DURHAM INVESTIGATION: Why Indictment Over Russia Collusion Hoax Might Actually Be GOOD News

We at ClashDaily will be the first to admit that expectations of anyone paying a serious price connected to the Durham investigation have been WAY overhyped.

With Kleinsmith being the only government official to even face a slap on the wrist at this point, it’s easy to be cynical about thinking any important heads will ever roll. But the criminal indictment of a Clinton-connected lawyer for his role in creating the Russian Collusion hoax does give some (small) occasion for (cautious and limited) optimism.

Here’s how even a left-leaning news site described the indictment.

The charge against Michael Sussmann, a prominent cybersecurity attorney whose firm is closely tied with Democratic Party interests, is linked to a 2016 contact with the FBI when he raised concerns about a secret channel of communications between a Russian bank and the Trump Organization.

Prosecutors claim that Sussmann had requested the Sept. 19, 2016, meeting with then-FBI general counsel James Baker to provide “data files” and other evidence of the covert communications link involving the Moscow-based Alfa Bank and did not disclose that he was acting as an advocate for other interested parties.

“In fact, Sussmann assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two clients, including a U.S. technology executive and the Clinton Presidential Campaign,” prosecutors said. —USAToday

We said all along that the Russian Collusion allegations sure looked like they had Clinton’s fingerprints all over them. And then Hillary had the audacity to claim that she would have won if it weren’t for them meddling Russians! (Zoinks!)

National Review has reason to think there is a long game at play here.

Now, more critically, the long game.

It is unusual for a one-count false-statement charge, which can be alleged in a paragraph, to be presented as a 27-page speaking indictment. But Durham wrote a highly detailed account of the facts and circumstances surrounding the false-statements charge. It is significant in that it tells us far more about his investigation.

Here is where the prosecutor appears to be going: The Trump–Russia collusion narrative was essentially a fabrication of the Clinton campaign that was peddled to the FBI (among other government agencies) and to the media by agents of the Clinton campaign — particularly, its lawyers at Perkins Coie — who concealed the fact that they were quite intentionally working on the campaign’s behalf, and that they did not actually believe there was much, if anything, to the collusion narrative. It was serviceable as political dirt but would not amount to anything real for criminal or national-security purposes.

… In a nutshell, then, people closely connected to the Clinton campaign use privileged access to nonpublic information for political purposes. They concoct it into a political narrative that they know is baseless but can be convincingly spun to suggest Trump is in cahoots with Putin. They then simultaneously peddle that story line to the media and the FBI — the latter of which opens an investigation of Trump because the Clinton team, in this instance Sussmann, misrepresents its intentions. Sussmann was supposedly bringing this alarming “evidence” to the FBI not for political purposes but because he and his associates were well-meaning citizens concerned about national security. Naturally in this cozy world, Sussmann is a former Department of Justice cybersecurity official who traded on his long-standing professional relationship with Baker, the Bureau’s lawyer. –NationalReview

By making this a 27-page report, he is setting this in an incredibly detailed broader context, with motives and co-conspirators. He has also exposed the tools these operatives exploited.

They go on to explain that Sussman was identified as the source of the discredited Alfa bank story by … Christopher Steele. Steele, as our readers will remember, was the source of the (discredited) documents on which the entire Mueller investigation revolved.

Even the press knew they were baseless, as evidenced by the fact that nobody was willing to touch them until Comey got the ball rolling by ‘reading in’ Trump on the ‘salacious stories’ being circulated about him, so that CNN could write the ‘story about the story’, giving Buzzfeed cover to publish the Steele Dossier.

The anonymous account Techno Fog has been a fantastic source of inside-baseball information on the Russian Collusion case from the beginning, and has had this to say about the indictment.

Durham sets the background by discussing a gov't contract where the researchers would receive classified data –

"in order to identify the perpetrators of malicious cyber-attacks and protect U.S. national security." pic.twitter.com/CbncHOurlP

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) September 17, 2021

Once you understand what they were looking at –

This then becomes a question of the criminal culpability for the misuse and dissemination of classified data.

US > Researchers > Sussmann > Media ?

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) September 17, 2021

Even if nobody important pays a price, having such a damning story about Democrat political malfeasance on the record has its uses.

Exposure of Democrat wrongdoing is one. Especially when it makes their favorite narratives implode.

Tightening controls to limit future exploitation of these practices is another.

There is also the risk of massive civil suits by the injured parties — including Trump, the GOP, General Flynn, and other targeted Republicans — to take these people to the cleaners in court. Significant court-awarded damages could act as a powerful deterrent for operatives considering similar malfeasance in the future.

It’s not exactly bringing us into ‘lock her up’ territory, but at this point, we’ll take our wins where we find them.