Gamenole, Durham IS investigating Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. That is a fact. All the rest is speculating. Counting on 'journalists' to understand what they read in a legal filing is iffy at best. Most journalists are lazy and often come from the bottom 25% of their admission class at Universities. To expect them to perform above their ceiling is not a good bet.

As we watch things play out over the next year, we'll get a better idea of what is really happening.

(02-18-2022 12:14 PM)MileHighBronco Wrote:  Gamenole, Durham IS investigating Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. That is a fact. All the rest is speculating. Counting on 'journalists' to understand what they read in a legal filing is iffy at best. Most journalists are lazy and often come from the bottom 25% of their admission class at Universities. To expect them to perform above their ceiling is not a good bet.

As we watch things play out over the next year, we'll get a better idea of what is really happening.

I predict someonee will get a strong talking to with harsh words. Really harsh.

Hillary's 'Comeback' Speech Is a Festival of Deflection, Durham, and Delusion

Quote:The one thing that you have to say about Hillary Clinton: She sure does have some kind of gall.

Her campaign paid — through cut-outs of her lawyers and Fusion GPS — for what became known as the Steele dossier to smear Donald Trump. She then later tried to smear Donald Trump with the debunked Alfa Bank story. We’ve seen now in the Durham probe how it is alleged that her campaign, through operatives, engaged someone to look into the DNS lookups of servers including Trump Tower and the Executive Office of the President to dig up dirt on him to push that Russia connection claim.

Despite that, on Thursday, she showed up at the New York State Democratic Convention to give what some called her “comeback” speech” and she used it as a platform to do what she has always done, all her life — deflect from charges against her by trying to blame others, including Trump and other Republicans. She had previously tried that earlier with a tweet, calling the accusations a “fake scandal.”

But even before she got in the door to the Convention, she was assailed by protesters who let her know what they thought of her, including shouting out “lock her up.”

The speech she delivered took such audacity — particularly given her actions — it was a wonder her tongue didn’t go up in flames or snap off its roller as she delivered it.

Clinton said we were a “nation deeply and dangerously divided.”

“It is one thing to have political disagreements. Those are natural and healthy. But it is an entirely different thing altogether to lose a shared sense of truth, facts, and reality itself. I know many of us hoped defeating Trump would start to help heal our divisions. I know I certainly did. Maybe, just maybe, the madness would break.”

Maybe she should check the mirror for what her actions have done to contribute to that division, particularly over the last several years with the Russia collusion lie, but also demonizing Americans as “deplorable.” She still hasn’t accepted the reality that she lost fair and square, despite all that she did to twist the process.

She then claimed the Republican Party was trying to normalize “storming the Capitol, assaulting police officers, and trying to overturn an election” leading us into “uncharted territory.” Again, madam, mirror, check it. Republicans are not “normalizing” violence. And what you allegedly did has no comparison in history and no one who did such a thing should ever be anywhere near any seat of power ever again.

“We must reject the big lie about the 2020 election and the cover-up of the insurrection of Jan. 6.” Clinton declared.

“And we can’t get distracted, whether it’s by the latest culture war nonsense or some new right-wing lie on Fox or Facebook. By the way, they’ve been coming after me again lately, in case you might have noticed. It’s funny, the more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get. So now his accountants have fired him, investigations draw closer to him, and right on cue, the noise machine gets turned up. Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again.”

Notice who and what she doesn’t mention? That this is about the Durham probe, the real indictments, and the filings in which the Clinton campaign plotting is laid out and alleged. Nothing to do with Fox or President Donald Trump — that’s his name by the way, even if Clinton can’t even bring herself to accord him the title that he earned despite her efforts. But it does sound a bit like she’s having a throwback to her “vast right-wing conspiracy” excuse from so many years ago. Wasn’t she just talking about division? Here she is putting down Fox viewers. So much for that — she couldn’t even make it through the speech without being the divisive person that she’s been for decades.

Clinton shows once again that Democrats have nothing to run on but lies and bashing Donald Trump.

She then ended her remarks by holding up the hand of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who she had endorsed. No masks, but Hochul will keep masks on kids in schools.

It sounds like she’s positioning herself in the eventuality that Biden can’t continue. This was supposed to be that speech that was going to make people talk about her again, to say, “Hey, look, let’s turn to her again.” But it just showed how delusional she still is and how, even now, she still can’t accept that President Donald Trump beat her. It showed that even in a speech that was supposed to be inspiring, she’s still the same old unlikeable person that she always was.

Durham Response to Sussmann Motion to Strike Squelches the Ridiculous Arguments

Quote:On Thursday, Special Counsel John Durham responded to a motion filed by former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s attorneys to strike the factual background part of his Feb. 11 filing about conflicts in the case. It was that Feb. 11 factual background — about the Clinton campaign through its operatives, engaging a tech company to surveil DNS lookups of locations including Trump Tower and the Executive Office of the President — that had made a lot of conservative and independent media sit up and take notice, while at the same time, liberal media thought of any way to ignore it or spin it. Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe even said on Monday that the intel he had given Durham for his probe would support “quite a few more” potential indictments.

That all must have been making some people in Clinton-land very nervous, so Sussmann’s attorneys moved to strike it, claiming the intent was “to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.”

In the meantime, Sussmann’s attorneys since moved on Thursday to dismiss the whole case against him, claiming that Durham did not state a case for the charge — meaning that they’re claiming that he didn’t allege all the elements of the false statement charge that was made against him.

But in the response to the first motion, Durham declared that there was “no basis” to strike any part of his filing, noting that the factual background was “central to proving” Sussmann’s “alleged criminal conduct.” But Durham also noted that some of that was essential to laying out the potential conflicts that were the point of his Feb. 11 filing.

“As an initial matter, defense counsel has presumed the Government’s bad faith and asserts the Special Counsel’s Office intentionally sought to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool,” Durham’s filing states.

“That is simply not true,” Durham states, noting that his Feb. 11 filing “included two paragraphs of limited additional factual detail in its Motion for valid and straightforward reasons.”

“First, those paragraphs reflect conduct that is intertwined with, and part of, events that are central to proving the defendant’s alleged criminal conduct,” Durham wrote.

