elias, called as a government witness, and Robby Mook, who was originally listed as a government witness, eventually testified to the issue on the stand). After Judge Cooper said he would reserve his decision, Berkowitz noted that in fact, DeFilippis planned to use the tweet to claim the campaign wanted to go to the FBI when the testimony at trial (from both Elias and Mook) would establish that going to the FBI conflicted with the campaign’s goals.

[T]hey are offering the tweet for the truth of the matter, that that’s what the campaign desired and wanted and that it was a accumulation of the efforts.

Number one, it’s not the truth; and in fact, it’s the opposite of the truth. We expect there to be testimony from the campaign that, while they were interested in an article on this coming out, going to the FBI is something that was inconsistent with what they would have wanted before there was any press. And in fact, going to the FBI killed the press story, which was inconsistent with what the campaign would have wanted.

And so we think that a tweet in October after there’s an article about it is being offered to prove something inconsistent with what actually happened.

Then, after both Elias and Mook had testified that they had not sanctioned Sussmann going to the FBI, DeFilippis renewed his assault on Cooper’s initial exclusion, asking to introduce it through Mook’s knowledge that the campaign had tried to capitalize on the Foer story.

Having ruled in the past that the tweet was cumulative and highly prejudicial, Cooper nevertheless permitted DeFilippis to introduce the tweet if he could establish that Mook knew that the campaign tried to capitalize on the Foer story.

But Cooper set two rules: The government could not read from the tweet and could not introduce the part of the tweet that referenced the FBI investigation. (I explained what DeFilippis did at more length in this post.)

THE COURT: All right. Mr. DeFilippis, if you can lay a foundation that he had knowledge that a story had come out and that the campaign decided to issue the release in response to the story, I’ll let you admit the Tweet. However, the last paragraph, I agree with the defense, is substantially more prejudicial than it is probative because he has testified that had neither — he nor anyone at the campaign knew that Mr. Sussmann went to the FBI, no one authorized him to go to the FBI, and there’s been no other evidence admitted in the case that would suggest that that took place. And so this last paragraph, I think, would unfairly suggest to the jury, without any evidentiary foundation, that that was the case. All right?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Your Honor, just two brief questions on that.

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Can we — so can we use — depending on what he says about whether he was aware of the Tweet or the public statement, may we use it to refresh him?

THE COURT: Sure. Sure.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Okay. And then, as to the last paragraph, could it be used for impeachment or refreshing purposes as well in terms of any dealings with the FBI?

THE COURT: You can use anything to refresh.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Okay.

THE COURT: But we’re not going to publish it to the jury. We’re not going to read from it. And let’s see what he says. [my emphasis]

Having just been told not to read the tweet, especially not the part about the FBI investigation, DeFilippis proceeded to have Mook do just that.

The exhibit of the tweet that got sent to the jury had that paragraph redacted and that part of the transcript was also redacted. But, predictably, the press focused on little but the tweet, including the part that Cooper had explicitly forbidden from coming into evidence.

4. Hearsay about Joffe’s Request for Feedback

As noted above, Judge Cooper permitted just one email between Joffe and the researchers to come into evidence: a request for feedback Rodney Joffe made of the researches. But he did so based on Durham’s representation that either David Dagon or Manos Antonakakis — both of whom received the email — would testify.

Neither did.

During Sean Berkowitz’ cross-examination of Curtis Heide, one of the agents assigned to investigate the anomaly, Sussmann’s attorney had Heide explain how they knew David Dagon had a role in the research, but nevertheless never bothered to speak to him directly.

AUSA Jonathan Algor used that as an opportunity to ask to introduce not just the email that had been permitted, but also the response, claiming that by highlighting how shoddy the FBI investigation was, Berkowitz was opening the door to accuracy questions.

MR. ALGOR: So, Your Honor, there was a good amount of cross-examination regarding David Dagon.

THE COURT: Yes.

MR. ALGOR: And specifically asking about reaching out to him and also going into that he was the source of the white paper and what types of questions you would ask him and all. I think that this goes right to the red herring email.

THE COURT: I’m sorry, the what email?

MR. ALGOR: The red herring email, which you’ve previously excluded. It was Government Exhibit 124, when you would go through what type of questions. Now that Mr. Berkowitz has asked these, I would ask: What would you have asked having to provide data related to it? You know, Were there drafts of the white paper? Would Agent Heide ask who else he communicated with and what he believed regarding all of that data? And so I think he’s opened the door regarding that email.

Berkowitz noted that neither Sussmann nor Heide knew of the email.

MR. BERKOWITZ: Judge, this is not an email that was authored by Mr. Dagon. My cross-examination went directly to their investigation, who they spoke to, who they didn’t speak to. I asked him, he doesn’t know what Mr. Dagon said to Mr. Sussmann, if anything, and he said he didn’t. And I don’t think that opening the door to these communications where there’s no indication that it went to Mr. Sussmann is appropriate.

Cooper ruled that Algor could not introduce the email response.

That did not open the door to the excluded email about which — about what his and the other researchers’ views on the data or motivations may have been. In any case, the emails reflect — or the email reflects the views of Mr. Joffe, not Mr. Dagon, and those views came a full month and a half before the FBI was in a position to interview Mr. Dagon. They are, therefore, not relevant to Mr. Dagon’s views or motivations in any event.

So you can — you can certainly ask him, as you have in direct, what he would have done differently, what he would have questioned Mr. Dagon about, you know, to establish a materiality argument, but we’re not going to get into what the researchers’ motivations were. Okay?

Minutes later, Algor walked how Heide didn’t know any of the people on the email, and elicited from Heide the opinion that even asking the opinion might suggest people were trying to fabricate the data.

Q. Okay. And it — the “from” is Rodney Joffe. Do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. And then the “to” is to Manos Antonakakis. Do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you know who that is?

A. I do not.

Q. And David Dagon, do you see that second name?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you know who David Dagon is?

A. No.

Q. You testified —

A. I’m sorry.

Q. — earlier —

A. I never met David Dagon, but I do know that he was the information that the source came forward and said he was potentially the author of the white paper.

Q. Okay. And that’s from a CHS that your team was contacted by?

A. Yes. Yes.

Q. And then, finally, April Lorenzen. Do you know who April Lorenzen is?

A. I do not.

[snip]

Q. Would you also want to know whether the authors of the white paper were trying to make it out so that it wasn’t — so that it couldn’t be understood if you weren’t a DNS expert?

A. That would be important.

Q. And if you could read that last line, please.

A. It says, “Do NOT spend more than a short while on this (if you spend more than an hour you have failed the assignment). Hopefully less.”

Q. And just going back to the line above, it says, without — it says, “NOT to be able to say this is, with out doubt, fact, but to merely be plausible,” would you want to understand that coming from the source of the white paper?

A. Yes.

The discussion of the bench conference immediately after Heide left the stand (Berkowitz generally refrained from objecting to these shenanigans in front of the jury) is entirely redacted. But as noted below, Judge Cooper ultimately excluded the entire email as hearsay introduced without proper foundation.

6. Hearsay Commentary on an Attorney

In the very same sidebar where Judge Cooper excluded the Heide testimony, he also explicitly prohibited prosecutors from tying a research request that Rodney Joffe had given a colleague, Jared Novick, to an attorney. The research request pertained to Richard Burt and Carter Page (among others) at a time both had established ties to Russia. Novick testified to Joffe’s displeasure with his work abilities and it’s quite clear the two don’t like each other.

MR. BERKOWITZ: So with respect, Judge, to that, it sounds as if outside the norm of what he normally does, that he thought it was likely for a political campaign. I’m not sure that his determination that he thought it was for an attorney is relevant. If they want to put in an attorney-client-privileged document that he saw, I think he can do that. But if he says I understood this was going to an attorney connected to the campaign, that’s hearsay. And it really doesn’t have anything to do with Mr. Sussmann, unless they can tie it up in any way.

THE COURT: Is there — is there any link to the defendant?

MR. ALGOR: Your Honor, just that he understood the tasking was related to opposition research regarding Trump; that he was told by Mr. Joffe — and his understanding was — that it was — it was someone tied to the Clinton campaign. But his understanding overall, full context and understanding, regardless of what Mr. Joffe said, was that this was going to someone tied to the campaign; and that also in receiving the document that had attorney-client privilege, that he understood it to be for an attorney.

THE COURT: How is that not hearsay if Mr. Joffe offered for the purpose of showing that, in fact, it was from —

MR. ALGOR: Because it’s a full understanding. It’s not getting into the actual specific statements that Mr. Joffe told him, but just the full context of what he was tasked to do and who the ultimate receiver was.

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. KEILTY: One second, Your Honor.

THE COURT: You can elicit his understanding that it was for a campaign, that it was unusual, that it may have had some political purpose. But I want you to stay away from any suggestion, which I don’t think has been established, that it was from Mr. Sussmann, including by suggesting it was from an attorney. Okay? [my enphasis]

Once again, minutes after Judge Cooper issued an order — this one ruling that Durham’s team could not elicit any reference to an attorney — Algor nevertheless got a former Joffe associate to do so.

Q. And, again, you — during cross-examination, Mr. Berkowitz asked you a series of questions regarding — regarding your work for Mr. Joffe on this project?

A. Uh-huh.

Q. And without getting into any specific conversations, based on the totality of your work, who was the intended audience for the project?

A. It was to go to an attorney with ties.

MR. BERKOWITZ: Objection, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Sustained.

That was the first time Berkowitz started getting really insistent about the pattern of Durham’s prosecutors completely ignoring explicit prohibitions from Cooper.

MR. BERKOWITZ: And — and just briefly, Your Honor, I don’t know when is an appropriate time to — to raise this. I want to express what — and I am not a — a hotheaded person —

THE COURT: You’re not a what?

MR. BERKOWITZ: I’m not a hotheaded person, but I have deep concern over the last line of questioning with the witness eliciting something that I think was clearly prohibited. And it’s consistent, in our view, with the line of questioning relative to Mr. Elias, [sic] relative to them reading the tweet that had been excluded. And, again, I know you don’t apportion bad faith, and I’m not asking you to do that at this point, but I just — I’m — I’m really concerned about the number of those issues that have come in and the prejudice to Mr. Sussmann. And I don’t know how best to deal with it, but I want to raise that to your attention.

Judge Cooper finally warns Durham to follow his orders

The Novick questioning finally stirred Cooper to try to do something about prosecutors flouting his orders. The first thing the next morning, he issued a both-sides warning about adhering to his rulings.

THE COURT: Okay. Good morning, everybody. All right. I just want to return briefly to the discussion we had at the end of the day yesterday.

You know, we’ve been here for two weeks. I have tried my best to let you folks try your cases as you see fit without undue intervention from the Court, as is my usual practice. But I obviously have set some evidentiary guardrails in the case that I expect both sides to follow, and I think you’ve done that for the most part.

Yesterday, however, I thought it was pretty clear — that I was pretty clear that in Mr. Novick’s testimony the government was not to suggest a link between the defendant and — on the one hand, and Mr. Joffe and the researchers’ data collection efforts on the other hand, or their views about the data. I didn’t think there was an evidentiary foundation for that.

I thought that the jury would only be able to speculate about any such connection, and I thought that any knowledge Mr. Novick had about that was necessarily hearsay from Mr. Joffe, who obviously is not here to testify. And I thought, at least, the final question in the redirect that was asked yesterday, nevertheless, attempted to establish such a link.

You know, I know that questions get asked rhetorically or argumentatively that are likely to draw an objection, and I will give lawyers some slack on that, but I expect both sides to comply with my evidentiary rulings.

There’s a lot of evidence in this case. There’s a lot for the jury to digest. They will have plenty of validly admitted evidence to pore over, and from here on out, including in arguments, I expect both sides to comply with both the letter and the spirit of the Court’s evidentiary rulings. So let’s keep it clean from here, okay?

MR. KEILTY: Yes, Your Honor.

Berkowitz used that exchange to request that Cooper exclude the entirety of the email that Algor used to invite Heide to suggest the data had been fabricated as the only way to limit the damage from prosecutors breaking Cooper’s rules.

MR. BERKOWITZ: Thank you very much for that, Your Honor. I have one other request related to it. And I don’t mean to go to the well, but there was an additional line of questioning yesterday related to Government Exhibit 132 with Agent Heide. I’m happy to provide a copy of it, if you would like.

THE COURT: Just remind me what it is.

MR. BERKOWITZ: It’s the document they sought to admit between Rodney Joffe, David Dagon, and Manos Antonakakis, “Is this a plausible explanation?”

THE COURT: Yes, I know that one. Actually, pass it up.

MR. BERKOWITZ: Your Honor, I went back and read the basis for your admitting the document, which was that it was not hearsay because there was a statement, “can you review,” and a question, “is this a plausible explanation?” I think we all contemplated at the time that both Mr. Dagon and Mr. Antonakakis were on the witness list and might testify.

You did allow it in. We didn’t object on the basis that you had previously ruled on it.

The manner in which it was used with the witness, I think, didn’t comply with the spirit of the Court’s ruling. There were questions asked related to “if you had spoken with Mr. Dagon, and you were aware of this communication” words to the effect of “would that have been concerning?”

And the witness — and I’m not suggesting that it was elicited intentionally, but the witness said “it would concern me because it appears as if it’s fabricated.”

Berkowitz noted that (like the Clinton tweet before it, though Berkowitz didn’t make the connection) that exchange got reported in the press.

That’s been reported in the press, even though you struck it from the record at our request.

Our remedy request, Your Honor, in light of that, and in light of the lack of probative value of that document with no connection to Mr. Sussmann, would be to strike the question and answering related to that document, to strike that document from the record, and not allow the prosecution team to use it with any defense witnesses, as well as not to use it in argument because it would have been stricken from the record.

We think the probative value of that document at this stage is minimal, and I expect that if it is published to the jury and used in any way, the jurors will associate it with the fabrication comment. And you worked real hard — and we have all worked really hard — to keep out the accuracy of the data. And the prejudicial nature of the document and the testimony associated with it is something that we think, while it can’t be remedied, and the bell can never be unrung, they should not be reminded and put before them. [my emphasis]

After having just been scolded, DeFilippis nevertheless made a bid to keep the document that might trigger the improperly elicited comment in as evidence.

Michael Keilty — the closest thing to a grown-up on this team — then tried to explain away Algor’s flouting of the rules with Novick.

