[RETRACTED] Durham Report: Hillary Campaign Lawyers Paid Techs to Infiltrate Servers at Trump Tower, White House
RETRACTION, Feb. 23, 2022: The Western Journal has retracted this commentary because it was based on a misunderstanding of the contents of the Feb. 11 court filling by special counsel John Durham’s office and on quotations from others who mischaracterized the information contained in that filing. The document did not allege that Hillary Clinton or her campaign paid anyone to hack or “infiltrate” computer servers, as our headline and commentary claimed. It also provides no foundation for the claims made by Kash Patel and Donald Trump and quoted in this piece. The commentary remains here as originally published, except that we have corrected the spelling of Michael Sussmann’s last name, which was incorrect throughout the piece. We apologize to Mr. Sussmann for that error.
A court filing from special counsel John Durham reportedly alleges lawyers for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign paid a tech company to “infiltrate” servers at both Trump Tower and the White House to attempt to establish a link between Donald Trump and a Russian bank with Kremlin ties.
The revelations came in a Friday court filing related to the case of Michael Sussmann, a former Clinton campaign lawyer charged with lying to the FBI, according to Fox News. The case is part of Durham’s special counsel investigation probing the origins of the Donald Trump-Russia investigation.
The allegations are another complication to Hillary Clinton’s return to the public spotlight as some float the 2016 Democratic standard-bearer as a potential replacement for President Joe Biden in 2024. (As these rumors continue to multiply, The Western Journal will keep reminding readers just how wretched a Clinton candidacy would be. You can help us bring America the truth about Hillary by subscribing.)
Sussmann’s indictment involves an alleged lie to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker during a September 2016 meeting.
During the meeting, in which the indictment states Sussmann claimed he had “purported data and ‘white papers’ that allegedly demonstrated a covert communications channel” between the Trump Organization and Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank, according to Fox, he also told Baker he wasn’t working “for any client”
However, Durham said in his filing that the lawyer’s “billing records reflect” that he “repeatedly billed the Clinton Campaign for his work on the Russian Bank-1 [Alfa Bank] allegations.”
But there’s much more to it than that. In Friday’s filing, which deals with Sussmann’s potential conflicts of interest, the special counsel alleges Sussmann “had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including a technology executive (Tech Executive 1) at a U.S.-based internet company (Internet Company 1) and the Clinton campaign.”
The tech executive reportedly worked with Sussmann, other Clinton campaign assets and individuals working for numerous tech companies to “assemble the purported data and white papers.”
“In connection with these efforts, Tech Executive-1 exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data,” Durham’s filing alleges.
“Tech Executive-1 also enlisted the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.”
“Tech Executive-1 tasked these researchers to mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia,” the filing continued. “In doing so, Tech Executive-1 indicated that he was seeking to please certain ‘VIPs,’ referring to individuals at Law Firm-1 and the Clinton campaign.”
At Sussmann’s trial, the filing says, the government intends to prove the tech executive and those around him captured domain name system, or DNS, internet traffic from “(i) a particular healthcare provider, (ii) Trump Tower, (iii) Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and (iv) the Executive Office of the President of the United States.”
In other words, Hillary’s campaign allegedly paid someone to infiltrate, in part, Trump Tower, Trump’s apartment and the White House. What’s more, Fox reported that sources said an unnamed lawyer Sussmann and the anonymous tech executive met with was Marc Elias, general counsel to Hillary’s 2016 campaign and generally regarded as the Democrats’ top election lawyer.
It’s unclear what role the remnants of the Hillary campaign played in what purportedly happened next, since it occurred while Trump was in the White House.
Nevertheless, Durham’s filing alleges the tech executive’s company “had come to access and maintain dedicated servers” for the Executive Office of the President, “part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP.”
“Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.”
According to Fox, the indictment alleges Sussmann met with the government a second time in 2017 with “an updated set of allegations” in which he “provided data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by these entities of internet protocol (IP) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider.”
Sussman told the government the DNS lookups “demonstrated Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations,” the indictment states, according to Fox.
“The Special Counsel’s Office has identified no support for these allegations,” Durham wrote in his filing, noting the “lookups were far from rare in the United States.”
It was during this second meeting, Durham the indictment states, according to Fox, that Sussmann “made a substantially similar false statement as he made to the FBI General Counsel,” telling the government “that he was not representing a particular client in conveying the above allegations.”
“In truth and in fact, the defendant was representing Tech Executive-1 — a fact the defendant subsequently acknowledged under oath in December 2017 testimony before Congress, without identifying the client by name.”
Kash Patel, the former chief investigator of the House Intelligence Committee’s Trump-Russia probe when the committee was chaired by GOP Rep. Devin Nunes, told Fox News that Friday’s filing is evidence that the Clinton campaign had worked to “infiltrate” servers in the Trump Tower and the White House.
It “definitively shows that the Hillary Clinton campaign directly funded and ordered its lawyers at Perkins Coie to orchestrate a criminal enterprise to fabricate a connection between President Trump and Russia,” Patel told Fox, adding it was part of a “false narrative” Sussmann was shopping around to the government “in the hopes of having them launch investigations of President Trump.”
“Per Durham, this arrangement was put in motion in July of 2016, meaning the Hillary Clinton campaign and her lawyers masterminded the most intricate and coordinated conspiracy against Trump when he was both a candidate and later President of the United States while simultaneously perpetuating the bogus Steele Dossier hoax,” Patel told Fox.
Trump, as you might expect, had a far stronger reaction:
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) February 13, 2022
“Durham’s filing provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia,” Trump said in a Saturday evening statement.
“This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution. In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.”
Well, that’s not about to happen. What is likely to occur, however, is a re-evaluation of just how much the Democrats want to cozy up to Hillary Clinton again.
Sure, Clinton looks appealing next to President Joe Biden, a task that isn’t difficult at the moment. However, the latest filing in the Sussmann case is a handy reminder of the noxious intrigue that follows Hillary around like the dust-cloud trailing Pig-Pen. Not only were her operatives behind the Steele dossier, Durham is alleging one of them was involved in infiltrating servers at both Trump Tower and the White House to fabricate a non-existent link between Donald Trump and Alfa Bank.
The filing is also another reminder that, despite a complete lack of evidence, the Trump-Russia hoax continues to poison our national conversation. Even six years after the fact, liberals remain convinced something happened, that there must have been some collusion.
If revelations like this continue to pour out of the Sussmann case, perhaps this is the indictment that finally puts that tired narrative to bed.
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