“Second, the Government included these paragraphs to apprise the Court of the factual basis for one of the potential conflicts described in the Government’s Motion, namely, that a member of the defense team was working for the Executive Office of the President of the United States (“EOP”) during relevant events that involved the EOP,” Durham wrote.

Durham added: “If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government’s Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information.”

“In light of the above, there is no basis to strike any portion of the Government’s Motion,” Durham wrote, adding that the government intends to file motions in which it will “further discuss these and other pertinent facts to explain why they constitute relevant and admissible evidence at trial.”

He also noted that any issues as to prejudice on a jury could be dealt with in voir dire.

It’s funny that first, the Sussman lawyers claimed that Durham was saying too much and prejudicing their client, then they flipped on a dime and moved to an argument that he hadn’t said enough. Neither argument is likely to fly, but it will be interesting to see the Durham response to the motion to dismiss because, by their argument, Sussmann’s lawyers are going to have Durham put even more out there on their client. The lawyers are likely just prolonging the pain and making more media stories out of the case, even as they are trying desperately to squelch media.

Liberals Willfully Deluded Themselves on the Russia Collusion Hoax

Quote:Aself-referential quality envelops the coverage of the Russia Collusion Hoax’s further unraveling.

Just as partisans concocted the Russia Collusion Hoax by pointing journalists and the FBI to the “evidence” advanced (and paid for) by other partisans, partisans in the press deny evidence of farce rather than facts pushing that story by citing the nothing-to-see-here-move-along “expert” opinion of other partisans.

The most preposterous example of this self-referential phenomenon in this recent wave of coverage came from Dylan Stableford, who reports for Yahoo News, which (more on this later), played a central role in acting as an initial booster of the hoax.

“Former President Donald Trump and his allies are saying that a recent court filing by Justice Department special counsel John Durham is proof that he was being spied on as a candidate in 2016 and later as president by people involved with Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” begins Stableford’s article at Yahoo News. He writes in paragraph three, “But according to a leading cybersecurity expert, the highly technical filing — while raising some potentially troubling questions about the use of nonpublic government data for political purposes — does little to support Trump’s claim that his allegations of spying have been vindicated.”

That expert assures in the piece that “DNS traffic” — the addresses of the sites one visits — “is not content.” While he concedes Durham’s findings raise concerns, the “expert,” according to the piece’s paraphrase, calls the material “not the kind of content you would normally associate with spying.”

Who is the “leading cybersecurity expert” validating the reporter’s propagandistic narrative? Why, it’s Russian-born Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of CrowdStrike.

Memba dem?

The Democratic National Committee employed CrowdStrike quite controversially in the midst of the Russia Collusion Hoax. Stableford somehow forgot to mention the group’s involvement, albeit in a peripheral role, in the debunked narrative he seeks to resuscitate in his article, or the connection of the subject of the article, the indicted Michael Sussmann, to CrowdStrike. This is a bit like if journalists had asked G. Gordon Liddy, “leading expert on law enforcement,” whether or not the Watergate break-in was on the level. Though the Justice Department does not accuse Alperovitch of criminal involvement in the scandal (as Liddy was criminally involved in Watergate), CrowdStrike stood in the middle of the story.

The DNC strangely avoided appealing to federal law enforcement to directly investigate the data breach. James Comey admitted under oath, saying the FBI took the word of “a high-class entity” investigating the claims at face value, that the bureau did not bother to investigate the computer forensics involved in the allegations of a foreign enemy power hacking data from an American political party. That “high-class entity”? CrowdStrike.

George Parry wrote at The American Spectator in October 2019, “CrowdStrike, which was working for the DNC, announced that it had detected Russian malware on the DNC’s computer server. The next day, a self-described Romanian hacker, Guccifer 2.0, claimed he was a WikiLeaks source and had hacked the DNC’s server. He then posted online DNC computer files that contained metadata that indicated Russian involvement in the hack.”

“The FBI has never examined the DNC’s computer servers — an omission that is beyond preposterous,” Patrick Lawrence pointed out in an exhaustive 2017 article at the Nation. “It has instead relied on the reports produced by Crowdstrike, a firm that drips with conflicting interests well beyond the fact that it is in the DNC’s employ. Dmitri Alperovitch, its co-founder and chief technology officer, is on the record as vigorously anti-Russian. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which suffers the same prejudice.”

The bipartisan skepticism of the official story stems from the DNC material downloaded from the Eastern Time Zone and not the Eastern European Time Zone, the quickness of the download allegedly inconsistent with a hack from across the ocean, Russian metadata imposed on the material after the fact as though the person putting it there wished to plant evidence, and its content exposing the DNC’s choosing of sides in the Clinton–Bernie Sanders primary fight. Whether one doubts CrowdStrike’s findings, regards them as compelling, or judges their findings of Russian malware on DNC computers accurate but not inconsistent with the data breach stemming from a leak coming from within the building seems irrelevant to the journalistic ethics involved in citing the company’s then-chief technology officer as an impartial expert — without even bothering to disclose CrowdStrike’s involvement — pertaining to controversial matters involving his for-profit entity.

The genesis of the hoax — the DNC and Hillary Clinton funneling millions through the law firm Perkins Coie to the placers of political kick-me signs, Fusion GPS (a laundering presumably to avoid the transparency of campaign finance disclosure laws), which then paid Christopher Steele to issue a smear campaign dressed up as an “intelligence dossier” — shows this.

Not only did the closed loop of source material for the Clinton-paid “dossier” rely heavily on Igor Danchenko, a Beltway-based employee of the Brookings Institution then run by Strobe Talbott, a Friend of Bill dating back more than five decades, but in keeping its funding secret the Democrats pushing the hoax effectively passed it off as a sober analysis from detached foreign intelligence hands. It wasn’t that. It was phony information provided to a campaign that paid for it by U.S.-based sympathizers of that campaign.

The bureau neglected to tell the court issuing the warrant to spy on Carter Page that the information upon which the probable cause rested came from a dirt dealer paid by Donald Trump’s political opponent. The warrant refers to “research” rather than “opposition research,” and mentions a “law firm” and not Clinton’s campaign hiring the investigator, whom it strangely seems to dub a “U.S. person.” It withholds crucial information that, if included, would be liable to result in a denial of the warrant. And, of course, a Justice Department official has already pleaded guilty to altering an email pertaining to Carter Page by saying he was “not a source” for the CIA when Page was.