MR. KEILTY: One last thing, Your Honor, just with respect to the final question to Mr. Novick yesterday. I think Your Honor’s aware that the government obviously did not intend for that — to elicit that answer. Instead, it intended to elicit an answer regarding Mr. Novick’s thoughts about whether this was involved with a political entity or political campaign. We didn’t have the opportunity or the benefit of conferring with Mr. Novick prior to Your Honor’s ruling. So we apologize for that, but we just wanted to put on the record some of the reasons why.

THE COURT: Well, you could have asked, “Without telling me who it came from, what was your understanding of the general nature of the source?” Right?

7. Hearsay on Top of Hearsay about Joffe’s Joke about a Job

But the Durham team’s defiance of Cooper didn’t stop there. While Cooper had permitted (with the proper foundation) a Joffe email that elicited feedback, Cooper had excluded an email — sent to someone never identified as a witness in this case — in which Joffe had joked about working in cybersecurity under a Clinton Administration. Nevertheless, as part of a long exchange with retired FBI Agent Tom Grasso in which DeFilippis asked Grasso materiality questions about stuff he heard about but had no firsthand knowledge of — each time presented as fact rather than as a conspiracy that Durham had explicitly been prohibited from presenting because they hadn’t charged it — Durham’s lead prosecutor raised the allegation he had been prohibited from raising.

Q. So when he came to you or at any time after that, did Mr. Joffe disclose to you whether he was working on this with representatives of the — of a political campaign?

A. He did not, no.

Q. And do you think you’d remember if he had told you at the time, you know, “I’m doing this, working with some folks who are working with the political campaign”?

A. I would think I would remember that, yes.

Q. So Mr. Joffe didn’t tell you — have you heard of a firm called Fusion GPS?

A. I have heard of Fusion GPS, yes, sir.

Q. Okay. And are you generally aware that they had — without getting into any specific work you did, are you generally aware that they had done some work for the Clinton Campaign at the time?

A. Yes, I —

Q. Okay.

A. Yes, I am aware of that, yes.

Q. So Mr. Joffe didn’t say he was working with Fusion GPS on this project?

A. Not that I recall, no.

Q. And Mr. Joffe never told you that, you know, this project had arisen in the context of opposition research that the Clinton Campaign was working on?

A. I do not recall that coming up, no.

Q. If Mr. Joffe had come to you and said, “I’m working with some investigators and some lawyers who are working for the Clinton Campaign, and, you know, that’s part of what I’m doing here with this information, can you please keep my name out of this,” would you have viewed that differently than you viewed the information as you got it?

[snip]

Q. Okay. And in the 2016 election period, you and Mr. Joffe, I imagine, never discussed politics or anything like that?

A. I don’t recall political discussions with him, no.

Q. Okay. And did you — so you certainly didn’t know that he was working with folks affiliated with a particular political party or campaign on what he brought to you, right?

A. I have no recollection of that.

Q. And any recollection of hearing or learning that he was expecting any kind of position in a future political administration?

A. I do not have a recollection of that other than — let me rephrase that. I have a recollection of that being reported in the media, but I don’t have a —

MR. BERKOWITZ: Objection, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Sustained. [my emphasis]

When Berkowitz raised this exchange at the end of the day, Judge Cooper noted that the several meetings they had with Grasso were ample basis for DeFilippis to understand that Grasso had no knowledge of those matters (or, for that matter, the topics covered by that entire line of questioning).

MR. BERKOWITZ: Judge, I regret that I’m going back to this same issue that we started the day with where  you admonished counsel to be careful of the guardrails related to evidentiary rulings. We had another situation n today that I think ran afoul of your comments. There was an email that was the subject of a motion related to Mr. Joffe communicating about a potential job. And in the cross-examination of Agent Grasso there was a question about, “He certainly didn’t know he was working with folks affiliated with a particular political party or campaign when he brought that to you. Right?”

Answer: “I have no recollection of that.” I didn’t object.

And then he followed up with: “And any recollection of hearing or learning that he was expecting any kind of position in a future political administration, knowing that there was nothing in the 3500 materials related to that and knowing an objection that was sustained could elicit a belief that he would do that?”

The witness answered, “I do not have a recollection of that other than — let me rephrase that. I have a recollection of that being reported in the media.”

I objected. Your Honor, they had met with this witness four times. They had pretried him twice. There was nothing in the 3500 material to suggest that he had any belief of that or any recollection or any connection.

And it’s another instance in a litany of instances that’s suggesting to the jury topics and issues that were the subject of your ruling. And I, you know, particularly  with the potential testimony of Mr. Sussmann coming up, I don’t know what else to say or to do, and we’ll consider filing a motion. But I wanted to raise the issue, and I take no joy in continuing to do this. But I cannot stand by while it continues to go on.

DeFilippis at first tried to excuse blowing off Cooper’s ruling by saying that the rules for cross-examination are different. But not if the witness was originally a witness for the prosecution.

THE COURT: Counsel?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Yes, Your Honor. I guess we’re glad that Mr. Berkowitz raised it in the sense that, you know, typically the rules for cross-examination are different from evidence presented in a case in chief. And if there is a good-faith basis to ask — inquire as to knowledge of a matter, Your Honor, the government didn’t phrase the question tethered to any email or refer to any hearsay.

It was just inquiring as to knowledge and then inquiring as to whether that fact would be relevant to what  it is that Mr. Grasso’s interactions with Mr. Joffe were.

So if, again if the Court wants —-

THE COURT: Counsel, I don’t disagree with that, but you got to have a good faith basis for asking the question. Right? And if you prepped this guy and he’s never said anything about it, then there’s no good-faith basis. Okay? Him reading it in The New York Times or whatever is not a good-faith basis.

Then DeFilippis claimed that the question — which came after two earlier ones in which he asked Grasso questions about things he had “heard of” — was not deliberately intended to elicit such a response.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Yeah, and to be clear, Your Honor, the portion where he said he read in the — we didn’t know that, and we wouldn’t have intentionally elicited something from a press account. So we will certainly be careful.

THE COURT: He was the defense’s witness here, but he was on your witness list. You should have known. If there was a basis to ask that question, you should have known what it was.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Yeah. Understood, Your Honor.

Only after this exchange on prosecutors using someone who had originally been a government witness to invite speculation did Cooper exclude the entire email discussion involving Heide.

THE COURT: In that vein, let’s go back to GX-132 the admission of the email did not sit well with me yesterday, and it still does not sit well with me.

The Court ruled that the document was [sic] hearsay originally because it contained a question and a request, as opposed to an assertion. But the Court made clear in its order that, in order to be admitted, it would still need a proper foundation. The witness through which the document ultimately was admitted, albeit not without an objection from the defense, was Mr. Heide, who, as far as I could tell, had no personal knowledge whatsoever of the email. He didn’t know Mr. Joffe. He didn’t know the researchers who received it. He obviously was not a party to the email. So frankly, I don’t see how he could testify to that email in his personal knowledge as required by Rule 602.

So for that reason, I don’t think it was properly admitted through that witness. As I said yesterday, we had expected at least two of the researchers to testify based on who was on the government’s list. And I think it would have been properly admissible through those people to explain how the data came into being  as the Court ruled prior to trial. So I am going to exclude that email as well as any testimony by Mr. Heide describing his interpretation or views or thoughts on the email. Okay?

Conspiracy theory

This repeated defiance of Judge Cooper was treated as one after another evidentiary issue, usually prosecutors sneaking in hearsay with no basis. Ultimately, however, it was about a more basic ruling Judge Cooper had made, that this trial would not be about a conspiracy theory that Durham wanted to criminalize without charging.

As Berkowitz observed in his close,

This case is not about a giant political conspiracy theory. It’s about a short meeting.

[snip]

So the people who were part of this large political conspiracy theory are the people at HFA, Rodney Joffe, and Fusion GPS. They’re the people that are supposedly involved in this conspiracy.

There will be a lot said about this trial, no matter the verdict. But the serial defiance of the Durham prosecutors was a successful attempt to do something else that Judge Cooper had prohibited: to criminalize, under a conspiracy theory, perfectly legal behavior.

OTHER SUSSMANN TRIAL COVERAGE

Scene-Setter for the Sussmann Trial, Part One: The Elements of the Offense

Scene-Setter for the Sussmann Trial, Part Two: The Witnesses

The Founding Fantasy of Durham’s Prosecution of Michael Sussmann: Hillary’s Successful October Surprise

With a Much-Anticipated Fusion GPS Witness, Andrew DeFilippis Bangs the Table

John Durham’s Lies with Metadata

emptywheel’s Continuing Obsession with Sticky Notes, Michael Sussmann Trial Edition

Brittain Shaw’s Privileged Attempt to Misrepresent Eric Lichtblau’s Privilege

The Methodology of Andrew DeFilippis’ Elaborate Plot to Break Judge Cooper’s Rules

Jim Baker’s Tweet and the Recidivist Foreign Influence Cheater

That Clinton Tweet Could Lead To a Mistrial (or Reversal on Appeal)

John Durham Is Prosecuting Michael Sussmann for Sharing a Tip on Now-Sanctioned Alfa Bank

Apprehension and Dread with Bates Stamps: The Case of Jim Baker’s Missing Jencks Production

Technical Exhibits, Michael Sussmann Trial

Jim Baker’s “Doctored” Memory Forgot the Meeting He Had Immediately After His Michael Sussmann Meeting

The FBI Believed Michael Sussmann Was Working for the DNC … Until Andrew DeFilippis Coached Them to Believe Otherwise

The Visibility of FBI’s Close Hold: John Durham Will Blame Michael Sussmann that FBI Told Alfa Bank They Were Investigating

The Staples Receipt and FBI’s Description of Michael Sussmann Sharing a Tip from Hillary

“and” / “or” : How Judge Cooper Rewrote the Michael Sussmann Indictment

 

The Visibility of FBI’s Close Hold: John Durham Will Blame Michael Sussmann that FBI Told Alfa Bank They Were Investigating

Thanks to those who’ve donated to help defray the costs of trial transcripts. Your generosity has funded the expected costs of transcripts. But if you appreciate the kind of coverage no one else is offering, we’re still happy to accept donations. This coverage reflects the culmination of eight months work. 

According to an exchange at the end of they day yesterday, John Durham’s team plans to introduce “a hundred” exhibits through their paralegal acting as a summary witness today.

My understanding is that the defense objects to the PowerPoint presentation style of the process. But, again, we think it just streamlines it in terms of — the alternative is to have to put literally a hundred exhibits in through Ms. Arsenault one at a time.

Given the exhibits from Monday, I assume Durham will throw a bunch of Fusion documents at the jury in an attempt to insinuate, once again, that Michael Sussmann shared with the press that the FBI was investigating the Alfa Bank anomaly.

The coming onslaught of Fusion documents

I say that because Mark Hosenball wrote the FBI for comment at 1:33PM on October 5, 2016, attaching the Mediafire package, asking for comment and noting that, “it has been suggested to me that this information and scenario is under careful investigation by the FBI.”

Hosenball’s email to the FBI puts it right at the beginning (in red, below) of the known universe of Fusion emails we’ve seen from that day, the timestamps of which Durham has repeatedly tried to obscure. (Maybe while paralegal Kori Arsenault is on the stand, Sussmann’s team can ask her why Durham’s exhibits misleadingly don’t correct for UTC.)

That said, there’s still a Hosenball email unaccounted for in which he shared one of the publicly available links to Tea Leaves packaged data. It’s quite possible that email precedes Seago’s question to Fritsch, which is currently the earliest email in the list, asking whether one of the i2p sites hosting the data was safe. See this post for background.

5:23PM (likely 1:23?): Seago to Fritsch, Is this safe?

1:31PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball email with Alfa Group overview

1:32PM: Fritsch sends Isikoff the September 1, 2016 Alfa Group overview (full report included in unsealed exhibit)

1:33PM: Hosenball to FBI, “careful investigation by the FBI”

1:33PM [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “that memo is OTR — tho all open source”

1:35/1:36PM: Hosenball replies, “yep got it, but is that from you all or from the outside computer experts?”

1:37PM: Fritsch responds,

the DNS stuff? not us at all

outside computer experts

we did put up an alfa memo unrelated to all this

1:38PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

is the alfa attachment you just sent me experts or yours ? also is there additional data posted by the experts ? all I have found is the summary I sent you and a chart… [my emphasis]

1:41PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball:

alfa was something we did unrelated to this. i sent you what we have BUT it gives you a tutanota address to leave questions.  1. Leave questions at: [email protected]

1:41PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

yes I have emailed tuta and they have responded but haven’t sent me any new links yet. but I am pressing. but have you downloaded more data from them ?

1:43PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “no”

1:44PM: Fritsch to Lichtblau:

fyi found this published on web … and downloaded it. super interesting in context of our discussions

[mediafire link] [my emphasis]

2:23PM: [not included] Lichtblau to Fritsch, “thanks. where did this come from?”

2:27PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

tuta sent me this guidance

[snip]

Since I am technically hopeless I have asked our techie person to try to get into this. But here is the raw info in case you get there first. Chrs mh

2:32PM: Fritsch to Lichtblau:

no idea. our tech maven says it was first posted via reddit. i see it has a tutanota contact — so someone anonymous and encrypted. so it’s either someone real who has real info or one of donald’s 400 pounders. the de vos stuff looks rank to me … weird

6:33PM (likely 2:33PM): Fwd Alfa Fritsch to Seago

6:57PM (like 2:57PM): Re alfa Seago to Fritsch

7:02PM (likely 3:02): Re alfa Seago to Fritsch

3:27PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball cc Simpson: “All same stuff”

3:58PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch, asking, “so the trumpies just sent me the explanation below; how do I get behind it?”

4:28PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “not easily, alas”

4:32PM: Fritsch to Hosenball, cc Simpson:

Though first step is to send that explanation to the source who posted this stuff. I understand the trump explanations can be refuted.

So I assume that Durham will argue that Fusion must have passed on the information that the FBI was investigating — and they may have! (though none of the currently public emails reflect that — and suggest that was all part of Michael Sussmann’s devious plan on September 19.

When, under threat of prosecution, an attempt to prevent politicization turns into an attempt to hide political bias

That’s where things will get interesting. One key dispute in this case is why one keeps secrets. Durham wants to argue that keeping secrets can only serve a political purpose.

Sussmann will argue that keeping secrets facilitates national security interests.

