On Saturday, The Washington Examiner reported that Special counsel John Durham has issued trial subpoenas for members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Before you get too excited about this, consider the following:
The Conservative Treehouse reported on April 16th:
Thanks to a more detailed filing by John Durham last night {pdf here, h/t Techno}, we can now see the guardrails, rules and general direction the prosecution is taking.
In essence, the underlying Trump-Russia conspiracy theory material from the Clinton campaign, via Rodney Joffe to Michael Sussmann, was fabricated – likely for a dual purpose:
(A) to coverup and make excuses for the stunningly embarrassing, potentially unlawful and politically terrible April 2016 DNC email leaks, which showed the DNC Club internally working to secure the nomination for Hillary Clinton, while trying to destroy her primary opponent, Bernie Sanders.
and
(B) to create the political Russia narrative against Trump, to be deployed later in the general election.
Within the general direction Durham is following, the FBI was duped by a purposeful and manipulative intent from the Clinton campaign. Meanwhile, the CIA [Agency-2] did not buy into the technological evidence saying it was not “technically plausible” and was “user created and not machine/tool generated.”
…The prosecutorial approach by John Durham positions all of the corruption outside the institutions of government, thereby protecting them.
The swamp is deep and in control. The government agencies that were totally out of control will not be held accountable by the Durham investigation.
The Washington Examiner reports:
Hillary for America also tried to intervene Tuesday, saying it was “asserting attorney-client privilege and work protection” related to Perkins and Fusion. The filing included declarations from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook, and Elias.
“The Special Counsel continues to overreach: he seeks to admit evidence that the law squarely forbids, he seeks to prove unduly prejudicial allegations he has not charged, and he seeks to prove conduct that is utterly irrelevant to the one discrete crime he has charged,” Sussmann’s lawyers argued Friday night.
Durham also “seeks to prevent Mr. Sussmann from introducing relevant — indeed essential — exculpatory evidence in the form of testimony from his former client, Rodney Joffe,” Sussmann’s lawyers said Friday.
Durham pushed back Saturday.
“The goal of the joint venture could not have been more clear: it was to gather and disseminate derogatory non-public information regarding the internet activities of a political candidate and his associates,” he wrote.
“And that venture was far from collateral to the charged crime. Indeed, the above-described joint venture was the very project that led Tech Executive-1 to rely upon the defendant’s services; the very project that gave rise to the Russian Bank-1 allegations; the very project that prompted agents of the Clinton Campaign to meet with Tech Executive-1; and the very project that caused the defendant to meet with the FBI General Counsel and lie to him about the clients who were behind all of this work,” Durham said.
Durham has declined to promise that Joffe won’t be indicted at some point in the future, but if Joffe is not granted immunity to testify at trial on Sussmann’s behalf, then the charges should be dismissed, the defense team argued.
On Saturday, The Conservative Treehouse reported:
The current court battle is circling around various lawyers and groups saying they have attorney-client privileges in order to attempt to avoid document production and/or testimony that will put them in legal jeopardy. The Clinton Campaign is claiming communication with Fusion is privileged. Fusion is claiming communication with Perkins Coie is privileged. Perkins Coie is claiming they hired Fusion GPS for legal services, etc. etc. etc.
It takes much more time, but John Durham is working through each of the privilege claims in court, and so far, he has been successful in compelling compliance.
♦ A frequent question: Why didn’t Durham charge Rodney Joffe yet? It’s a good question, and the answer is likely because he’s building that case around something else. Here’s my suspicion.
You will remember, back in 2016, 2017 and 2018, when I said the Clinton team seem to have some kind of “direct portal” into government databases. There was some process clearly evident where the Clinton campaign itself had access to government databases.
We speculated about all kinds of contractors helping her, etc. This is entirely separate from what Fusion GPS and other participants were doing to data-mine information. This is not the people inside government connected to spygate (NSA, Fusion, etc), this is a portal specific to the Clinton campaign itself.
I always called this network the “Clinton Portal“, and the fingerprints from it just kept surfacing as the media described Trump-Russia connections, and then campaign officials would amplify. I’ve said that since mid 2016, and I retained that view throughout. Clinton’s campaign operation was data mining some government database, somehow. The question was who and how?
Rodney Joffe is the explanation that answers that question. Joffe exploiting contractor access to government databases (GA Tech via DARPA), in combination with his access to data from Neustar, gave him a unique position. Joffe was Clinton’s Portal.
My hunch is that Durham is holding back on Joffe because accessing government databases, via a government contract (DARPA) that was not given for that intent, is a bigger set of charges.
Please follow the links above to see exactly what is happening here. It is brilliant sleight of hand.