The FBI actually used an article from the Stableford’s employer, Yahoo News, that relied on the Steele opposition research for its claims, to corroborate the “intelligence dossier.” By such means, one could prove anything.

Along these same dishonest lines, Michael Sussmann, the Clinton campaign lawyer, claimed, according to his federal indictment, that he came to them “not doing this for any client” when he pushed for the FBI to investigate Trump’s ties to a Russian bank even though Sussmann allegedly billed the Clinton campaign for work pertaining to those supposed ties. Again, the Clinton campaign manufactured evidence (through an elaborate computer spying operation) and then a representative of it, allegedly representing himself as representing himself and not the campaign, cited that manufactured evidence in pushing the FBI for an investigation.

Making the Stableford Yahoo article even more brazen in its violation of journalistic norms, Sussmann, the roundabout subject of his story, hired CrowdStrike, the company co-founded by Alperovitch, to investigate the DNC leak.

Why didn’t Yahoo just cite Hillary Clinton as its expert to explain to readers why her campaign’s activities were on the level?

The Russia Collusion Hoax in microcosm represents modern liberals, a genus that primarily inhabits cities composed of people who vote like them, watch cable networks that shield them from information that challenges their assumptions, exclusively read publications similarly affirming, increasingly date only within their party, and even refuse commerce with businesses identified as associating with an unfashionable cause or party. They encounter conservatives often through caricature but rarely, at least in any substantive way, in real life. These parochial cosmopolitans living in a closed loop unsurprisingly approach ideas in a begging-the-question, circular-reasoning closed loop. (READ MORE: Spying Isn’t Spying If Democrats Do It)

One cannot compete in the game and referee it at once. Total-politics fanatics think that they can. That arrogance leads to profound ethical lapses and confusion of wish for reality.

While so much of the Russiagate endeavor involved willful deception, it also included subconscious self-deception. They wanted to believe the worst in their political enemies just as they now want to believe the best in their political friends. How could good people with good ideas like mine possibly invade privacy, smear innocents, use the intelligence apparatus for partisan purposes, employ foreign nationals to spy on a candidate for the presidency, and drag the country through such an at-each-other’s-throats period by peddling utter junk?

The outcome of all this primarily does not involve the fates, reputational or otherwise, of John Brennan, Andrew McCabe, Hillary Clinton, or Marc Elias. It instead separates liberals into two camps: the ones who so little minded other liberals lying to them for years that they welcome further propaganda campaigns after rationalizing this one and the ones whose epiphanies so scandalized them that they never again reflexively trust who share the same general political outlook.

Want to bet on the more populous of the two camps?

What I found interesting is his take on Durham's mention of Sussman. I agree with him that Durham was warning Sussman that the law firm representing him is also Hillary's law firm and doesn't necessarily have HIS best interests at heart. The Clinton camp will throw Sussman under the bus in a heartbeat. It suggests that co-operating might be his best course.

As to Benny's caption, I see nothing regarding ending the FBI but several of the leadership of the agency may be at legal risk.

(02-18-2022 11:58 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 11:03 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 10:53 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 10:49 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 10:38 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  The Special Counsel himself realizes that this is not, at this point, what many of you want it to be -

Durham Distances Himself From Furor in Right-Wing Media
February 18, 2022 at 9:13 am EST By Taegan Goddard 73 Comments

“John Durham, the Trump-era special counsel scrutinizing the investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference, distanced himself on Thursday from false reports by right-wing news outlets that a motion he recently filed said Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid to spy on Trump White House servers,” the New York Times reports.

Can you point to exactly where Durham distanced himself? For some reason this left wing rag left it out.

Here you go, here's a couple stories about it that aren't behind paywall -

https://news.yahoo.com/john-durham-dista...12065.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...uxbndlbing

Thanks, because what Durham said is also the exact opposite of what these left wing rags said he said. Here's Furhams quote:

"If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government's Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government's inclusion of this information," Durham's team wrote in a court filing Thursday.

What Durham said is that its not his fault if the media, whether right or left, cant read his indictment. If he's saying some right wing media is overstating his indictment, he's also saying the left wing media is understating his indictment.

This is another case where its better to read what Durham said instead of some left wing rag trying to tell us what he said.

I think we agree on what he is saying, which is what a Special Counsel should say - EVERYONE back off, calm down and let me finish my work. But if the left went wild with rampant speculation and said that he hadn't found anything and his investigation should be shut down, I missed that. Given that it was the right who has gleefully predicted that his filing heralds their dreamed of reckoning for the ever elusive Mrs. Clinton, I think the interpretation that he is distancing himself from that is a fair one. Certainly, if there is speculation on the left that his investigation is a witch hunt or that Hillary has been exonerated, that too is premature and I would agree he also seeks to distance himself from that.

"But if the left went wild with rampant speculation and said that he hadn't found anything and his investigation should be shut down, I missed that"


You can gind that all over the place.... hell, Hillary Clinton literally did that yesterday



Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

(02-18-2022 01:14 PM)maximus Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 11:58 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 11:03 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 10:53 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 10:49 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  Can you point to exactly where Durham distanced himself? For some reason this left wing rag left it out.

Here you go, here's a couple stories about it that aren't behind paywall -

https://news.yahoo.com/john-durham-dista...12065.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...uxbndlbing

Thanks, because what Durham said is also the exact opposite of what these left wing rags said he said. Here's Furhams quote:

"If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government's Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government's inclusion of this information," Durham's team wrote in a court filing Thursday.

What Durham said is that its not his fault if the media, whether right or left, cant read his indictment. If he's saying some right wing media is overstating his indictment, he's also saying the left wing media is understating his indictment.

This is another case where its better to read what Durham said instead of some left wing rag trying to tell us what he said.

I think we agree on what he is saying, which is what a Special Counsel should say - EVERYONE back off, calm down and let me finish my work. But if the left went wild with rampant speculation and said that he hadn't found anything and his investigation should be shut down, I missed that. Given that it was the right who has gleefully predicted that his filing heralds their dreamed of reckoning for the ever elusive Mrs. Clinton, I think the interpretation that he is distancing himself from that is a fair one. Certainly, if there is speculation on the left that his investigation is a witch hunt or that Hillary has been exonerated, that too is premature and I would agree he also seeks to distance himself from that.