Sussmann will show that everyone at the FBI recognized the value, to the FBI, of stalling a newspaper article about a potentially important threat so the FBI could covertly investigate it. All the more so during election season when — investigation after investigation into the Russian investigation has shown — the FBI was, if anything, being too careful in an attempt to avoid impacting Trump’s political fortunes, even while Jim Comey was tanking Hillary’s campaign. According to Sussmann’s own sworn testimony — testimony that Durham didn’t bother testing before charging Sussmann — allowing the FBI the opportunity to do that was the reason Sussmann shared the Alfa Bank anomaly with the FBI. Durham wants to imprison Sussmann for giving the FBI that heads up, arguing that because he hid his purported clients, it led the FBI to open a Full Investigation more quickly than they otherwise would have (even though, as Sussmann’s team has demonstrated, the FBI did nothing that would have required a Full Investigation in the short period during which they investigated).

A key part of that story Durham wants to tell — needs to tell, given all the evidence that the FBI perceived this to be a DNC-related tip — is that some of his key villains were attempting to hide the perceived political nature of the tip, rather than ensuring the integrity of the investigation itself (or possibly, but I’m still working on this, protecting the identity of a CHS).

Central to that narrative is the changing testimony of FBI Agent Ryan Gaynor — his stated reasons for refusing to let the case agents in Chicago interview either Sussmann or Georgia Tech professor David Dagon. In an interview on October 30, 2020 (a week after Durham had been granted Special Counsel status), Gaynor explained that he had intervened to make sure agents couldn’t conduct interviews that would have led to a more robust investigation to ensure the integrity of the investigation.

Q. Okay. So you remember telling the government that you believed that the agents in Chicago would have been biased by Mr. Sussmann’s perception of the issue — the source’s perception of the issue if they had interviewed him before they got all of the data and analyzed it?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. And that’s because, at the time, you believed the DNC was the source of the information itself. Right?

A. That’s because, at the time, I believed that he was a DNC attorney associated with the Democratic party and it would be potentially highly-biasing information.

Q. And you told the government, if you had provided the identity of the DNC as the source of the information, they would have known there was possible political motivation. rignt?

A. I recall that exact statement.

Shortly after he gave this testimony, prosecutors took a break, and told his lawyer they were moving towards treating Gaynor as a subject of, rather than just a witness in, the investigation.

Q. Okay. Well, at or around the time you were talking about passing along the source’s name or not, you took a break in the meeting. Do you remember taking breaks during the meeting?

A. I do.

Q. And do you remember when you broke at that point that the government told your attorney that your own status in the investigation had changed. Do you remember hearing that?

A. So I didn’t hear that, but when my attorney came back in, he advised me that my status was in jeopardy.

After that, Gaynor went back, looked at two sets of scribbled notes (Gaynor, because he remains at FBI, was able to review his notes, unlike a number of other Durham witnesses), and decided that now that he thought about it, Jonathan Moffa had actually instructed him to keep a close hold on Sussmann’s identity. It wasn’t his decision anymore, it was Moffa’s, and the dastardly Peter Strzok was in on it. Once Gaynor testified that way, he became a — to Andew DeFilippis, anyway — credible witness again.

Q. Okay. And when you told the government there was a close hold, were you told that your status changed back to being a witness?

A. At the conclusion of the interview, once I had gone over all of the material that I brought and walked through what I had reconstructed and what I could recollect after doing so, I was informed that my status had changed, yes.

Q. Changed back to being a witness?

A. To a witness, yes.

Q. So you go into meeting one being told you are a witness, telling them you decided not to share the agents’ names among other things. Then you are told you are a subject facing criminal charges, potentially. You come back. You tell them about a close hold, and you go back to being a witness; is that right?

Politico may have been the only outlet that described this fairly shocking testimony.

These conflicting claims about the purported reasons to keep Sussmann’s identity (as opposed to the investigation itself) a secret are important background to that Hosenball email on October 5, which I suspect Durham will use to claim that the Democrats were leaking about the investigation.

Starting almost immediately after getting the investigation, Chicago case agents started asking to interview the source, variously defined to be either Sussmann or the person who wrote the white paper. Gaynor kept pushing the agents to go review the logs again — though the file memorializing the contents of what it describes as a single thumb drive (Sussmann shared two) was not written up until October 4. But then, by October 5 (the same day that Hosenball asked the FBI for comment, albeit this report comes in four hours later), FBI had learned from one of their confidential human sources that David Dagon had a role in the white paper and he — and the FBI’s own source! — would be going public pushing the credibility of the allegations.

In that email, newbie agent Allison Sands explained that they were going to contact Dagon.

So, among other things, on the same day Hosenball writes in reflecting an awareness that there was an ongoing investigation, the FBI hears from a CHS who says he or she has already been talking with David Dagon and was going public backing the claims (though this source was speaking to the WaPo, not Reuters).

Note that, as of that date, the FBI still hadn’t received logs from Listrak.

By the time Allison Sands wrote that email, it appears from Lync messages that like others probably haven’t been noticed to reflect UTC time zone, had already contacted Rodney Joffe’s handler to contact Dagon.

Fun with missing Bates stamps

Side note. There are actually two versions of the notes that purportedly caused Gaynor to change his mind about there being a close hold and on what source that close hold was on. There’s Defense Exhibit 524, which has a slew of Bates stamps, and 7 redactions.

And then there’s a page from Government Exhibit 279, which appears between a page with Bates stamp SC-6454 and one with Bates stamp SC-6456, which has no Bates stamp at all (and lacks the protective order stamp that appears on the other pages of the exhibit).

That version of the exhibit has just four redactions, one of which is smaller. The unredacted bits on the exhibit reveal discussions of the informant and recognition that the statements of the informant “likely triggered” the press attention.

Incidentally, Durham’s team took an entire day to upload this set of exhibits. I’m wondering if the exhibit that was viewed by Gaynor and entered into evidence actually looked like this one does.

Calling the agent of a foreign agent to ask for comment

There’s one other thing going on. On the stand, Gaynor spent a great deal of time explaining about how important it was to hide an investigation — particularly from anyone who might have a partisan interest — during an election.

Except for all the talk of a close hold, the FBI wasn’t holding this very close. They were stomping around to a bunch of sources asking for data logs, even before they had checked what was on (one of) the thumb drives that Sussmann had dropped off. They fairly demonstrably were stomping around before they understood what they should be looking for.

They also were calling Mandiant, which was working for Alfa Bank, which by October 19 when they were formally interviewed discovered Alfa Bank had no logs, but which knew of the investigation by October 5.

Q. Uh-huh. You testified about the reasons why you’d want to keep it covert, you wouldn’t want to do anything that could affect the election so close to the election. Right?

A. Yes.

Q. The FBI, as part of the Alfa-Bank investigation, talked to a number of different individuals outside of the FBI to acquire information, to get you information so that you could investigate the allegations. Right?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. You spoke to people at Central Dynamics?

A. Yes, and I believe the investigative team documented in the email that I saw that they had done it in a manner to attempt to avoid it outing the allegation.

[snip]

A. I’m sorry?

Q. And how is that that they could conduct an interview with a third party in a way that the third party wouldn’t tell other people about it?

A. They described it in a manner that they had obfuscated what their direct interest was.

Q. So from the Central Dynamics’ perspective, they didn’t know what you were looking at?

A. That is what I had in the email chain, yes. n

Q. But you testified that the FBI interviewed Mandiant as part of the investigation. Correct?

A. Yes. My understanding there is that was a private liaison relationship that occurred.

Q. Mandiant — just to be clear — Alfa-Bank itself hired Mandiant to analyze whether there was a secret communications channel. Correct?

A. Yes.

Q. So Alfa-Bank paid Mandiant to look into whether there was a secret communications channel. Right?

A. Yes.

Q. And Alfa-Bank obviously had a relationship with Mandiant that was put at issue by hiring Mandiant. Right?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. So the FBI went to Alfa-Bank’s paid consultant and asked them for their view on the allegation. Correct?

A. I believe the FBI had a prior relationship with one of the employees, and they utilized that in the field. Plus, I don’t think the Bureau would violate policy on a sensitive investigative matter when the Chief Division Counsel of the office is involved. So I would assume that they did that in a manner that they did not feel would be alerting or go to the media.

Q. Mr. Gaynor, the FBI in this investigation went to Alfa-Bank’s paid consultant and asked them for their views of the allegations. correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And Alfa-Bank’s paid consultant could have told Alfa-Bank. Correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And could have told the press for all you know. Correct?

A. Yes. And I don’t know how Chicago mitigated that.

Q. And is it your testimony that going to Alfa-Bank, the Russian bank that is the focus of this investigation, and asking their paid consultant for their views on the matter wasn’t going to overt?

A. Again, I don’t know how Chicago mitigated that issue.

[snip]

Q. Did you ever have a conversation with anybody at headquarters about whether to provide the names of the source to the Chicago agents?

A. Yes. There was a conversation about the close hold, as I mentioned, although it wasn’t correctly, I guess, documented between Pete Strzok, myself and Mr. Moffa at some point during that time period.

[snip]

Q. And the reason that you say no one talked to him is because, as of that point, October 6th, you had already concluded that there was nothing to these allegations. Right?

A. As of October 5th, evening of October 5th, we had come to a pretty solid conclusion that these allegations did not have merit and there wasn’t a national security threat.

Q. Are you aware that the agents first interviewed Alfa-Bank’s paid consultant, Mandiant, merely two weeks later on October 19th?

A. So I’m aware that we had information from Mandiant as of October 5th that they had looked at this allegation and found that it didn’t have merit. And then I’m also aware that there was an interview that was conducted later, October 19th or so, when I was made aware of it, yes.

A text between Allison Sands and Scott Hellman reflects the FBI had contact with Alfa Bank by October 4.

It appears that contact occurred in London — a place where Mark Hosenball has strong source ties since the time in 1976 when he got expelled for reporting on Northern Ireland.

In other words, Gaynor’s currently operative stance is that case agents couldn’t contact David Dagon — much less Rodney Joffe, who had business ties with the FBI — to find out what was going on, because that would present a conflict.

But it was okay for the FBI to contact the agent of the subject of the investigation overtly.

Agent Gaynor belatedly rediscovers the Mediafire package

Incidentally, when that original request for comment from Hosenball came in, it got transferred to people in the cyber division, then shared with the investigative team. In response, the senior-most person on that team sent it to Peter Strzok. Strzok forwarded it, at 3:02 on October 5, to Ryan Gaynor.

On October 13, just over a week after he had originally received it, Gaynor sent the Mediafire package to the case team, noting that the observations in it reflected actions taken in response to their investigation, but asking for their technical opinion.

He included Moffa and Joe Pientka on that email.

But not Strzok, who knew he had received it 8 days earlier.

OTHER SUSSMANN TRIAL COVERAGE

Scene-Setter for the Sussmann Trial, Part One: The Elements of the Offense

Scene-Setter for the Sussmann Trial, Part Two: The Witnesses

The Founding Fantasy of Durham’s Prosecution of Michael Sussmann: Hillary’s Successful October Surprise

With a Much-Anticipated Fusion GPS Witness, Andrew DeFilippis Bangs the Table

John Durham’s Lies with Metadata

emptywheel’s Continuing Obsession with Sticky Notes, Michael Sussmann Trial Edition

Brittain Shaw’s Privileged Attempt to Misrepresent Eric Lichtblau’s Privilege

The Methodology of Andrew DeFilippis’ Elaborate Plot to Break Judge Cooper’s Rules

Jim Baker’s Tweet and the Recidivist Foreign Influence Cheater

That Clinton Tweet Could Lead To a Mistrial (or Reversal on Appeal)

John Durham Is Prosecuting Michael Sussmann for Sharing a Tip on Now-Sanctioned Alfa Bank

Apprehension and Dread with Bates Stamps: The Case of Jim Baker’s Missing Jencks Production

Technical Exhibits, Michael Sussmann Trial

Jim Baker’s “Doctored” Memory Forgot the Meeting He Had Immediately After His Michael Sussmann Meeting

The FBI Believed Michael Sussmann Was Working for the DNC … Until Andrew DeFilippis Coached Them to Believe Otherwise

John Durham’s Lies with Metadata

Thanks to those who’ve donated to help defray the costs of trial transcripts. Your generosity has funded the expected costs. If you appreciate the kind of coverage no one else is offering, we’re still happy to accept donations for this coverage — which reflects the culmination of eight months work. 

I’d like to thank John Durham for showing us back in April how he was going to mislead the jury with metadata.

He appears to have done just that, yesterday, with several exhibits entered into evidence. And I fear that unless Durham’s lie is corrected, he will gravely mislead the jury.

As I pointed out in April, because of the email system at Fusion GPS, the first email in any thread they produced to Durham renders as UTC; the rest render as ET. So, for the emails on which one could check, the first email in every thread they released in April was four hours later than the time the email was actually sent.

Durham has revealed that his exhibit has irregularities in the emails pertaining to a key issue: whether Fusion sent out a link to April Lorenzen’s i2p site before Mark Hosenball sent it to them.

This shows up in the timestamps. In the exhibit, the lead email for each appearance appears to be set to UTC, whereas the sent emails included in any thread appear to be set to ET.

For example, in this screencap, the time shown for Mark Hosenball’s response to Peter Fritsch (the pink rectangle) is 1:35 PM, which is presumably Eastern Time.

In this screencap, the very same response appears to be sent at 5:36PM, which is presumably UTC.

Both instances of Peter Fritsch’s email (the green rectangle), “that memo is OTR–tho all open source,” show at 1:33PM, again, Eastern Time.

To be clear: this irregularity likely stems from Fusion’s email system, not DOJ’s. It appears that the email being provided itself is rendered in UTC, while all the underlying emails are rendered in the actual received time.

That means if you show someone only the first email in a thread, you will be misrepresenting what time that email was sent.

That’s what Durham did yesterday with a bunch of Fusion-produced emails he submitted during Laura Seago’s testimony, including (but not limited to):

Over and over, Andrew DeFilippis showed these to Laura Seago and asked her to state what date and time the emails were.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Okay. And, Your Honor, if there’s no objection from the defense, we’ll offer Government’s Exhibit 612.

MR. BERKOWITZ: No objection.

THE COURT: So moved.

Q. Okay. So what is the date and time of this email?

A. October 5, 2016, at 5:23 p.m.

Q. And the “Subject” line?

A. “Re: so is this safe to look at” — excuse me — “so this is safe to look at.”

While these emails appear to have been produced to Durham at a later time (their Bates numbers from Fusion are about 3000 pages off some of the earlier ones), they’re from the same series and produced by the same custodian, so we should assume that the same anomaly that existed on the earlier ones exists here.

Seago hasn’t seen these emails for years and — because they were treated as privileged — she can only see the first email in a thread, even if there are replies in that thread (and there clearly are, in some of them). She had no way of knowing if she was looking at UTC time!

