A filing last week from special counsel John Durham provided more pieces to the “Trump-Russia collusion” puzzle as to how it began and was perpetuated.
According to the filing, Durham has obtained emails from several staffers at Fusion GPS to reporters in which they made false or unsubstantiated claims about then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
The purpose behind the emails from the opposition research firm linked to the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign was to generate negative stories about Trump and cast doubts about his loyalties in the public eye.
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Durham’s filing came in response to efforts by lawyers with ties to Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign to keep potentially explosive evidence out of his hands ahead of an upcoming trial involving Michael Sussmann, a Clinton campaign attorney who has been accused of lying to the FBI.
In a late Monday court filing, Durham said the wave of emails undermines claims by the Clinton campaign that Fusion GPS’s research on behalf of her presidential effort ought to remain confidential as part of attorney-client privilege.
According to the Washington Times, the stories peddled to media included:
• A Wall Street Journal article about a Trump adviser meeting with a former KGB official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• A Washington Post story about a Trump campaign adviser investing in Russia.
• New York Times and Reuters articles about the FBI investigating a secret communications setup between Mr. Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank.
GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin noted that the special counsel is exposing the Clinton campaign’s “political dirty tricks.”
“We’ve known for quite some time what happened here. And what the Durham indictments are just proving is how not only complicit but the Clinton campaign did this. They literally did this,” he told the Times.
“What the Clinton campaign did in terms of political dirty tricks, we are still putting up with the repercussions. Would Vladimir Putin have invaded Ukraine if Trump was still in office? That’s an interesting question,” he added.
Former Trump Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said last week he that Durham may be building a criminal conspiracy case involving various firms associated with perpetuating the discredited collusion narrative including a Democrat-aligned law firm, Perkins Coie.
In an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, Ratcliffe, a former U.S. Representative from Texas who left Congress to serve as DNI during the latter portion of Trump’s term, pointed a finger at House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) as well as the entire Perkins Coie law firm, the latter of which could eventually be indicted by special counsel John Durham, he said.
“This was a coordinated effort to mislead the American people” using “politicized intelligence,” the former DNI continued, regarding the downplaying of the laptop findings that included a statement from more than 50 currently serving and former U.S. intelligence community officials claiming that the info on the computer was likely “Russian disinformation.”
“Adam Schiff claiming that this was Russian disinformation and then it being peddled by Big Tech and former Obama national security officials who all signed on to, again, in the weeks leading up to 2020, to influence the outcome of the election,” he said. “I think they were successful in doing so.”
“This was a coordinated effort by Hillary Clinton Campaign officials, by executives who were working with them, lawyers who work for the campaign, all attempting to defraud the federal government… Defrauding the government is a felony, making false statements to federal investigators is a felony. And when multiple people do it together I think that is a conspiracy and I think that’s what is being revealed in John Durham’s filings,” he said.
He added: “If multiple lawyers from a law firm are attempting to defraud the government or lie to the government, not just commit a campaign dirty trick but to peddle a false narrative to mislead investigators an entire law firm like Perkins Coie could be subject to indictment.”
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