"But if the left went wild with rampant speculation and said that he hadn't found anything and his investigation should be shut down, I missed that"


You can gind that all over the place.... hell, Hillary Clinton literally did that yesterday



Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

No she didn't, not that I have seen. Certainly not in this Fox story about her remarks yesterday -

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hillary...ontroversy

She attacks Trump and the rightwing media for spreading disinformation regarding the Special Counsel's investigation, not the investigation itself. There's a tendency here to want to believe that the Durham filing implicates Secretary Clinton in a way that it simply doesn't. That is what she pushed back against, not what the filing does say or the investigation itself.

Perhaps that day will come and if it does I don't doubt she'll proclaim her innocence, then it will be up to the courts to decide. But the filing is the filing, and the fact remains that it simply doesn't state the conclusions that many of you want to draw from it.

(02-18-2022 02:48 PM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 01:14 PM)maximus Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 11:58 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 11:03 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 10:53 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  Here you go, here's a couple stories about it that aren't behind paywall -

https://news.yahoo.com/john-durham-dista...12065.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...uxbndlbing

Thanks, because what Durham said is also the exact opposite of what these left wing rags said he said. Here's Furhams quote:

"If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government's Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government's inclusion of this information," Durham's team wrote in a court filing Thursday.

What Durham said is that its not his fault if the media, whether right or left, cant read his indictment. If he's saying some right wing media is overstating his indictment, he's also saying the left wing media is understating his indictment.

This is another case where its better to read what Durham said instead of some left wing rag trying to tell us what he said.

I think we agree on what he is saying, which is what a Special Counsel should say - EVERYONE back off, calm down and let me finish my work. But if the left went wild with rampant speculation and said that he hadn't found anything and his investigation should be shut down, I missed that. Given that it was the right who has gleefully predicted that his filing heralds their dreamed of reckoning for the ever elusive Mrs. Clinton, I think the interpretation that he is distancing himself from that is a fair one. Certainly, if there is speculation on the left that his investigation is a witch hunt or that Hillary has been exonerated, that too is premature and I would agree he also seeks to distance himself from that.

"But if the left went wild with rampant speculation and said that he hadn't found anything and his investigation should be shut down, I missed that"


You can gind that all over the place.... hell, Hillary Clinton literally did that yesterday



Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

No she didn't, not that I have seen. Certainly not in this Fox story about her remarks yesterday -

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hillary...ontroversy

She attacks Trump and the rightwing media for spreading disinformation regarding the Special Counsel's investigation, not the investigation itself. There's a tendency here to want to believe that the Durham filing implicates Secretary Clinton in a way that it simply doesn't. That is what she pushed back against, not what the filing does say or the investigation itself.

Perhaps that day will come and if it does I don't doubt she'll proclaim her innocence, then it will be up to the courts to decide. But the filing is the filing, and the fact remains that it simply doesn't state the conclusions that many of you want to draw from it.

lulz, Clinton said Fox News was getting awful close to "malice" in their remarks.

That actually doesnt matter. You can report with all the malice in the world if what you are reporting is true.

Clinton campaign lawyer bets on fired FBI agent Peter Strzok to fight Durham case

Quote:Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann relied in part on legal analysis by fired FBI agent Peter Strzok when arguing that the false statements charge brought against him by special counsel John Durham should be dismissed.

Sussmann was indicted last year for allegedly concealing his clients, including Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, from FBI General Counsel James Baker when he pushed since-debunked claims of a secret backchannel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Sussmann denies any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty.

Lawyers for Sussmann are now asking a federal court to toss the case, arguing that their client did not lie to the FBI when passing along Trump-Russia collusion claims and that even if he had, such a deception would have been been “immaterial.” In claiming that Durham’s prosecution would “chill” future tipsters from coming forward to the FBI, they cited a lengthy post that Strzok wrote for Lawfare in October in which he criticized the special counsel's inquiry. Sussmann’s lawyers echoed and borrowed from the arguments made by Strzok.

“The tipsters who would be chilled are those providing truthful information about criminal wrongdoing that the FBI or other government agencies should be investigating. The fear is that they would later be criminally prosecuted for (purportedly) lying about ancillary matters, such as their motivation for reporting the criminal wrongdoing in the first place,” Sussmann’s team wrote Thursday, adding, “If would-be tipsters or sources fear that an incomplete disclosure will subject them to criminal liability, the FBI would be seriously weakened in its ability to gather information from the public, and recruit and maintain confidential human sources.”

While making this claim, Sussmann’s team cited Strzok’s article, claiming that it was “describing risk to confidential human source recruitment of the Sussmann Indictment, based on his more than 20 years of experience at the FBI.” Strzok began attacking the Durham investigation as early as 2020.

Strzok claimed in October that the Sussmann indictment is "more likely to cause greater damage to the FBI’s ability to recruit and maintain sources as those sources become increasingly fearful that incompleteness will be treated as a criminal false statement” and “in the worst case, it’s part of the previous administration’s effort to scare off investigators looking at anything related to Trump and counterintelligence.”

This was all part of a "chilling effect” sought by former Attorney General William Barr when he appointed Durham to the task, Strzok argued.

Sussmann’s team said “interpreting [the false statements statute's] materiality too broadly creates the additional risk of chilling First Amendment-protected speech” and claimed that “well-intentioned lay people with truthful information about criminal wrongdoing would be discouraged from providing that information to law enforcement for fear of a felony prosecution.”

Sussmann’s lawyers said Thursday that he “voluntarily” met with the FBI in September 2016 “to pass along information that raised national security concerns” and characterized this as meeting with the FBI simply “to provide a tip.”

Strzok claimed that the false statements charge would stop sources from reaching out to the FBI and that Sussmann was “not a counterintelligence professional but a source.”

However, Sussmann was not a random source off the street.

Sussmann was a high-profile cybersecurity lawyer with connections to the Democratic Party. He worked at the Department of Justice from the early 1990s to 2005 as a special assistant U.S. attorney at the DOJ’s criminal division and in the DOJ’s computer crime section.