But Andrew DeFilippis surely does. Indeed, he’s prepping an attack on Sussmann for not understanding that Durham turned over Lync files from the FBI without making clear they, also, get produced in UTC. So he’s aware of which exhibits he has sent to Sussmann without clarifying the correct time. Yet over and over again, DeFilippis asked Seago what time these emails were sent, even though he likely knows (especially since these are files that are no longer privileged, so he has seen those that are threads) that he was deceiving her.

And the timing of these Fusion emails — and possibly some earlier ones exchanged with Rodney Joffe — almost certainly matter.

As I showed in my earlier post, because Durham didn’t fix the anomaly in these emails, they have created the false impression that an October 5 email from Mark Hosenball that shared public links to Tea Leaves’ files came in after Fusion sent it out to Eric Lichtblau. They appear to be prepping another deceit, this one conflating a link that Hosenball sent with one Seago found on Reddit.

Assuming the emails released yesterday share this same anomaly, here’s how the timeline would work out. I’ve bolded the ones that would be grossly misleading taken out of order.

5:23PM (could be 1:23?): Seago to Fritsch, Is this safe?

1:31PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball email with Alfa Group overview

1:32PM: Fritsch sends Isikoff the September 1, 2016 Alfa Group overview (full report included in unsealed exhibit)

1:33PM [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “that memo is OTR — tho all open source”

1:35/1:36PM: Hosenball replies, “yep got it, but is that from you all or from the outside computer experts?”

1:37PM: Fritsch responds,

the DNS stuff? not us at all

outside computer experts

we did put up an alfa memo unrelated to all this

1:38PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

is the alfa attachment you just sent me experts or yours ? also is there additional data posted by the experts ? all I have found is the summary I sent you and a chart… [my emphasis]

1:41PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball:

alfa was something we did unrelated to this. i sent you what we have BUT it gives you a tutanota address to leave questions.  1. Leave questions at: [email protected]

1:41PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

yes I have emailed tuta and they have responded but haven’t sent me any new links yet. but I am pressing. but have you downloaded more data from them ?

1:43PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “no”

1:44PM: Fritsch to Lichtblau:

fyi found this published on web … and downloaded it. super interesting in context of our discussions

[mediafire link] [my emphasis]

2:23PM: [not included] Lichtblau to Fritsch, “thanks. where did this come from?”

2:27PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

tuta sent me this guidance

[snip]

Since I am technically hopeless I have asked our techie person to try to get into this. But here is the raw info in case you get there first. Chrs mh

2:32PM: Fritsch to Lichtblau:

no idea. our tech maven says it was first posted via reddit. i see it has a tutanota contact — so someone anonymous and encrypted. so it’s either someone real who has real info or one of donald’s 400 pounders. the de vos stuff looks rank to me … weird

6:33PM (likely 2:33PM): Fwd Alfa Fritsch to Seago

6:57PM (like 2:57PM): Re alfa Seago to Fritsch

7:02PM (likely 3:02): Re alfa Seago to Fritsch

3:27PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball cc Simpson: “All same stuff”

3:58PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch, asking, “so the trumpies just sent me the explanation below; how do I get behind it?”

4:28PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “not easily, alas”

4:32PM: Fritsch to Hosenball, cc Simpson:

Though first step is to send that explanation to the source who posted this stuff. I understand the trump explanations can be refuted.

 

 

What Durham will completely and utterly misrepresent if it doesn’t clarify this anomaly (and this is the second time they have declined to) is that Seago and Mark Hosenball both accessed different packages of the Tea Leaves materials, one of which then got sent out to Lichtblau. Between 2:33 and 2:57, Seago appears to have compared the files and told Fritsch, who then told Hosenball, that the packages were “all the same stuff.”

With a Much-Anticipated Fusion GPS Witness, Andrew DeFilippis Bangs the Table

Thanks to those who’ve donated to help defray the costs of trial transcripts. Your generosity has funded the expected costs. If you appreciate the kind of coverage no one else is offering, we’re still happy to accept donations for this coverage — which reflects the culmination of eight months work. 

Andrew DeFilippis has done several arguably unethical things in an attempt to win the Michael Sussmann trial.

He repeatedly attempted to get Marc Elias to repeat something Elias shouldn’t have said in the first place: that the only way to understand whether Sussmann had gone to the FBI to benefit the Hillary campaign would be to ask him (in response to which stunt Sussmann is asking for a mistrial).

DeFilippis also set up a ploy to get a non-expert to offer opinions that only an expert should offer (more on that later).

At times (such as during Neustar employee Steve DeJong’s testimony), DeFilippis seemed more focused on eliciting testimony that might help him make a case against Rodney Joffe than obtain a guilty verdict against Sussmann.

And in direct examination yesterday of Fusion’s Laura Seago (my reading of the transcript is here), he did both, violating Judge Cooper’s orders in an attempt to set up his ongoing investigation in a way that did nothing to help him win the trial against Sussmann.

For all the anticipation for it, Seago’s testimony was not all that helpful to Durham’s team. She described having about as much awareness of which Democratic entity Fusion’s ultimately client was as the FBI did on Carter Page’s FISA applications. She indicated that the Alfa Bank allegations were just one of a whole bunch of possible ties to Russia that Trump had. She described how, to the extent Fusion could assess the Alfa Bank allegations, they found them credible. In discussing Fusion’s pitch to Franklin Foer on the Alfa Bank story, she described the other major data scientists who had backed the Alfa Bank allegations, identities that Durham has always suppressed because they kill his conspiracy theory.

Q. And what was discussed? What did you say, and what did they say?

A. I really don’t remember the specifics six years on. We talked about the allegations between the Trump organization and Alfa-Bank. We talked about highly credible computer scientists who seemed to think that these allegations were credible.

Q. And by that, are you referring to Mr. Joffe or somebody else?

A. There were others that ended up being cited in Mr. Foer’s article. He cited L. Jean Camp and Paul Vixie, who invented the DNS system.

During cross-examination by Sussmann lawyer Sean Berkowitz, Seago made it clear she didn’t tell Foer about the FBI investigation into these matters.

Q. And with respect to your meeting with Mr. Foer, did you tell Mr. Foer that the FBI was investigating these allegations?

A. No. I had no knowledge of that investigation.

Q. So before your meeting with Franklin Foer, did you have any information that the FBI was involved in any way?

A. No.

Q. All right. Did Mr. Fritsch or anyone else at the meeting say, “The FBI is looking into this”?

A. Not that I can remember.

Also on cross, Seago described that her impression from having dealt with Joffe is that he really did believe the allegations too.

Q. And your impression of Mr. Joffe that was made at that meeting was that he was — he seemed reliable?

A. Yes.

Q. And he seemed well-placed to have knowledge and information about the server issues?

A. Yes, he did.

Q. And you understood that Mr. Joffe supported the suggestion that there was at least potential contact between Trump servers and Alfa-Bank servers?

A. Yes, I did.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Objection, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Overruled.

Q. You answered the question?

A. Yes, I did understand that.

But it was in DeFilippis’ treatment of emails that Judge Cooper granted Durham’s team access to, but did not permit them to use at trial, where he got particularly obnoxious. Remember: while Durham’s team maintained from the start that the privilege claims behind these emails were not proper (because they were largely about communicating with the press, not about providing research assistance to the Democrats), the reason they didn’t get access to them was their own incompetence. They didn’t ask for a privilege review until right before trial.

DeFilippis has no one to blame but himself, but in true right wing fashion, he’s lashing out.

Perhaps in an attempt to make some drama out of documents that Cooper described “not very revelatory,” DeFilippis walked Seago through all the ones she was privy to, including those with Joffe that Cooper ruled were privileged.

Generally, such exchanges went something like this:

Q. Ms. Seago, does this appear to be part of the same chain as the prior email exchanges?

A. It has the same “Subject” line and says “Re,” so that is what it appears to be. I have no independent recollection of this email.

Q. And what, if any, connection in your mind did the Alfa Bank issue have to New York? I ask because “New York” is in the “Subject” line. Any sense?

A. I don’t know.

Q. And the attachment on this email, any sense of what that was?

A. I don’t know.

Note: there’s no reason to believe Seago has reviewed these emails recently.

That was all setup for DeFilippis’ last set of questions:

Q. Did you ever receive instructions that you couldn’t disclose your affiliation with Fusion GPS to the media?

A. No. I don’t remember hiding that affiliation from the media ever.

Q. Do you ever remember hiding or considering hiding that affiliation from anyone?

A. No.

Q. How certain are you of that?

A. I’m quite certain. You know, we don’t go around advertising who we are and where we work, but I certainly don’t lie to people, and I don’t lie to the press about where I work.

Q. Okay. So you’re fairly certain you never sought to conceal that?

A. Not that I can recall.

Immediately after Seago left the stand, DeFilippis asked for a bench conference (the DC Court adopted phones for the purpose during COVID and all the judges love them, so they’re keeping them). Seago’s answer to the question, DeFilippis noted, was inconsistent with the content of the email, which referenced Tea Leaves.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Your Honor, could we speak to you on the phone?

THE COURT: Excuse me?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Could we speak to you on the phone?

THE COURT: Yes. (The following is a bench conference outside the hearing of the jury)

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Your Honor, can you hear me now?

THE COURT: Yes.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: So we have an issue with regard to Ms. Seago’s testimony. The government followed carefully Your Honor’s order with regard to the Fusion emails that were determined not to be privileged but that the government had moved on.

As Your Honor may recall, there was an email in there in which Ms. Seago talks very explicitly about seeking to approach someone associated with the Alfa-Bank matter and concealing her affiliation with Fusion in the email. When we asked her broadly whether she ever did that, she definitively said no when I, you know, revisited it with her. So it raises the prospect that she may be giving false testimony.

And so we were — you know, I considered trying to refresh her with that, but I didn’t understand that to be in line with Your Honor’s ruling. So the government is — we’d like to consider whether we should be — we’d like Your Honor to consider whether we should be able to at least recall her and refresh her with that document?

THE COURT: I don’t remember that question, but the subject matter was concealing Fusion or her identities in conversations with the press. If I recall correctly, that email related to “tea leaves,” correct?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Your Honor, I thought I had phrased it more broadly. We can go to the transcript.

THE COURT: Mr. Berkowitz?

MR. BERKOWITZ: Judge, I’m not familiar with the specifics. I’m happy to take a look at the transcript. I certainly got the impression he was asking if she had ever concealed Fusion as an entity from the press. That was what was asked in her deposition, and she answered the same way in her deposition. One thing, just to note, some of our paralegals can hear Mr. DeFilippis talking, so I suggest, just as a reminder, to keep your voices down.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Sure, sure.

THE COURT: All right. Let me look at the transcript.

(Pause)

THE COURT: Can you hear me?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Yes, Your Honor.

THE COURT: All right. Looking at the transcript, I think you did ask a more open-ended question. She said, “I don’t remember hiding that affiliation from the media ever.” And then you followed up, “Do you ever remember hiding or considering hiding that affiliation from anyone?” And she answered, “No.” I would — so I think that she — I think the email is inconsistent with her answer, Mr. Berkowitz. But the question now is whether they can refresh her with that email notwithstanding the Court’s order. And now she’s gone.

How are we going to do that even if we were to allow it? Is it worth the candle of calling her back?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Your Honor, I understand she’s still in the building.

MR. BERKOWITZ: Your Honor, is this email privileged?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: This was one of the emails that was determined not to be privileged by Your Honor.

MR. BERKOWITZ: So why didn’t they impeach her with it when they had the chance?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Your Honor, the reason is because I didn’t want to violate Your Honor’s order that we couldn’t use those affirmatively.

THE COURT: Well, I think the time to have asked the Court whether using the document to refresh was consistent with the order was before she was tendered and dismissed. So I think you waived your opportunity. All right? So we’re going to move on.

Frankly, I think using the formerly privileged emails to impeach was beyond the scope of Cooper’s order, too. This was an affirmative use of the email!

But this was nothing more than a perjury trap, and with it an attempt to get the content of the email DeFilippis had been prohibited from using before the jury. Cooper didn’t allow it in, though he shouldn’t have allowed that line of questions in either (had such questions been permitted, then Seago should have been permitted to refresh her own memory of them).

Probably, DeFilippis will consider charging her with perjury over this. I think the fact that both Judge Cooper and Berkowitz had the impression that the question pertained solely to outreach to the press, Seago’s reiteration that, “I don’t lie to the press about where I work,” reinforcing that understanding, plus her last minute caveat, “Not that I can recall,” would make such a case as flimsy as this one. Probably, DeFilippis will use this exchange as part of his bid to get access to some subset of the 1,500 other not very revelatory emails that Democrats have claimed privilege over.

But this was a stunt. It wasn’t about getting, or sharing, the truth with the jury (and any scenario in which I can imagine Seago trying to hide her identity with Tea Leaves would suggest a more distant relationship than even I imagined Fusion had, though I would love to know what it was).

When a prosecutor engages in as many stunts as DeFilippis has, it’s a confession he knows the facts are not on his side.

The Witness List for the Michael Sussmann Trial

According to the transcript for the pre-trial hearing yesterday, here is the status of the witness lists. The most interesting one, to me, is Michael Horowitz, who presumably will testify that Rodney Joffe shared a worthwhile tip on the same terms that Sussmann attempted to do with James Baker.

Prosecution:

  • Trisha Anderson: Yes, for 30 minutes
  • Apple custodian: stipulation
  • Manos Antonakakis: “Possibly yes” for less than an hour of testimony
  • James Baker: Yes, for several hours
  • Special Agent Batty: Unclear
  • Mr. Chadason: Under a half hour
  • David Dagon: Likely no (possibly on rebuttal)
  • Mr. DeJong (who pulled data for Joffe): Probably yes, for half hour
  • Marc Elias: Possibly yes, for 45 minutes
  • Robby Mook: Yes, for 30 to 45 minutes
  • Special Agent Gaynor (on the course of the investigation): Yes, 30 to 45 minutes
  • Mr.Grasso (Special Agent whom Joffe provided a piece of the Alfa Bank allegations to): Yes, a half hour
  • Special Agent Heide (one of the case agents on the investigation): Yes, a couple of hours
  • Special Agent Hellman (who first analyzed the allegations): About half an hour
  • Agent Martin (expert): Under half an hour
  • Steven M: Unlikely to call in case in chief
  • Mr. Novick (CEO of one of Joffe’s companies): 45 minutes to an hour
  • Kevin P (CIA meeting): 30 minutes
  • Bill Prestap: 30 minutes
  • Ms. Sands (one of case agents): a couple of hours
  • Special Agent Schaaf: Unlikely on case in chief
  • Laura Seago: Perhaps an hour
  • Mr. McMahon (former DNC employe, had lunch immediately before Sussmann’s meeting with Baker): under 15 minutes
  • Perkins Coie billing department
  • Debbie Fine (Clinton lawyer who participated in daily Fusion GPS meetings): An hour or less
  • Not looking to put one of their own agents on the stand

Defense (may change in light of Prosecution decisions):

  • Steven M: May call
  • Marc Elias
  • Ben Gessford (LYNC messages involving Clinton hacks): 30 minutes
  • Marc Giardina (who wanted to open investigation in response to Slate article)
  • Tasha Gauhar: Under 30 minutes
  • Not Shawn Henry
  • Michael Horowitz: Referrals to law enforcement
  • Eric Lichtblau: An hour or so (concern about limits of privilege)
  • Mary McCord
  • Jonathan Moffa (as to Sussmann’s credibility)
  • Scott Schools (possible stip): 15 minutes
  • Character witnesses

Update: I had accidentally left Priestap out.

