Another significant filing by John Durham’s special counsel team to the court was made Monday night. {READ HERE} Within the filing the staff accidentally did not seal the attachments which are emails between Fusion GPS and many major media outlets. Whoops.
First, is the background.
In a previous liable lawsuit by Alfa Bank against Fusion GPS, the Russian bank was able to get the internal emails between Fusion GPS and major media outlets as part of the lawsuit discovery phase. Despite the lawsuit failing to advance, those prior emails now become evidence for John Durham to use in the case against Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann.
Michael Sussmann, a Perkins Coie lawyer, is accused of lying to the FBI about who he was working for when Sussmann was trying to push the Trump-Russia collusion story to trigger an investigation. Former FBI legal counsel James Baker has said Sussmann told the FBI he was operating independently as a concerned citizen. However, Sussmann is defending himself by saying: (a) he never said he was not working for Clinton at the time he brought the FBI the material, a demonstrable falsehood; and (b) he was motivated by altruism, unrelated to efforts to help Clinton, another demonstrable falsehood.
As the case has proceeded all of the parties are now claiming legal and work product ‘privileges’ to stop Durham from using their communication and networked conspiracy against Michael Sussmann, and by extension them, in court. Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie, Marc Elias, Michael Sussmann, Hillary for America (Clinton campaign), Robby Mook (Campaign Manager), along with Tech-Executive-1 Rodney Joffe, are all claiming some form of privilege.
Monday night, in a responsive filing connected to all of the privilege claims, John Durham deconstructed the nature of their defense. Techno-Fog has a good outline {SEE HERE} of the court documents. However, attached to the filing were exhibits supposed to be filed under seal that the Durham staff “accidentally” did not seal right away.
The exhibit consists of the emails between Fusion GPS and media as the opposition research team attempted to push the Trump-Russia collusion story into the media bloodstream -through their ideologically aligned allies- in 2016.
The emails show how extensive Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch pushed the Trump Russia story. The emails show the coordinated effort of Fusion GPS with multiple journalists, producers and media outlets. You can read the emails HERE.
I’m not going to publish the emails because the contacts, addresses, phone numbers etc. are not redacted; but you can clearly see the scale of who was involved.
The emails show journalists from Politico, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC all feeding from the same trough of manipulated information being fed from Fusion GPS. The journalists, producers and Fusion GPS all working in close coordination to push the false Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy.
The accidentally public emails highlight a soup-to-nuts ‘who’s-who‘ of political disinformation. {SEE HERE}
Additionally, the Durham filing itself {SEE HERE} gives us another granular look at how the prosecution is walking the tightrope of carefully balanced prosecution of leftist activists, lawfare people and political organizations outside government.
Within the filing the privilege claims are easily dispatched by prosecutor Andrew J. DeFilippis, Assistant Special Counsel to John Durham. One key paragraph is a little funny in that the prosecution uses the defense position against them. The prosecution states the “purported privilege holders who have intervened do so in a case in which the defendant has denied representing any client when he brought the Russian Bank-1 allegations to the FBI.”
The privilege controversy itself seemingly entraps Michael Sussmann. How can Sussmann claim attorney-client privilege when his defense is to say he wasn’t working on behalf of any client when he brought the information to the FBI? Whoopsie daisy.
All of that said, there’s another interesting aspect to this specific filing if you stand back away from the granular legal details and look at the arc of the prosecution within it. It appears to me that Michael Sussmann is not the REAL target of this prosecution, Marc Elias is.
It looks like John Durham is using the prosecution of Sussmann, and all the details within the case, to box in a very easy prosecution of Michael Sussmann’s boss, the infamous Democrat lawyer, Marc Elias. Read the filing and you see how Perkins Coie and Marc Elias are clearly and purposefully outlined as having the major role in the activity of Sussmann. All prosecutorial roads against Sussmann are leading to Elias.
That risk would certainly explain why Marc Elias left Perkins Coie immediately after the Alfa Bank lawsuit against Fusion GPS revealed the connective tissue, and then John Durham start focusing on Perkins Coie and Michael Sussmann.
Given the ideological and political nature of the DOJ under AG Merrick Garland and Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, it makes sense that John Durham would not and importantly, could not, go directly at Marc Elias.
Marc Elias is the biggest Lawfare fish in the world of Democrats. He is the primary legal mind and legal entity around the entire Democrat apparatus from elections to electoral maps. Elias is the leftists modern legal Moses.
If John Durham was viewed to be targeting Elias directly, his special counsel investigation would be shut down tomorrow, regardless of political backlash. Marc Elias is to outside government as Barack Obama is to inside government.
The DOJ would immediately stop Durham if he was obviously targeting Elias. Inside the firestorm that follows, the political media would rally the wagons around protecting Garland, Monaco and Biden ….and after a few days of republicans in the legislative branch gnashing their teeth on Hannity, Ingraham et al, the explosive decision would blow over. DC would make or create some massive shiny thing to cover the controversy.
Bottom Line: Marc Elias is protected by both wings of the professionally political UniParty.
That said, if, in the prosecution of Michael Sussmann, it became obvious that Marc Elias was guilty of organizing a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States government on behalf of the Clinton campaign, well, that would be incidental, and that’s how Durham could get to Elias.
Marc Elias is likely to be the biggest catchable fish in the carefully navigated prosecution of those outside government.
Keep watching.