“Mr. Sussmann did not make any false statement to the FBI,” Sussmann’s defense team claimed. “But in any event, the false statement alleged in the indictment is immaterial as a matter of law.”

The criminal count against Sussmann makes it clear that Durham believes Sussmann "did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement or representation" to Baker. Durham said Sussmann’s alleged lie was “material” because it “misled” the FBI “concerning the political nature of his work and deprived the FBI of information that might have permitted it more fully to assess and uncover the origins of the relevant data and technical analysis, including the identities and motivations of Sussmann’s clients.”

In a filing last week, Durham revealed that he has evidence Sussmann’s other client at the time of the 2016 FBI meeting, known to be former Neustar executive Rodney Joffe, “exploited” domain name system internet traffic at Trump Tower, Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and the Executive Office of the President.

Strzok played a key role in opening the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in 2016 and interviewed retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in January 2017. He also helped lead high-profile investigations related to Clinton’s use of an unauthorized private email server during her time as secretary of state.

However, Strzok was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in 2017 after the discovery of anti-Trump texts with then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page and was later fired from the bureau.

In one of their text message exchanges, Page asked Strzok, “[Trump's] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

“No. No he won’t,” Strzok replied. “We'll stop it.”

Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, said in his December 2019 report that the FBI "concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links" between Trump and Alfa Bank. The DOJ watchdog said the FBI's explanations for its Trump-Russia investigation screwups were “unsatisfactory across the board" but was unable to determine whether it was “gross negligence” or “intentional misconduct.”

“I had a minor role in the events in question, insofar as I transferred the material Sussmann gave to Jim Baker ... to the personnel who ultimately supervised and looked into the allegations," Strzok said in October. Strzok said he heard “a briefing or two” about Alfa Bank “and heard sort of updates and kind of the final resolution." Strzok even conceded that it was possible Durham might call him as a witness.

Strzok filed a civil lawsuit against Barr, the FBI, and FBI Director Christopher Wray in August 2019, claiming he was wrongfully terminated from his job. Last month, the Justice Department moved to block a subpoena to depose Trump as part of Strzok's wrongful termination suit.


Horowitz suggested that Strzok's work could have been biased. When the bureau unearthed tens of thousands of Clinton emails in late September 2016 on the laptop belonging to Huma Abedin’s husband, disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, Strzok and other FBI leaders dragged their feet on investigating for weeks.

"We did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias," Horowitz said.

FBI agent John Robertson, who worked in the bureau's child sex crimes unit in New York, found tens of thousands of Clinton emails in late September 2016 on the laptop belonging to Weiner. But for weeks after being alerted, top FBI leaders, including Strzok, took little to no action to investigate.

Strzok claimed in October that the Sussmann indictment is "more likely to cause greater damage to the FBI’s ability to recruit and maintain sources as those sources become increasingly fearful that incompleteness will be treated as a criminal false statement” and “in the worst case, it’s part of the previous administration’s effort to scare off investigators looking at anything related to Trump and counterintelligence.”

This was all part of a "chilling effect” sought by former Attorney General William Barr when he appointed Durham to the task, Strzok argued.

In other words, if you keep prosecuting our sources for lying, we at the FBI will find it harder to get sources to come to us and lie so we can open investigations against innocent people. So chilling......

(02-18-2022 11:58 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 11:03 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 10:53 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 10:49 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 10:38 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  The Special Counsel himself realizes that this is not, at this point, what many of you want it to be -

Durham Distances Himself From Furor in Right-Wing Media
February 18, 2022 at 9:13 am EST By Taegan Goddard 73 Comments

“John Durham, the Trump-era special counsel scrutinizing the investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference, distanced himself on Thursday from false reports by right-wing news outlets that a motion he recently filed said Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid to spy on Trump White House servers,” the New York Times reports.

Can you point to exactly where Durham distanced himself? For some reason this left wing rag left it out.

Here you go, here's a couple stories about it that aren't behind paywall -

https://news.yahoo.com/john-durham-dista...12065.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...uxbndlbing

Thanks, because what Durham said is also the exact opposite of what these left wing rags said he said. Here's Furhams quote:

"If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government's Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government's inclusion of this information," Durham's team wrote in a court filing Thursday.

What Durham said is that its not his fault if the media, whether right or left, cant read his indictment. If he's saying some right wing media is overstating his indictment, he's also saying the left wing media is understating his indictment.

This is another case where its better to read what Durham said instead of some left wing rag trying to tell us what he said.

I think we agree on what he is saying, which is what a Special Counsel should say - EVERYONE back off, calm down and let me finish my work. But if the left went wild with rampant speculation and said that he hadn't found anything and his investigation should be shut down, I missed that. Given that it was the right who has gleefully predicted that his filing heralds their dreamed of reckoning for the ever elusive Mrs. Clinton, I think the interpretation that he is distancing himself from that is a fair one. Certainly, if there is speculation on the left that his investigation is a witch hunt or that Hillary has been exonerated, that too is premature and I would agree he also seeks to distance himself from that.

Oh, I don't know. In another sense I think witch hunt is entirely apropos.

(02-18-2022 12:45 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:  Hillary's 'Comeback' Speech Is a Festival of Deflection, Durham, and Delusion

Quote:The one thing that you have to say about Hillary Clinton: She sure does have some kind of gall.

Her campaign paid — through cut-outs of her lawyers and Fusion GPS — for what became known as the Steele dossier to smear Donald Trump. She then later tried to smear Donald Trump with the debunked Alfa Bank story. We’ve seen now in the Durham probe how it is alleged that her campaign, through operatives, engaged someone to look into the DNS lookups of servers including Trump Tower and the Executive Office of the President to dig up dirt on him to push that Russia connection claim.

Despite that, on Thursday, she showed up at the New York State Democratic Convention to give what some called her “comeback” speech” and she used it as a platform to do what she has always done, all her life — deflect from charges against her by trying to blame others, including Trump and other Republicans. She had previously tried that earlier with a tweet, calling the accusations a “fake scandal.”

But even before she got in the door to the Convention, she was assailed by protesters who let her know what they thought of her, including shouting out “lock her up.”