Update: I also accidentally left out McCord and Moffa.

John Durham May Lose His Battle But Gain New Ammunition to Fight His War

There were a number of things not said at yesterday’s hearing on the Democrats’ privilege claims in the Michael Sussmann case. The importance of having Russian-speaking experts when representing a client getting systematically attacked by Russia, for example, was not mentioned. Nor was the amount of research that Fusion did that was never released to the press. Nor were Durham’s two cheap stunts — falsely claiming an FEC settlement was not “public” in time to introduce it as part of the initial filings, and presenting exhibits without correcting for a time anomaly and thereby falsely suggesting Fusion sent a previously unpublished link to Tea Leaves’ postings to Eric Lichtblau — which made Durham’s case to pierce the Democrats’ privilege claims look stronger than it was.

Even on the issue of whether communications can have more than one purpose — an issue that Robert Trout, representing Hillary’s campaign, addressed directly — the argument could have been stronger. And when Judge Christopher Cooper asked if there were specific emails “that might support [the Democrats’] position that Fusion’s internal communications on these issues were for the purpose of providing legal support as opposed to pure opposition research and dissemination that is not covered by the privilege?,” Trout was caught flat-footed. Which is to say that the Democrats may not have presented their case as well as they could have.

It likely didn’t matter. Even before ruling that he will review the documents over which Democrats invoked privilege, Judge Christopher Cooper made it clear he was pretty skeptical of their privilege claims.

But there were a number of other things that were mentioned that may limit how much value Durham gets from this decision, even if Cooper determines that most of the Fusion documents were not privileged. Most importantly, both before and after Cooper had clearly decided he was going to review the documents, he raised the other procedural issues — which I raised in this post — that will dictate whether or not Durham can use them at trial.

The defense has raised some procedural objections to I think the use and introduction of the emails; namely, that you have waited too long after the assertion of the privilege — on the eve of trial now — to bring the issue to me.

I take it you’re saying that even if I were to agree with them about the specific emails that have been withheld, I would still have to deal with the privilege issue with respect to Ms. Seago’s testimony.

[snip]

That still leaves the relevance issues as well as the prejudice issues and the knock-on effects from the defense from the introduction and use of the emails, but I think that I’m probably going to have to deal with this issue nonetheless because of what the government may plan to ask Ms. Seago about. All right?

That is, even if Cooper agrees that the 38 documents Durham wants unsealed are not privileged, it may not mean Durham can use them at trial. The following are all possibilities, of greater or lesser likelihood:

  1. Cooper rules that one purpose of the emails was legal advice and so are privileged
  2. Cooper decides some or all of the emails are not privileged, but rules, based on representations made yesterday, that Durham violated local rules in his attempt to obtain them and so cannot get them
  3. Cooper rules that some or all of the emails are not privileged but rules that they are prejudicial, irrelevant, or hearsay to the charge against Sussmann, so Durham can have the emails, he just can’t use them at trial
  4. Cooper determines that Durham’s claims about the necessity or relevance of Laura Seago’s testimony are not only false, but Durham knew them to be false when he made them and, given that Durham has used as his excuse to pierce privilege at this late date, cannot introduce them at trial
  5. Cooper rules that the communications involving Rodney Joffe are privileged, even if the internal Fusion emails are not, adding further problems with Seago’s role as a witness
  6. Cooper rules the Fusion emails aren’t privileged, but at least some of them end up disproving Durham’s conspiracy theories

If I had to guess, I’d say a combination of 3, 5, and 6 are most likely. I’ll explain why, but if that turns out to be the case, it may mean that Durham finds a way to access the other 1,500 Fusion emails he says he wants to use in “other investigations,” but still can’t use many of the 38 emails at issue here in the trial against Sussmann. Durham’s conspiracy theories might live on, but his case against Sussmann might not.

As a reminder, Sussmann argued that Durham broke a number of rules by bypassing Beryl Howell and waiting until the last minute to try to get these emails — the procedural objections Cooper alluded to above. Cooper can’t be that impressed with the argument, or he wouldn’t have agreed to review the emails at all. But he did seem rather interested in Steven Tyrell’s assertion that he had made it clear there was never a way Durham was going to get the emails involving Joffe without litigation.

MR. TYRRELL: So if they wanted to challenge our assertion of privilege as to this limited universe of documents — again, which is separate from the other larger piece with regard to HFA — they should have done so months ago. I don’t know why they waited until now, Your Honor, but I want to be clear. I want to say without hesitation that it’s not because there was ever any discussion with us about resolving this issue without court intervention.

THE COURT: That was my question. Were you adamant a year ago?

MR. TYRRELL: Pardon me?

THE COURT: Were you adamant a year ago that —

MR. TYRRELL: Yes. We’ve been throughout. We were not willing to entertain resolution of this without court intervention.

THE COURT: Very well.

This is important because it supports Sussmann’s contention that this late bid for the emails is just an improper means of bypassing local rules and discovery deadlines. The same is not as true for Fusion, though, because they did make some concessions to Durham along the way.

Joffe’s intransigence about his privilege claims are all the more problematic for Durham, because (contrary to all my predictions!) Cooper seems far more convinced of Joffe’s privilege claims than the those of the Democrats.

With respect to the Joffe/Sussmann/Seago emails, I am dubious that the government has met its burden to pierce the privilege, but I will take a look at the emails nonetheless.

Indeed, at one point, Cooper noted that Durham’s entire theory of the case assumes, “Sussmann was in the [September 19, 2016 James Baker] meeting representing Joffe,” which would mean there was a privileged relationship between Sussmann and Joffe, and so therefore assumes Sussmann’s communications with Joffe about the topic would be privileged. If Joffe’s communications with Sussmann and Laura Seago aren’t privileged, then it’s proof that Sussmann was not representing a client. If they are privileged, then Durham can’t have them.

Catch-22.

Given what Cooper said in last week’s hearing, in which he repeatedly suggested that Joffe’s testimony might be central, the possibility that Durham may not pierce Joffe’s privilege may dictate other evidentiary (though not privilege) decisions. All the more so given how Durham excused his late bid to pierce privilege based off a late recognition they were going to immunize and call Seago.

In addition, over the course of months, and until recently, the Government has been receiving voluminous rolling productions of documents and privilege logs from numerous parties. The Government carefully analyzed such productions in order assess and re-assess the potential legal theories that might support the parties’ various privilege assertions. In connection with that process, the Special Counsel’s Office reached out to each of those parties’ counsel numerous times, directing their attention to specific documents where possible and communicating over email and phone in an effort to obtain non-privileged explanations for the relevant privilege determinations.2 The Government also supplied multiple counsel with relevant caselaw and pointed them to documents and information in the public domain that it believed bore on these issues. The Government was transparent at every step of these discussions in stating that it was contemplating seeking the Court’s intervention and guidance. Unfortunately, despite the Government’s best efforts and numerous phone calls, it was not able to obtain meaningful, substantive explanations to support these continuing broad assertions of privilege and/or work product protections.

It was only recently, when the Government determined it would need to call an employee of Fusion GPS as a trial witness (the “Fusion Witness”), that the Government concluded these issues could not be resolved without the Court’s attention. Because all or nearly all of the Fusion Witness’s expected testimony on these matters concern work carried out under an arrangement that the privilege holders now contend was established for the purpose of providing legal advice, it is essential to resolve the parties’ potential disputes about the appropriate bounds of such testimony (and the redaction or withholding of related documents).

As of yesterday, Sussmann had not received a 302 from Seago, so it’s not clear whether Durham has even interviewed her yet. But with one exception, Sussmann, Fusion lawyer Joshua Levy, and Joffe say she’ll be of limited value for Durham. Last week Sean Berkowitz said that Seago did not recall knowing Christopher Steele, much less being aware of the dossier project.

The only person from Fusion on their witness list is Laura Seago, who either I think has been immunized or will be immunized, and we understand that she would say she doesn’t recall that she even knows Mr. Steele or is able to talk about what he did. And so we don’t know that they actually are able to get anything in about what Mr. Steele did or didn’t do. Certainly there’s no evidence that Mr. Sussmann was aware of what Mr. Steele was doing. No evidence of that.

Levy noted that — as proven by the transcript of her Alfa Bank deposition, which the government has — Seago will testify she has no knowledge of either Sussmann’s meeting with the FBI or of the white paper Fusion did on Alfa Bank.

[I]n its brief, the government says that Ms. Seago has unique possession of knowledge as to what the government tries to characterize as the core issue in the case. But the government mischaracterizes that core issue. The government says that the core issue in this case is whether the defendant was representing any client in 2016 with regard to the Russian Bank 1 allegations.

That’s not the core issue in the case, respectfully. The core issue in the case is whether the defendant knowingly made a false and misleading statement to the government when he met with the government about whether he was there on behalf of a client or not that day. And as to that issue, Your Honor, Ms. Seago, the Fusion witness, has no knowledge. And the government knows this.

In parallel to the government’s investigation of this case, Russian Bank 1, Alfa-Bank, was pursuing its own discovery in a civil case. They subpoenaed and deposed Ms. Seago last year. There’s a transcript of that deposition. It’s in the public record. The government’s made clear to counsel that it has that deposition transcript, and we can furnish a copy of it to the Court.

And at the same time the government knows that Ms. Seago has no knowledge of the meeting between Mr. Sussmann and the FBI, and that’s at Pages 151 to 152 of that transcript.

THE COURT: All right. If you could file the — not file it, but provide it to the Court.

[snip]

And it’s very clear that she has no knowledge about the meeting, that she doesn’t recall any discussions about the meeting, that she didn’t work on this white paper that allegedly was provided to the government by Mr. Sussmann.

This is the memo that, again, the government has talked about today in its papers as to why it’s so important to pierce this privilege. Ms. Seago didn’t contribute to it, doesn’t know who did, doesn’t know who researched it, doesn’t know who wrote it, doesn’t know its purpose; and the government’s aware of all that.

As Sean Berkowitz followed up, Seago also does not recall knowing about the late July meeting involving Joffe, Sussmann, and Marc Elias.

And the question that was asked was: “So were you aware of this July 28th meeting between Sussmann and personnel of Fusion?

“ANSWER: Not that I recall.

“QUESTION: Were you aware of the meeting after it happened?

“ANSWER: Not that I recall.

Importantly, Durham knew (because he has been operating as a parasite on the lawfare project that Vladimir Putin probably ordered to make America less safe) that Seago would testify she didn’t know about the July meeting with Perkins Coie and Joffe or Sussmann’s meeting with James Baker or the Fusion-drafted white paper when Durham said she would be the pivotal witness to represent the relationship between Joffe and Fusion. This foreknowledge, which is incompatible with Durham’s claim that Seago’s testimony, “may be necessary to the public interest,” undermines both his relevance arguments and his excuse for the belated bid to pierce privilege.

As to Joffe, Tyrrell represented that at least some of the emails between him and Seago were the exchange of PGP keys.

MR. TYRRELL: Well, there are — Mr. Joffe is a cyber security expert, and he was trying to exchange something called PGP keys with Ms. Seago —

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. TYRRELL: — so that their communications would be secure and encrypted. So some of the attachments are actually just simply an exchange of PGP keys. But there is at least one or — there’s one or two attachments that’s not that, and I’m really not — I’d be happy to answer that in camera ex parte.

It’s the other communications that might be of value to Durham, but if they’re not privileged via Sussmann’s representation of Joffe, then his entire argument that Sussmann was representing a client may fall apart.

So Seago has, per those who know her involvement, little to offer in useful testimony (and Durham knew this). That’s a problem for Durham, because per Jonathan Algor, she was the way they planned to introduce the emails as evidence.

THE COURT: Okay. And obviously you haven’t seen these emails. You don’t know what they say. But you think there is a possibility, based on the descriptions in the privilege log, that they would be relevant and admissible through Ms. Seago for that purpose?

MR. ALGOR: Yes, Your Honor.

If Seago doesn’t know about the key issues necessary to validate the documents in question, then Durham may have a problem introducing them at trial at all.

As noted above, there are a number of possible ways Cooper resolves this, and it’s most likely he makes decisions that will displease both sides.

But given what he said yesterday, I think it quite likely Cooper will rule at least some of the Fusion emails are not privileged, even while making other rulings that will prevent them from coming into the trial as evidence.

If that happens, Durham may be able to use that ruling to get access (this time via proper methods) to that pool of 1,500 emails — many presumably of more interest to the Igor Danchenko case — that will let him spin his conspiracy theories for years to come. It might take losing the case against Sussmann, though, to continue his war of conspiracies.

Judge Cooper Probes Andrew DeFilippis’ Conspiracy Theory about “Worker Bees” in a “Cabal”

I’m certain that the hearing in the Michael Sussmann case the other day was not laugh-out-loud funny in real time. I’m certain that when Judge Christopher Cooper rules on what can and cannot come in, some of the conspiracy theory that John Durham is pursuing may come in to substantiate the motive he alleges Michael Sussmann had for allegedly hiding the existence of a client in a meeting with FBI General Counsel James Baker. I also recognize that Durham may moot many of these issues by bringing one or several interlocutory appeals before the trial to buy time to continue to spin his conspiracy theories some more.

But when I was reading the part of the transcript pertaining to whether Durham will be able to introduce researcher emails at trial, I started laughing out loud when Judge Cooper said this:

You could call Mr. Joffe.

The comment came after the discussion earlier in the hearing about what kind of evidence Durham might present to prove that Sussmann had a privileged relationship with both the Hillary campaign and Rodney Joffe.