The speech she delivered took such audacity — particularly given her actions — it was a wonder her tongue didn’t go up in flames or snap off its roller as she delivered it.

Clinton said we were a “nation deeply and dangerously divided.”

“It is one thing to have political disagreements. Those are natural and healthy. But it is an entirely different thing altogether to lose a shared sense of truth, facts, and reality itself. I know many of us hoped defeating Trump would start to help heal our divisions. I know I certainly did. Maybe, just maybe, the madness would break.”

Maybe she should check the mirror for what her actions have done to contribute to that division, particularly over the last several years with the Russia collusion lie, but also demonizing Americans as “deplorable.” She still hasn’t accepted the reality that she lost fair and square, despite all that she did to twist the process.

She then claimed the Republican Party was trying to normalize “storming the Capitol, assaulting police officers, and trying to overturn an election” leading us into “uncharted territory.” Again, madam, mirror, check it. Republicans are not “normalizing” violence. And what you allegedly did has no comparison in history and no one who did such a thing should ever be anywhere near any seat of power ever again.

“We must reject the big lie about the 2020 election and the cover-up of the insurrection of Jan. 6.” Clinton declared.

“And we can’t get distracted, whether it’s by the latest culture war nonsense or some new right-wing lie on Fox or Facebook. By the way, they’ve been coming after me again lately, in case you might have noticed. It’s funny, the more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get. So now his accountants have fired him, investigations draw closer to him, and right on cue, the noise machine gets turned up. Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again.”

Notice who and what she doesn’t mention? That this is about the Durham probe, the real indictments, and the filings in which the Clinton campaign plotting is laid out and alleged. Nothing to do with Fox or President Donald Trump — that’s his name by the way, even if Clinton can’t even bring herself to accord him the title that he earned despite her efforts. But it does sound a bit like she’s having a throwback to her “vast right-wing conspiracy” excuse from so many years ago. Wasn’t she just talking about division? Here she is putting down Fox viewers. So much for that — she couldn’t even make it through the speech without being the divisive person that she’s been for decades.

Clinton shows once again that Democrats have nothing to run on but lies and bashing Donald Trump.

She then ended her remarks by holding up the hand of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who she had endorsed. No masks, but Hochul will keep masks on kids in schools.

It sounds like she’s positioning herself in the eventuality that Biden can’t continue. This was supposed to be that speech that was going to make people talk about her again, to say, “Hey, look, let’s turn to her again.” But it just showed how delusional she still is and how, even now, she still can’t accept that President Donald Trump beat her. It showed that even in a speech that was supposed to be inspiring, she’s still the same old unlikeable person that she always was.

Durham Response to Sussmann Motion to Strike Squelches the Ridiculous Arguments

Quote:On Thursday, Special Counsel John Durham responded to a motion filed by former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s attorneys to strike the factual background part of his Feb. 11 filing about conflicts in the case. It was that Feb. 11 factual background — about the Clinton campaign through its operatives, engaging a tech company to surveil DNS lookups of locations including Trump Tower and the Executive Office of the President — that had made a lot of conservative and independent media sit up and take notice, while at the same time, liberal media thought of any way to ignore it or spin it. Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe even said on Monday that the intel he had given Durham for his probe would support “quite a few more” potential indictments.

That all must have been making some people in Clinton-land very nervous, so Sussmann’s attorneys moved to strike it, claiming the intent was “to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.”

In the meantime, Sussmann’s attorneys since moved on Thursday to dismiss the whole case against him, claiming that Durham did not state a case for the charge — meaning that they’re claiming that he didn’t allege all the elements of the false statement charge that was made against him.

But in the response to the first motion, Durham declared that there was “no basis” to strike any part of his filing, noting that the factual background was “central to proving” Sussmann’s “alleged criminal conduct.” But Durham also noted that some of that was essential to laying out the potential conflicts that were the point of his Feb. 11 filing.

“As an initial matter, defense counsel has presumed the Government’s bad faith and asserts the Special Counsel’s Office intentionally sought to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool,” Durham’s filing states.

“That is simply not true,” Durham states, noting that his Feb. 11 filing “included two paragraphs of limited additional factual detail in its Motion for valid and straightforward reasons.”

“First, those paragraphs reflect conduct that is intertwined with, and part of, events that are central to proving the defendant’s alleged criminal conduct,” Durham wrote.

“Second, the Government included these paragraphs to apprise the Court of the factual basis for one of the potential conflicts described in the Government’s Motion, namely, that a member of the defense team was working for the Executive Office of the President of the United States (“EOP”) during relevant events that involved the EOP,” Durham wrote.

Durham added: “If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government’s Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information.”

“In light of the above, there is no basis to strike any portion of the Government’s Motion,” Durham wrote, adding that the government intends to file motions in which it will “further discuss these and other pertinent facts to explain why they constitute relevant and admissible evidence at trial.”

He also noted that any issues as to prejudice on a jury could be dealt with in voir dire.

It’s funny that first, the Sussman lawyers claimed that Durham was saying too much and prejudicing their client, then they flipped on a dime and moved to an argument that he hadn’t said enough. Neither argument is likely to fly, but it will be interesting to see the Durham response to the motion to dismiss because, by their argument, Sussmann’s lawyers are going to have Durham put even more out there on their client. The lawyers are likely just prolonging the pain and making more media stories out of the case, even as they are trying desperately to squelch media.

Liberals Willfully Deluded Themselves on the Russia Collusion Hoax

Quote:Aself-referential quality envelops the coverage of the Russia Collusion Hoax’s further unraveling.

Just as partisans concocted the Russia Collusion Hoax by pointing journalists and the FBI to the “evidence” advanced (and paid for) by other partisans, partisans in the press deny evidence of farce rather than facts pushing that story by citing the nothing-to-see-here-move-along “expert” opinion of other partisans.

The most preposterous example of this self-referential phenomenon in this recent wave of coverage came from Dylan Stableford, who reports for Yahoo News, which (more on this later), played a central role in acting as an initial booster of the hoax.

“Former President Donald Trump and his allies are saying that a recent court filing by Justice Department special counsel John Durham is proof that he was being spied on as a candidate in 2016 and later as president by people involved with Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” begins Stableford’s article at Yahoo News. He writes in paragraph three, “But according to a leading cybersecurity expert, the highly technical filing — while raising some potentially troubling questions about the use of nonpublic government data for political purposes — does little to support Trump’s claim that his allegations of spying have been vindicated.”

That expert assures in the piece that “DNS traffic” — the addresses of the sites one visits — “is not content.” While he concedes Durham’s findings raise concerns, the “expert,” according to the piece’s paraphrase, calls the material “not the kind of content you would normally associate with spying.”

Who is the “leading cybersecurity expert” validating the reporter’s propagandistic narrative? Why, it’s Russian-born Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of CrowdStrike.

Memba dem?

The Democratic National Committee employed CrowdStrike quite controversially in the midst of the Russia Collusion Hoax. Stableford somehow forgot to mention the group’s involvement, albeit in a peripheral role, in the debunked narrative he seeks to resuscitate in his article, or the connection of the subject of the article, the indicted Michael Sussmann, to CrowdStrike. This is a bit like if journalists had asked G. Gordon Liddy, “leading expert on law enforcement,” whether or not the Watergate break-in was on the level. Though the Justice Department does not accuse Alperovitch of criminal involvement in the scandal (as Liddy was criminally involved in Watergate), CrowdStrike stood in the middle of the story.

The DNC strangely avoided appealing to federal law enforcement to directly investigate the data breach. James Comey admitted under oath, saying the FBI took the word of “a high-class entity” investigating the claims at face value, that the bureau did not bother to investigate the computer forensics involved in the allegations of a foreign enemy power hacking data from an American political party. That “high-class entity”? CrowdStrike.

George Parry wrote at The American Spectator in October 2019, “CrowdStrike, which was working for the DNC, announced that it had detected Russian malware on the DNC’s computer server. The next day, a self-described Romanian hacker, Guccifer 2.0, claimed he was a WikiLeaks source and had hacked the DNC’s server. He then posted online DNC computer files that contained metadata that indicated Russian involvement in the hack.”

“The FBI has never examined the DNC’s computer servers — an omission that is beyond preposterous,” Patrick Lawrence pointed out in an exhaustive 2017 article at the Nation. “It has instead relied on the reports produced by Crowdstrike, a firm that drips with conflicting interests well beyond the fact that it is in the DNC’s employ. Dmitri Alperovitch, its co-founder and chief technology officer, is on the record as vigorously anti-Russian. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which suffers the same prejudice.”

The bipartisan skepticism of the official story stems from the DNC material downloaded from the Eastern Time Zone and not the Eastern European Time Zone, the quickness of the download allegedly inconsistent with a hack from across the ocean, Russian metadata imposed on the material after the fact as though the person putting it there wished to plant evidence, and its content exposing the DNC’s choosing of sides in the Clinton–Bernie Sanders primary fight. Whether one doubts CrowdStrike’s findings, regards them as compelling, or judges their findings of Russian malware on DNC computers accurate but not inconsistent with the data breach stemming from a leak coming from within the building seems irrelevant to the journalistic ethics involved in citing the company’s then-chief technology officer as an impartial expert — without even bothering to disclose CrowdStrike’s involvement — pertaining to controversial matters involving his for-profit entity.

The genesis of the hoax — the DNC and Hillary Clinton funneling millions through the law firm Perkins Coie to the placers of political kick-me signs, Fusion GPS (a laundering presumably to avoid the transparency of campaign finance disclosure laws), which then paid Christopher Steele to issue a smear campaign dressed up as an “intelligence dossier” — shows this.

Not only did the closed loop of source material for the Clinton-paid “dossier” rely heavily on Igor Danchenko, a Beltway-based employee of the Brookings Institution then run by Strobe Talbott, a Friend of Bill dating back more than five decades, but in keeping its funding secret the Democrats pushing the hoax effectively passed it off as a sober analysis from detached foreign intelligence hands. It wasn’t that. It was phony information provided to a campaign that paid for it by U.S.-based sympathizers of that campaign.

The bureau neglected to tell the court issuing the warrant to spy on Carter Page that the information upon which the probable cause rested came from a dirt dealer paid by Donald Trump’s political opponent. The warrant refers to “research” rather than “opposition research,” and mentions a “law firm” and not Clinton’s campaign hiring the investigator, whom it strangely seems to dub a “U.S. person.” It withholds crucial information that, if included, would be liable to result in a denial of the warrant. And, of course, a Justice Department official has already pleaded guilty to altering an email pertaining to Carter Page by saying he was “not a source” for the CIA when Page was.

The FBI actually used an article from the Stableford’s employer, Yahoo News, that relied on the Steele opposition research for its claims, to corroborate the “intelligence dossier.” By such means, one could prove anything.

Along these same dishonest lines, Michael Sussmann, the Clinton campaign lawyer, claimed, according to his federal indictment, that he came to them “not doing this for any client” when he pushed for the FBI to investigate Trump’s ties to a Russian bank even though Sussmann allegedly billed the Clinton campaign for work pertaining to those supposed ties. Again, the Clinton campaign manufactured evidence (through an elaborate computer spying operation) and then a representative of it, allegedly representing himself as representing himself and not the campaign, cited that manufactured evidence in pushing the FBI for an investigation.

Making the Stableford Yahoo article even more brazen in its violation of journalistic norms, Sussmann, the roundabout subject of his story, hired CrowdStrike, the company co-founded by Alperovitch, to investigate the DNC leak.

Why didn’t Yahoo just cite Hillary Clinton as its expert to explain to readers why her campaign’s activities were on the level?

The Russia Collusion Hoax in microcosm represents modern liberals, a genus that primarily inhabits cities composed of people who vote like them, watch cable networks that shield them from information that challenges their assumptions, exclusively read publications similarly affirming, increasingly date only within their party, and even refuse commerce with businesses identified as associating with an unfashionable cause or party. They encounter conservatives often through caricature but rarely, at least in any substantive way, in real life. These parochial cosmopolitans living in a closed loop unsurprisingly approach ideas in a begging-the-question, circular-reasoning closed loop. (READ MORE: Spying Isn’t Spying If Democrats Do It)

One cannot compete in the game and referee it at once. Total-politics fanatics think that they can. That arrogance leads to profound ethical lapses and confusion of wish for reality.