It came after the discussion about whether Durham should be forced to immunize Rodney Joffe or not. That discussion had a lot more nuance than reports I had seen, including that Cooper floated the idea of prohibiting any Durham questions to Joffe about the allegations — that he had Sussmann share information showing the use of a YotaPhone by someone who was sometimes in Donald Trump’s presence — that Durham claims would be the basis of a contract fraud charge against Joffe if the data actually were only available as part of a DARPA contract that didn’t already, for very good cybersecurity reasons, encourage the tracking of such things.

THE COURT: What if the Court were to grant your motion in limine to keep out the information that he provided later to the CIA, and all the YotaPhone stuff is not in the case? Do you believe that Mr. Joffe would — and seeing that that appears to be the basis of the government’s position that there is some continuing exposure, do you think Mr. Joffe would see fit to change his position?

And the hearing, and so therefore this discussion on the conspiracy theory, came before Cooper turns to adjudicating Durham’s bid to pierce privilege claims, a bid which — I have already noted — makes a solid case that Durham should immunize Joffe rather than Fusion GPS’ Laura Seago, whom he plans to call as a witness.

So between the time when Cooper considered ways to make Joffe’s testimony available to Sussmann and the time when he turns to Durham’s false claim that the only possible way of accessing testimony about communications between Joffe and Seago is by calling Seago, the judge noted that one way of accomplishing what Durham claims to want to accomplish, rather than by introducing hearsay emails, would be to call Joffe.

Cooper made the comment to lay out that, if Durham really wanted to present the mindset researchers had as they attempted to understand a DNS anomaly involving a Trump marketing server and Alfa Bank, he could simply call the researchers directly.

And these emails, regardless of the words of any particular one, you’re offering them to show that the researchers had concerns about the data, right? And so you’re offering them for the truth of that proposition, that the folks who were in on this common venture had concerns about the data that Mr. Sussmann wanted to keep in the dark and, therefore, did not reveal to Mr. Baker why he was there. And so, the truth of the emails is that we have concerns.

Now, you know, if that’s a — if that’s an acceptable basis — if that’s relevant, right, you could certainly call those researchers. You could call Mr. Joffe. They could testify about how — you know, what was going on in, you know, those few weeks in August or whenever.

So, A, you know, why do you need the emails? [my emphasis]

In response to that, Andrew DeFilippis tried to spin that the government wasn’t trying to introduce the emails for the truth, but to show the existence of what he claims amounts to a conspiracy. In doing so, DeFilippis described that the emails were critical to tie Joffe to the effort to collect the data.

All we’re saying is that the existence of that written record itself might have provided a motive for Mr. Joffe or Mr. Sussmann to tell the lie that we allege he did. Now, that is the government’s secondary argument. The principal argument we’re making, Your Honor, is that these emails show a back-and-forth that tie Mr. Joffe to the data that went into the FBI, that tie Mr. Joffe to the white papers that went into the FBI, and tie Mr. Joffe to the entire effort which, absent that —

THE COURT: Mr. Joffe or Mr. Sussmann?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: First Mr. Joffe. And the reason why that’s important, Your Honor, is, again, because the defendant is alleged to have lied about whether, among other things, he had a relationship with Mr. Joffe, an attorney- client relationship. [my emphasis]

Cooper’s response — Mr. Joffe or Mr. Sussmann — nodded to the fact that Sussmann’s state of mind, not Joffe’s, is what’s on trial. Though shortly thereafter, he noted that the charged lie wasn’t even an attempt to hide Joffe personally.

THE COURT: Well, let’s just — you know, words matter, and let’s just be clear. He wasn’t asked “Are you here on behalf of Mr. Joffe?” and said no. He didn’t say “I’m not here on behalf of Mr. Joffe.”

He said generally, allegedly, he’s not here on behalf of a client, so at this point I’m not sure how relevant Mr. Joffe actually is at the time of the statement.

Indeed, much later, Sussmann’s lawyer noted that there’s no contest Sussmann told Baker he had gotten the allegations from cybersecurity experts.

What do we know is undisputed? That Mr. Baker will testify that Mr. Sussmann said the information was from cyber experts, okay? Not whether it was a client or not, but it was from cyber experts.

Cooper’s discussion of Durham’s conspiracy theory continued through DeFilippis’ effort to acknowledge that he’s not alleging collecting political dirt is illegal — though it may be “improper” — and then admitting this is not a “standard drug case.”

I have not seen one case where the charge is not conspiracy and the alleged conspiracy in which the statements are being made in furtherance of it is not criminal or improper in any way. Would this be the first time?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: Your Honor, I think — so we would not expressly allege to the jury that it was criminal. There are aspects of it that may be improper.

[snip]

And I think, Your Honor, that most — that this hasn’t come up often should not cause the Court to hesitate just because these facts are a bit different than your standard drug case or, you know, your standard criminal case.

And it continued to DeFilippis’ effort to describe why people whose actions preceded the alleged formation of a conspiracy and other people who expressed reservations about joining into this alleged conspiracy would be included in what Cooper dubbed “a cabal.”

THE COURT: Okay. So who was part of this joint venture, in your view?

MR. DeFILIPPIS: So, Your Honor, it would be three principal categories of people. We have the researchers and company personnel who supported Mr. Joffe once they were tasked by Mr. Joffe.

THE COURT: Okay, but they were just tasked. You’ve made the point yourself that some of them, you know, had concerns. Some of them had issues with the data. Some had concerns that what they were doing was proper or not until they were satisfied that it was.

MR. DeFILIPPIS: That’s true, Your Honor, but —

THE COURT: How are they members of this cabal?

[snip]

MR. DeFILIPPIS: — just to distill it down as to each category of people. The thrust of this joint venture was that there was a decision and an effort to gather derogatory Internet-based data about a presidential candidate — about a presidential candidate among these folks. There were the researchers who began doing that, it seems, before Perkins Coie became fully involved, and there are emails we will offer that show that data was being pulled in late July and August. So the researchers were the engine of this joint venture in the sense that they were doing the work, and they were doing — and the emails make clear they were doing it for the express purpose of finding derogatory information in Internet data. So that’s one category. [my emphasis]

I mean, even ignoring the fact that the record shows these researchers were not, in fact, analyzing data for “the express purpose of finding derogatory information in Internet data” — indeed, if one actually cares about national security, their actions might be better understood as an effort to protect Donald Trump from his dishonest campaign manager with a history of laundering money from Putin-linked oligarchs through Cyprus — DeFilippis admitted right here that the research into the data preceded the moment when DeFilippis wants to make it criminal (but not criminal in “your standard drug case” sense).

But Durham’s frothy lead prosecutor wants to treat cybersecurity research as — in Cooper’s word! — a cabal.

DeFilippis then went on to call some of the top cybersecurity researchers in the US, who found and started trying to understand an anomaly on their own volition, “the worker bees who are bringing the data and funneling it into this effort.”

Maybe I have a twisted sense of humor. But I was guffawing at this point.

Judge Cooper, however, capped DeFilippis’ effort with the same question:

THE COURT: And assuming that I agree that it’s relevant, you could get that in by calling witnesses without the emails, correct?

Everything that DeFilippis wants to do — even before he wants to get Laura Seago (who, Sussmann attorney Sean Berkowitz revealed later, would testify that she doesn’t even know about key parts of DeFilippis’ conspiracy theory, starting with Christopher Steele’s involvement) to offer the non-unique testimony about her conversations with Joffe — is best done by calling Joffe as a witness.

I’m not the only one, it seems, who recognizes that some of what Durham wants to do actually depends on calling Joffe as a witness.

John Durham’s Irregular Now-Sealed Timeline

As I noted here, John Durham claimed to attempt to file a bunch of confidential Fusion emails under seal.

Whether intentionally or not, he failed, at first, but has now closed the barn doors after voluntarily publishing damning evidence (much of it true!) against the purported victims he claims to be avenging.

By publishing these emails on the docket, Durham has revealed that his exhibit has irregularities in the emails pertaining to a key issue: whether Fusion sent out a link to April Lorenzen’s i2p site before Mark Hosenball sent it to them.

This shows up in the timestamps. In the exhibit, the lead email for each appearance appears to be set to UTC, whereas the sent emails included in any thread appear to be set to ET.

For example, in this screencap, the time shown for Mark Hosenball’s response to Peter Fritsch (the pink rectangle) is 1:35 PM, which is presumably Eastern Time.

In this screencap, the very same response appears to be sent at 5:36PM, which is presumably UTC.

Both instances of Peter Fritsch’s email (the green rectangle), “that memo is OTR–tho all open source,” show at 1:33PM, again, Eastern Time.

To be clear: this irregularity likely stems from Fusion’s email system, not DOJ’s. It appears that the email being provided itself is rendered in UTC, while all the underlying emails are rendered in the actual received time.

But given that these emails are being submitted to Judge Cooper in regards to a privilege claim, the fact that DOJ has made no effort to fix — or at least call attention to — the anomaly, it makes the exhibit affirmatively misleading with regards to perhaps the most important detail in the exhibit.

As I note in the timeline below, this obscures the order in which Fusion received and passed on a link to the mediafire package introducing Tea Leaves’ DNS allegation package — precisely the issue (and, it is now clear, the specific communication) about which Alfa Bank had confusion in their lawsuit. I explained the import of these communications here.

Given the selection of emails included here (not even all from this time period  are included as primary emails, which is what makes the anomaly misleading, and one involving Mark Hosenball — in the italicized email, he references having sent a summary to Fritsch —  appears to be entirely missing), Fusion’s public explanation — that they received this link and then passed it on — cannot be proven or disproven. But it is clear that after Fritsch got the mediafire link, he sent it to Lichtblau, which I’ve bolded below. And by context, it appears that Laura Seago had already figured out that the mediafire package was first posted on Reddit.

(I’ll have to check but given what Perloth told me, this may not actually be how NYT first got this data.)

Update, May 19: I’ve added emails from trial.

October 5 emails:

1:31PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball email with Alfa Group overview

1:32PM: Fritsch sends Isikoff the September 1, 2016 Alfa Group overview (full report included in unsealed exhibit)

1:33PM [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “that memo is OTR — tho all open source”

1:35/1:36PM: Hosenball replies, “yep got it, but is that from you all or from the outside computer experts?”

1:37PM: Fritsch responds,

the DNS stuff? not us at all

outside computer experts

we did put up an alfa memo unrelated to all this

1:38PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

is the alfa attachment you just sent me experts or yours ? also is there additional data posted by the experts ? all I have found is the summary I sent you and a chart… [my emphasis]

1:41PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball:

alfa was something we did unrelated to this. i sent you what we have BUT it gives you a tutanota address to leave questions.  1. Leave questions at: [email protected]

1:41PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

yes I have emailed tuta and they have responded but haven’t sent me any new links yet. but I am pressing. but have you downloaded more data from them ?

1:43PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “no”

1:44PM: Fritsch to Lichtblau:

fyi found this published on web … and downloaded it. super interesting in context of our discussions

[mediafire link] [my emphasis]

2:23PM: [not included] Lichtblau to Fritsch, “thanks. where did this come from?”

2:27PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

tuta sent me this guidance

[snip]

Since I am technically hopeless I have asked our techie person to try to get into this. But here is the raw info in case you get there first. Chrs mh

2:32PM: Fritsch to Lichtblau:

no idea. our tech maven says it was first posted via reddit. i see it has a tutanota contact — so someone anonymous and encrypted. so it’s either someone real who has real info or one of donald’s 400 pounders. the de vos stuff looks rank to me … weird

3:27PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball cc Simpson: “All same stuff”

3:58PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch, asking, “so the trumpies just sent me the explanation below; how do I get behind it?”

4:28PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “not easily, alas”

4:32PM: Fritsch to Hosenball, cc Simpson:

Though first step is to send that explanation to the source who posted this stuff. I understand the trump explanations can be refuted.

5:23PM (could be 1:23?): Seago to Fritsch, Is this safe?

6:33PM (likely 2:33PM): Fwd Alfa

6:57PM (like 2:57PM): Re Alfa

7:02PM (likely 3:02): Seago to Fritsch re Alfa

“Not Us at All:” In His Bid to Pierce Privilege, John Durham Makes Strong Case for Immunizing Rodney Joffe

The folks in John Durham’s Office of Conspiracy-Mongering seem to be frazzled. What other explanation might they have for a positively hysterical entry in their bid to pierce Democrats’ privilege claims?

To be clear (because frothy lawyers are making false claims about what I think might happen), I think some of the privilege claims being made are suspect. Durham might succeed, in part, and a more professional effort to do so in a different case — say, Igor Danchenko’s — might get the results he wanted.

But last night’s filing, even ignoring that Durham released confidential emails while purportedly asking permission to release them under seal, was a clown show.

Start with what Durham doesn’t mention.

In Michael Sussmann’s opposition to Durham’s motion to compel, he raised four procedural problems with Durham’s effort.

First, the Special Counsel’s Motion is untimely. Despite knowing for months, and in some cases for at least a year, that the non-parties were withholding material as privileged, he chose to file this Motion barely a month before trial—long after the grand jury returned an Indictment and after Court-ordered discovery deadlines had come and gone.

Second, the Special Counsel’s Motion should have been brought before the Chief Judge of the District Court during the pendency of the grand jury investigation, as the rules of this District and precedent make clear.

Third, the Special Counsel has seemingly abused the grand jury in order to obtain the documents redacted for privilege that he now challenges. He has admitted to using grand jury subpoenas to obtain these documents for use at Mr. Sussmann’s trial, even though Mr. Sussmann had been indicted at the time he issued the grand jury subpoenas and even though the law flatly forbids prosecutors from using grand jury subpoenas to obtain trial discovery. The proper remedy for such abuse of the grand jury is suppression of the documents.

Fourth, the Special Counsel seeks documents that are irrelevant on their face. Such documents do not bear on the narrow charge in this case, and vitiating privilege for the purpose of admitting these irrelevant documents would materially impair Mr. Sussmann’s ability to prepare for his trial.

While Durham makes unconvincing attempts to address the first and fourth issue (to which I’ll return), he doesn’t meaningfully address the second and third. In this post, I opined that the third — his blatant abuse of grand jury rules — could be easily addressed (which he didn’t try to do), but given how obviously irrelevant and potentially inadmissible these documents are to the charge against Sussmann, I’m not so sure anymore.

But Durham only addresses Sussmann’s argument that he ignored local rules and deliberately bypassed Beryl Howell, who would have been the proper person to assess these privilege claims, by making unconvincing claims he made a good faith effort to do so directly.

There’s another thing he doesn’t mention, another point Sussmann raised. Some of the emails Durham is focused on make it explicit that there was a separation between Fusion’s research (including the Steele dossier) and the DNS research.

The Special Counsel makes much of the fact that (1) there was an August 11, 2016 email exchange between Mr. Sussmann, Mr. Elias, and Fusion employees with the subject “connecting you all by email” and (2) that thereafter, Fusion employees “began to exchange drafts of a document . . . the defendant would provide to the FBI General Counsel.” Motion ¶¶ 29, 30. But in seeking to draw inflammatory and unsupported inferences, the Special Counsel ignores another email—that he produced in discovery—in which a Fusion employee stated that the document was “an [A]lfa memo unrelated to all [the Alfa Bank DNS information].” See Email from P. Fritsch to M. Hosenball (Oct. 5, 2016), SC-00027475, at SC-00027476.

Indeed, Peter Fritsch told Mark Hosenball that “the DNS stuff” was “not us at all.”

Even though Sussmann pointed that out, Durham did not address the clear evidence in his possession that this was not a joint effort. Other of these communications, Peter Fritsch has testified under oath, he engaged in because he was independently alarmed about the Alfa Bank allegations. And some of them, Fusion has noted before, derived from Paul Singer’s involvement in the project and Singer didn’t invoke privilege.

Much of rest, though, is primarily focused on Carter Page and Sergei Millian (though in one place, Durham also downplays that Fusion was investigating Felix Sater, which is interesting given Durham’s efforts to pretend the notion Trump had multiple back channels with Russia is malicious and political). Indeed, included emails explain that what had been a potentially scandalous reference — the allegation that Millian had an email “with” Alfa Bank — actually came from public Internet research, not from the DNS analysis.

Given the focus on Millian, though, it is inexplicable why Durham is trying to pierce these privilege claims here rather than in the case where it might matter, Danchenko’s. Rather, I can think of some explanations, such as that someone in Millian’s organization viewed the obligation to register under FARA as a “problem” as early as 2013, but none of them are legally sound.

The far more interesting aspect of Durham’s filing comes in how he addresses two substantive issues. First, here’s how he addressed the timing of his belated decision to try to pierce privilege.

As an initial matter, the defendant and others accuse the Government of carrying out an untimely “full frontal assault” on the attorney client privilege by raising these issues more than a month before trial. (Def. Opp. at 1.) But those characterizations distort reality. Indeed, the opposite is true: the primary reason the Government waited until recently to bring these issues to the Court’s attention was because it wanted to carefully pursue and exhaust all collaborative avenues of resolving these matters short of litigation. The Government did so to avoid bringing a challenge to the parties’ privilege determinations and to ensure that it first gathered all relevant facts and provided the relevant privilege holders with notice and an opportunity to explain the bases for their privilege assertions. Even the emails between the Government and counsel that the defendant quotes in his opposition reflect this very purpose. See., e.g., Def. Opp. at 7 (quoting emails in which the Special Counsel’s Office stated that it “wanted to give all parties involved the opportunity to weigh in before we. . . seek relief from the Court” and requested a call “to avoid filing motions with the Court.”).

In addition, over the course of months, and until recently, the Government has been receiving voluminous rolling productions of documents and privilege logs from numerous parties. The Government carefully analyzed such productions in order assess and re-assess the potential legal theories that might support the parties’ various privilege assertions. In connection with that process, the Special Counsel’s Office reached out to each of those parties’ counsel numerous times, directing their attention to specific documents where possible and communicating over email and phone in an effort to obtain non-privileged explanations for the relevant privilege determinations.2 The Government also supplied multiple counsel with relevant caselaw and pointed them to documents and information in the public domain that it believed bore on these issues. The Government was transparent at every step of these discussions in stating that it was contemplating seeking the Court’s intervention and guidance. Unfortunately, despite the Government’s best efforts and numerous phone calls, it was not able to obtain meaningful, substantive explanations to support these continuing broad assertions of privilege and/or work product protections. [my emphasis]

This flips a point Sussmann made on its head — that Durham kept prodding Sussmann to waive privilege. “[T]he Special Counsel has been asking Mr. Sussmann whether there would be any waiver of privilege in this case because of his concern that a privilege waiver at this stage in the proceedings would fundamentally impact the course of trial.”

Durham provides no dates on his claimed efforts to resolve the privilege issues. But Sussmann has already revealed what some of those dates are. The two Durham cites were in August.

Email from Andrew DeFilippis, Dep’t of Just., to Patrick Stokes, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, et al. (Aug. 9, 2021) (requesting a call to discuss privilege issues with a hope “to avoid filing motions with the Court”); Email from Andrew DeFilippis, Dep’t of Just., to Patrick Stokes, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, et al. (Aug. 14, 2021) (stating that the Special Counsel “wanted to give all parties involved the opportunity to weigh in before we . . . pursue particular legal process, or seek relief from the Court”). And since January— before the deadline to produce unclassified discovery had passed—the Special Counsel suggested that such a filing was imminent, telling the DNC, for example, that he was “contemplating a public court filing in the near term.” Email from Andrew DeFilippis, Dep’t of Just., to Shawn Crowley, Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP (Jan. 17, 2022).

2 In response to these inquiries and discussions, Tech Executive-1’s counsel withdrew his client’s privilege assertions over a small number of documents, and Fusion GPS produced a redacted version of its retention agreement with Perkins Coie. [my emphasis]

August is when Durham should have been involving Chief Judge Howell. Instead, we’re in April, and Durham is only now involving Judge Christopher Cooper. Importantly, using the dates Sussmann decided to include but which Durham did not, Durham was talking about taking imminent action in January, over two months before he first raised piercing privilege. After that, Durham again nudged Sussmann to waive privilege on his own. And the only reason why Durham was still getting responses to subpoenas, to the extent he was, is because he subpoenaed some of this after indicting (again, which he doesn’t address).

Given Durham’s claims he was trying to use other methods to get this information, his explanation of why he “only recently” decided he needed to pierce privilege is utterly damning: He only recently decided he needed to immunize Laura Seago and call her as a witness, he says.

It was only recently, when the Government determined it would need to call an employee of Fusion GPS as a trial witness (the “Fusion Witness”), that the Government concluded these issues could not be resolved without the Court’s attention. Because all or nearly all of the Fusion Witness’s expected testimony on these matters concern work carried out under an arrangement that the privilege holders now contend was established for the purpose of providing legal advice, it is essential to resolve the parties’ potential disputes about the appropriate bounds of such testimony (and the redaction or withholding of related documents).

That’s utterly damning because one of the last two things Alfa Bank was pursuing in their John Doe lawsuits before they were sanctioned, on Thursday, February 10, was to revisit privilege claims made by Fusion in a September Seago deposition with Alfa Bank (Seago’s first interview, in March 2021, was abandoned quickly). The reason Alfa gave for needing to challenge privilege claims Seago made in a 4-hour September deposition at which she invoked privilege over 60 times was because, “people at Fusion are speaking with the likes of Rodney Joffe.” And before Associate Judge Heidi Pasachow could rule, Alfa Bank was sanctioned to prevent it from helping Russia to attack democracy.

As I’ve laid out, all of Durham’s missed deadlines came after he could no longer rely on Alfa Bank to do his dirty work. As did, by his own description, the belated decision that he needs to immunize Seago and get her to testify at trial.

And that’s important because in spite of the pages and pages of irrelevant emails, when Durham turns to make the case that he needs to pierce this privilege, he again turns to Seago, claiming that she has “unique” knowledge about the charges against Sussmann.

Where a party seeks to overcome work product protection, it must show either that “it has a substantial need for the materials to prepare its case and cannot, without undue hardship obtain their substantial equivalent by other means” for fact work product, or make an “extraordinary showing of necessity” to obtain opinion work product. Boehringer, 778 F.3d at 153 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (quotations omitted).

Here, the vast majority of the relevant materials likely constitute fact work product, given that few of the communications involve an attorney. In addition, the Government has met both prongs of the relevant test. First, the Government has a “substantial need” for materials that it has requested the Court to review in camera. Those materials include, for example, communications between Tech Executive-1 and the Fusion Witness whom the Government will call at trial. The Fusion Witness is, to the Government’s knowledge, the only Fusion GPS employee who exchanged emails with Tech Executive-1 concerning the Russian Bank-1 allegations (or any other issue). The Fusion Witness also (i) acted as the firm’s primary “technical” expert; (ii) worked for an extended time period on issues relating to the Russian Bank-1 allegations; (iii) was a part of the team that handled work under Fusion’s contract with HFA and the DNC; and (iv) met in 2016 with various parties – including Law Firm-1, Tech Executive-1, and the media – about the Russian Bank-1 allegations. As such, the Fusion Witness undoubtedly possesses unique insight to the core issue to be decided by the jury—i.e., whether the defendant was acting on behalf of one or more clients when he worked on the Russian Bank-1 allegations. Accordingly, the Government has a “substantial need” to obtain the Fusion Witness’s communications relating to the Russian Bank-1 allegations. Moreover, the materials for which the Government has requested in camera review also include internal Fusion GPS communications regarding one of the three white papers that the defendant provided to the FBI, namely, the “[Russian Bank-1’s parent company] Overview” paper. Communications regarding the origins and background the very Fusion GPS paper that the defendant brought to the FBI are therefore likely to shed unique light on the defendant’s meeting with the FBI General Counsel, including the defendant’s work on behalf of his clients. Fusion GPS’s communications regarding that paper in the days prior to the defendant’s meeting with the FBI General Counsel are also likely to reveal information about the paper’s intended purpose and audience. Such facts will, again, shed critical light on the defendant’s conduct and meeting with the FBI.

Second, the Government cannot “without undue hardship obtain the[] substantial equivalent” of these materials “by other means.” Boehringer Ingelheim Pharms., Inc., 778 F.3d at 153. That is because these materials constitute mostly internal Fusion GPS communications and, accordingly, are not available from any other source. To the extent these communications reflect emails with Tech Executive-1, they are similarly unavailable because Tech Executive-1 has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Therefore, obtaining the materials or their substantial equivalent from another source would not merely present an “undue hardship,” but rather, is impossible. [my emphasis]

This is a fairly astonishing argument.

That’s because Seago’s knowledge of the communications she had with Joffe is not unique. Joffe also has knowledge of their communications. To get Seago’s testimony, Durham plans to immunize her.

Yet he says he can’t get the very same testimony from Joffe because Joffe would invoke the Fifth.

Durham has an obvious alternative, and it just so happens to be the alternative that Sussmann is also seeking: To immunize not Seago, but Joffe. That would be more beneficial for Durham, if he really wants that testimony, because Joffe can waive privilege over precisely these communications and enter them as evidence with no hearsay exception. Immunizing Joffe gives Durham everything he wants and his testimony would be unquestionably pertinent to the charge against Sussmann.

Just twelve days ago, John Durham argued that he’s not playing fast-and-loose with his immunity decisions and that Joffe would offer no testimony useful to Sussmann (though to do so, Durham misrepresented Sussmann’s statement about Joffe’s role in helping to kill the NYT story).

Indeed, to now arbitrarily force the Government to immunize Tech Executive-1 merely because the defense believes he would offer arguably helpful testimony to the defendant would run afoul of the law and inject the Court into matters plainly reserved to the Executive Branch.

[snip]

(The Government also currently intends to seek immunity at trial for an individual who was employed at the U.S. Investigative Firm. But unlike Tech Executive-1, that individual is considered a “witness” and not a “subject” of the Government’s investigation based on currently-known facts.)

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

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.

Now, he’s claiming that the only possible way he can get testimony pertaining to Seago’s communications with Joffe is to immunize Seago and breach both Joffe’s and the Democrats’ claims of privilege.

By far the easiest way of solving this issue — and the one that meets Sussmann’s due process rights — is instead to immunize Joffe.

It’s a great case Durham made that they should cede to Sussmann’s request and immunize Joffe!

We’ll see what Cooper thinks of these claims at the status hearing tomorrow (because the hearing is in person, it’s unclear whether I’ll be able to call in).

But what is clear is that Durham keeps presenting evidence that he’s looking in the wrong place for the evidence he says he needs.

The Alfa Bank Dark Net at Noon

Before its John Doe nuisance lawsuits got shut down by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Alfa Bank made several claims that led me to chase down a minor – but potentially important – part of the Alfa Bank story.
Someone totally uninvolved in the Michael Sussman/Fusion/April Lorenzen effort played a role in making their efforts public in 2016: “Phil,” the guy about whom I went to the FBI in 2017. As I told the FBI, I suspected he had played a role in the Guccifer 2.0 and Shadow Brokers operations.

This post will focus on what Alfa Bank got wrong. A follow-up post will look at why, if John Durham made the same error, it may matter for the Michael Sussmann case.

Someone exposes Tea Leaves’ research via Krypt3ia

At issue is this post on the eponymously-named InfoSec blog Krypt3ia. As the post describes, someone tipped Krypt3ia off to a WordPress site and a purported i2p site (also called an “eepsite”) that laid out a version of the claims that Michael Sussmann had shared with the FBI and the NYT in September 2016.

Those claims are at the heart of the false statement charge against Sussmann.

Along with the basic allegations about weird DNS look-ups between servers from Alfa Bank and Spectrum Health and a Trump marketing server, those sites also revealed that after the NYT called Alfa Bank for comment about the DNS anomaly in September 2016, the Trump DNS address changed. This is the digital equivalent of someone changing their phone number after discovering they were being surveilled. The seeming response by Trump to the NYT call to Alfa for comment has always been regarded as the smoking gun showing human acknowledgement of the communications (a report from Alfa Bank attempted, unpersuasively, to contest that).

By connecting to a Russian-hosted proxy service, the Krypt3ia post about all this added an element of Russian mystery to the story. But that’s it. The post offered no other new content.

The Krypt3ia post is more important for the function it played than its content. Krypt3ia’s post served to make the contents of a publicly available but difficult to find i2p site – believed to be created by data scientist April Lorenzen, but written under the pseudonym Tea Leaves – accessible.

In response to tips from source(s) of his, Krypt3ia focused attention on a series of communications, none tied in his post to a then-identified person. First, someone alerted him to the WordPress site. That site spoke of Tea Leaves as a third person; there was never a pretense that it was Tea Leaves or Lorenzen. Krypt3ia learned of that WordPress site because someone approached Krypt3ia, purportedly asking for help finding an incomplete i2p address listed in the post.

I caught wind of the site when someone asked me to look at an i2p address that they couldn’t figure out and once I began to read the sites [sic] claims I thought this would be an interesting post.

That tip led Krypt3ia to find what was actually a proxy allowing access to a real i2p site – the one that injected an air of Russian mystery to the story.

First off, the i2p address in the WordPress site is wrong from the start. Once I dug around I found that the real address was gdd.i2p.xyz which is actually a site hosted on a server in Moscow on Marosnet.

That led Krypt3ia to ask whether anyone at NYT wanted to verify the claim that Trump Organization seemingly took action after NYT called Alfa.

I also have to wonder about this whole allegation that a NYT reporter asked about this.

Say, any of you NYT’s people out there care to respond?

Ask and you shall receive! Someone–as I lay out below, I have confirmed that this was “Phil”–put Krypt3ia in touch with a NYT reporter.

First off, someone in my feed put me in touch with the NYT and a reporter has confirmed to me that what the site says about NYT reaching out and asking about the connections, then the connections going bye bye is in fact true.

[snip]

The biggest takeaway is that the NYT confirmed that they asked the question and shit happened. They are still looking into it.

In an update, someone purporting to be Tea Leaves responded to Krypt3ia via an untraceable Tutanota email account, and in response, Krypt3ia posed a bunch of questions, only to get no answer. That non-answer was a key reason why Krypt3ia later treated the allegations as a fraud – an opinion that Alfa Bank, at least, used to bolster their own claims of fraud.

As Krypt3ia mused in real time, it seemed that the entire point of the tips he was receiving was focusing attention on the allegations themselves. Except, if your goal was to release a story that might swing an election, it was a really weird way of doing so.

One does wonder though just who might be trying this tac to attempt to cause Donny trouble. It seems a half assed attempt at best or perhaps they were not finished with it yet.. But then why the tip off email to someone who then got in touch with me? Someone I spoke to about this alluded to maybe that was the plan, for me to blog about this from the start..

[snip]

I have to say it though, these guys are trying to get the word out but in a strange way. I mean this eepsite is now hosted in Czechoslovakia, staying with the Baltic flavor but why not broadcast this more openly? Why does the WordPress site have the wrong address to start and then the other eepsite disappears after a little poking and prodding?

There are at least four unattributed or unattributable communications that appeared in this post: an email to someone who, in turn, got in touch with Krypt3ia; a tip about the WordPress site (presumably from the person who got the email) and through it to the i2p gateway; the contact with the unnamed NYT reporter; and the email from someone claiming to be Tea Leaves via a service that made it impossible to prove it was the person who originally adopted that pseudonym.

Notably, this all happened between October 5, 2016 – before the Podesta drop and the DHS attribution of the DNC hack to Russia – and the days after it. Krypt3ia was checking out the i2p proxy on October 7, at 3:08PM ET – less than half an hour before DHS would release an unprecedented attribution statement, followed shortly by the Access Hollywood video, followed shortly by the first Podesta email drop. Krypt3ia wrote his post the following day.

i2p sites aren’t supposed to get noticed

To understand why using Krypt3ia to get noticed is so weird, you need to understand a little about i2p.

i2p is a network like Tor that provides obscurity and security. Even today, it’s far less accessible than Tor (and was even more so in 2016). Krypt3ia could credibly access it, but I couldn’t have. Reporter Eric Lichtblau or Fusion GPS’ Laura Seago probably couldn’t have either. Normally you need either a special browser or a gateway to to access an eepsite. Importantly, the public DNS routing information that was at the heart of the project that discovered the Alfa Bank anomalies doesn’t exist for i2p. You can’t just Google for a site.

If data scientist April Lorenzen put her research on an i2p site, as alleged, she may have done so to limit who noticed it and her role in it.

It didn’t work out that way.

(Note, because the Durham investigation remains ongoing, I am not contacting her or her lawyers for comment or others who are obviously still the focus of Durham’s investigation.)

Krypt3ia didn’t link directly to her i2p site at first. He started by linking a gateway, which would be accessible to mere mortals who don’t have an i2p browser or technical prowess. His second link may have been a different gateway – again, a link readily accessible to people without using special software. It was one of these links that got sent around by journalists and researchers.

That’s what I mean about content versus function: Krypt3ia added no new content to this story. He did, however, make parts of it accessible to people – like reporters – who would otherwise never have found it.

A comment purportedly from Lorenzen sent to Krypt3ia’s site, playing on Tea Leaves’ name, expressed (or feigned) surprise at finding what the email called a mirror (but which was a proxy).

Thank you to https://krypt3ia .wordpress.com for pointing out a possible mirror of this (the original, what you are reading, http://gdd.i2p). We did not know about gdd.i2p.xyz until hearing about it from Krypt3ia. So we did a little research and see that i2p.xyz has been around for years and appears to mirror a lot of *.i2p sites. *i2p.xyz probably functions as an alternative for everybody that doesn’t have the skills to reach an i2p site :)

Next question, why would somebody first mirror – and then drop their mirror – of our http://gdd.i2p website. The following is just speculation: maybe normally i2p.xyz just mirrors everything but oops! Something hot – drop the mirror. I don’t know. I didn’t try to visit it. Mirrors of course could choose to alter content and measure who visits. We have no such opportunity to see who is visiting our real i2p site.

Whoever wrote the email, it emphasized how the proxy was different from the “real i2p site:” The proxy “functions as an alternative for everybody who that doesn’t have the skills to reach an i2p site,” but it also can “measure who visits” whereas a “real i2p site” cannot.

Whatever the story behind the Krypt3ia post, it had the effect of making it clear that researchers who believed they could find hackers by looking at public DNS data couldn’t hide what they were doing, even on networks designed to be untrackable. It had the effect of making it clear their efforts to look for Russian hackers in DNS data had been seen.

Alfa Bank alleges the Krypt3ia notice is part of an imagined conspiracy targeting the bank

It also appears to have convinced Alfa Bank that Krypt3ia was a key cog in the publication of this story. Their lawsuit claimed that,

The scientists and researchers who obtained the nonpublic DNS data deliberately leaked portions of that data to other scientists and researchers and, ultimately, to the media.

Depositions in the Alfa Bank lawsuit make it clear that Alfa believed (presumably because of those characteristics about i2p) that Fusion GPS must have been behind the effort to alert Krypt3ia to the research site and, via his post, to alert the public.

In a February 10 bid to overcome privilege claims that Fusion GPS’ Laura Seago had previously made, Alfa Bank lawyer Margaret Krawiec argued that Seago must have breached any privilege by sharing information from the publicly posted Tea Leaves information. Krawiec’s logic was that someone internal to the privilege claims asserted by Perkins Coie must have told Seago where the i2p site was, because otherwise there would be no way she could find it.

Krawiec: So, your honor, let me jump in there because one of the things that happened is that we were trying to understand how it was that Ms. Seago knew that this data had been published on the internet because it was published in an obscure place in the internet by this Tea Leaves that I told you about.

And then what Fusion did was – so we asked about that. We said, “How did you know where to look for that data? Who told you?” Cut off, instruction not to answer, privileged. But guess what they did with those links of that data? They took that data that someone told them because no one would have known to find it where it was unless someone told them.

And they wouldn’t tell us who told them or how they found it, but then they took all those links – the supposed public source research – and disseminated it to seven or eight media outlets saying you have to check this out. This is big stuff.

Fusion’s lawyer Joshua Levy countered that the link and the site itself were public.

Levy: If you – if you take the example that Alfa-Bank’s lawyer just presented to the Court, the link that someone at Fusion had circulated to a reporter, that link is a link to the internet. It’s a publicly available link, right?

The link – it’s, it’s like sending a New York Times article to a reporter at the Washington Post. Have you – have you seen this article? You should look at it. It’s interesting. Here’s a link. It happens to do with the subject matter which (indiscernible) is fascinated, [sic] but it’s a publicly available link.

Ms. Seago may have had communications internally at Fusion about that link. Those are privileged communications, but the link itself is available online for the Court, for me, for Ms. Krawiec. It’s public. There’s, there’s nothing confidential about that link.

Alfa’s lawyer responded by arguing that because an i2p site was so difficult to find, Seago’s knowledge of its location must have come from privileged information, and because she subsequently shared a link to a gateway with journalists, she had waived privilege.

Krawiec: Your Honor, I can tell you that where this link was when it was on the internet, you, myself, Mr. Levy, no one could have found that by doing a basic Google search. They were instructed where to find it in this obscure location.

And all we were trying to understand is who instructed them because the person who posted it was Tea Leaves, the anonymous computer scientist who had this computer data.

Alfa’s lawyer argued, not unreasonably, that because Tea Leaves’ site could not have been discovered by a Google search, someone connected to Tea Leaves must have told Fusion where it was, and because Fusion, in turn, shared a link to it, any privilege around Fusion’s discussions about Tea Leaves had therefore been breached.

Alfa’s focus on how Tea Leaves’ i2p site became public continued during a February 14 deposition of Peter Fritsch. In it, Alfa raised an email from Seago to Fritsch describing that Krypt3ia had become aware of Tea Leaves’ work, in response to which questions Fritsch pled the Fifth. By the time Krypt3ia posted, it seems likely, Fusion already knew April Lorenzen was involved.

But in the Seago hearing, Fusion lawyer Joshua Levy stated clearly that, “Our client didn’t move that specific communication –” pushing Tea Leaves’ information (from the context, it’s unclear to me whether this was a link directly to a gateway to Tea Leaves i2p site or one that involved Krypt3ia). Elsewhere Levy explained that Mark Hosenball had sent the link to Fusion which, in turn, sent it out to other journalists.

Fusion’s claims are consistent with them knowing of Lorenzen’s work before the Krypt3ia post, but having nothing to do with the Krypt3ia post and/or public links directly to Lorenzen’s site.

“Phil” hooked Krypt3ia up with the NYT

Alfa Bank seems to doubt Fusion’s denials that they were behind all those levels of notice to Krypt3ia.

I have no idea who first alerted Krypt3ia to the WordPress site or the i2p site, and he says he doesn’t remember who did. I do know who hooked him up with the NYT.

As I noted when I criticized this story in 2016, I was pitched the Alfa Bank story, like the NYT. But unlike the NYT, I was not pitched it by the people Durham is trying to put in jail like Sussmann, the researchers, or Fusion GPS. I was pitched it by the guy whom I’ve referred to by the pseudonym “Phil,” the person I went to the FBI about in 2017. (This is a pseudonym and he has not been charged by DOJ.)

Not only did he pitch me on it, but he told me he was the one to have hooked Krypt3ia up with the NYT reporter.

The rest of our exchange is below…

The claim that Phil had introduced Krypt3ia to a NYT reporter was credible. At the time I knew of several NYT reporters he claimed to have ties to (at Phil’s request, I had introduced him to one of them, and I’ve confirmed his contacts with others since). He also publicly interacted with Krypt3ia on Twitter.

But I had never checked whether Phil had really introduced the NYT to Krypt3ia until the Alfa Bank filing that blamed that tie on Fusion.

Nicole Perloth has confirmed it was Phil. As she described, Phil basically pushed Krypt3ia on her. “Nicole: Krypt is a person who can be an invaluable resource on this,” specifically addressing Krypt3ia‘s expertise on the dark web, even while asking her to keep him (Phil) updated on when the story would be published.

When I asked Krypt3ia if it was possible that the same person alerted him to the i2p site as had connected him to a NYT journalist, he said he did not remember.

Do you know if the person who connected you with the NYT reporter was the same was the one who pointed out the mirror? As per your post? Or don’t you remember?

Honestly don’t remember. Did not take notes or anything, thought it all bullshit and some kind of game of disinformation.

Whether or not Phil had a role in first tipping Krypt3ia off to the i2p proxy, he had a role in making the NYT aware of a series of moving versions of that site, starting with the one in Russia.

Importantly, this is not the only attempt to broker these allegations that remains publicly unexplained. There’s another unexplained package of these allegations – a “mediafire” package first posted on Reddit – raised in the Alfa suit that Fusion disclaimed credit for.

At least one person pushing this story was (as far as I know) completely unrelated to the efforts Durham and Alfa have focused on. Given that April Lorenzen used a pseudonym for her efforts, it would have been easy to hijack those efforts. So until April Lorenzen certifies that all the communications posted under the name “Tea Leaves” out there are hers (including the comment attached to a Tutanota email in Krypt3ia’s post), neither should anyone assume she’s responsible for all of them.

Alfa Bank believed that the public notice of the Tea Leaves i2p site was proof that Fusion, and only Fusion, was dealing these allegations. The opposite is the case.

To be sure: that might have mattered if Vladimir Putin’s invasion hadn’t killed the Alfa Bank lawsuit. But Phil’s role in the Krypt3ia post doesn’t much matter to the Sussmann indictment. Sussmann’s alleged lie was on September 19, 2016, 16 days before the communications leading to the Krypt3ia post started. Nothing Phil did on October 8 and thereafter, it seems, could affect that alleged lie.

That said, Durham’s sprawling single-count indictment does include allegations about Sussmann’s outreach to the press that post-dates Phil’s involvement and may rely on it. Most notably, a paragraph describing that Sussmann emailed Lichtblau on October 10 encouraging him to send an opinion piece criticizing the NYT for its Trump coverage mentions that, “At or around that time, and according to public sources, [Lichtblau] was working on an article concerning the [Alfa Bank] allegations, but [Lichtblau’s] editors at [NYT] had not yet authorized publication of the article.” [my emphasis] Krypt3ia’s comment, “the NYT confirmed that they asked the question and shit happened. They are still looking into it” – a comment that indirectly involved Phil – is one of those public sources.

At the time, Phil was pushing a NYT article more aggressively than what Durham describes Sussmann doing, and he played at least some role in the public sources that reported NYT was working on an article.

So Phil’s involvement adds an important detail about how these claims were made public in the weeks leading up to the election, but none of that changes whether or not Sussmann lied to cover up Hillary and/or Rodney Joffe’s role in all this.

Update: I’ve corrected the post to reflect that the original site, hosted in Russia, was a proxy, not a mirror. Thanks to @i2p at geti2p.net for the corrections starting in this exchange.

Texts

The following includes all the Signal texts included in the exchange regarding the Alfa Bank DNS anomalies.

Two comments on these texts: I’m not sure what I meant in the text sent on October 9 at 10:51AM. I suspect I mistyped. I suspect I was trying to explain Betsy and Dick DeVos’ traditional role in the Republican party – money – was less urgent to Trump in October 2016 than some kind of credible Republican policy platform. 

I stand by everything else I said in these texts, though admit my observation about the adversity between UAE and Russia turned out to be hilariously and epically wrong, particularly as it pertained to Prince.