While so much of the Russiagate endeavor involved willful deception, it also included subconscious self-deception. They wanted to believe the worst in their political enemies just as they now want to believe the best in their political friends. How could good people with good ideas like mine possibly invade privacy, smear innocents, use the intelligence apparatus for partisan purposes, employ foreign nationals to spy on a candidate for the presidency, and drag the country through such an at-each-other’s-throats period by peddling utter junk?

The outcome of all this primarily does not involve the fates, reputational or otherwise, of John Brennan, Andrew McCabe, Hillary Clinton, or Marc Elias. It instead separates liberals into two camps: the ones who so little minded other liberals lying to them for years that they welcome further propaganda campaigns after rationalizing this one and the ones whose epiphanies so scandalized them that they never again reflexively trust who share the same general political outlook.

Want to bet on the more populous of the two camps?

Good grief.

Interviewing some guy from Crowdstrike as a "computer security expert" for a Hee-Haw "news" article trying to debunk or offer an assist to yet another indicted Clintoon crony.

Why not just call and use zerO's buddy Joffe as the source instead? He can run interference for himself too at the same time.



Swampity, swamp swamp swamp

(02-17-2022 01:16 PM)b2b Wrote:  

(02-17-2022 12:20 PM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-17-2022 11:36 AM)bearcat65 Wrote:  

(02-17-2022 11:12 AM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(02-17-2022 08:28 AM)b2b Wrote:  Why is Tom so hell bent on defending Hillary?

I'm not defending her, neither is anyone else here. I voted for her solely because it was a vote against trump. I said years ago that I just want her to go away. And thankfully other than the right's continual obsession with her, she has.

But if you think I'm going to blindly parrot, so far, baseless allegations from this Durham debacle you're delusional.

If he actually presents any evidence that's credible and charges her with anything, I'll be right there calling for her the appropriate punishment. The facts just don't fit here. Durham made some vague allegations and presented no facts and the fox heads starting adding words like infiltrated and hacked and you all started following along like lost sheep.

The right's obsession with her? This coming from the guy who started a thread about Sarah Paliin?

One major difference is that the left hasn't spent years clamoring for Sarah Palin to be locked up. She is rightly ridiculed at some points, other times she has been piled on unfairly by the media. But if some faction has been pushing for her incarceration, I've missed it and it clearly didn't capture the hearts & minds on the left as fully as your equally unsuccessful campaign to imprison Secretary Clinton has.

Maybe that's because Palin hasn't done a bunch of crap that would land one of us peons in prison.

Dohhhhh, you think?? They just don't get it. Hopefully the indictments will start being handed down and it will help them understand.

(02-17-2022 02:26 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(02-17-2022 01:13 PM)maximus Wrote:  

(02-17-2022 11:12 AM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(02-17-2022 08:28 AM)b2b Wrote:  Why is Tom so hell bent on defending Hillary?

I'm not defending her, neither is anyone else here. I voted for her solely because it was a vote against trump. I said years ago that I just want her to go away. And thankfully other than the right's continual obsession with her, she has.

But if you think I'm going to blindly parrot, so far, baseless allegations from this Durham debacle you're delusional.

If he actually presents any evidence that's credible and charges her with anything, I'll be right there calling for her the appropriate punishment. The facts just don't fit here. Durham made some vague allegations and presented no facts and the fox heads starting adding words like infiltrated and hacked and you all started following along like lost sheep.

Baseless allegations

Bwahahahahahaha

Youre effin delusional

Word on the street is Durham is running this investigation like a well oiled legitimate professional machine.

Unlike Comey and Mueller

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

1,000+ Days and what, 2 indictments?

Yeah...sure thing.

1460 plus days and NO impeachment conviction...

(02-18-2022 03:52 PM)UofMstateU Wrote:  Strzok claimed in October that the Sussmann indictment is "more likely to cause greater damage to the FBI’s ability to recruit and maintain sources as those sources become increasingly fearful that incompleteness will be treated as a criminal false statement” and “in the worst case, it’s part of the previous administration’s effort to scare off investigators looking at anything related to Trump and counterintelligence.”

This was all part of a "chilling effect” sought by former Attorney General William Barr when he appointed Durham to the task, Strzok argued.

In other words, if you keep prosecuting our sources for lying, we at the FBI will find it harder to get sources to come to us and lie so we can open investigations against innocent people. So chilling......

No legit judge is gonna buy this line that Lawyer Sussman didn't know exactly why HE was going to see Baker with this cooked up "evidence" and by and for whom. This character Joffe had friends all over the FBI, CIA and even in the Oval office. Why didn't he just pick up the phone and set this meeting up himself?

Cause Sussman was working for the Cankle campaign and he could pose as an additional source to try to get an investigation started in to the Trump campaign and then Presidency. Largely to serve as a distraction from the entire e-mail criminal enterprise (What like with a clothe? Member that?), the Weiner laptop and the hacked DNC emails outlining the collusion from inside the Committee and the campaign and whatever else was going on.

Seems to me Sussman would be well served to take the advice of the Prosecution and start covering his ass, the Clintoon criminal syndicate will chew him up in and spit him out in a heartbeat. Or worse.


Condolences to his family.

Man, I'm tired from just from being a spectator to all the mental gymnastics being used by our friends on the other side of the aisle in this thread.

(02-18-2022 05:26 PM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote:  Man, I'm tired from just from being a spectator to all the mental gymnastics being used by our friends on the other side of the aisle in this thread.

I have always found it to be a healthy inclination to not listen to, or attempt to reason with, fools. You owe yourself peace of mind, and a peaceful countenance. Letting idiots rile us only shortens life, and our time with loved ones. If fools press upon you dispatch them quickly, as they will not listen to, or reason, with you and as the Bible says they reject correction.

The Misleading Claim That Durham’s Reference to Trump White House Records Was Misleading

Quote:The media–Democrat complex’s main gripe about special counsel John Durham’s Feb. 11 motion is the prosecutor’s supposedly misleading reference to Internet traffic records (i.e., domain name system data, or DNS) derived from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) — i.e., the president’s staff or the White House.

Durham, of course, has indicted Democratic Party lawyer Michael Sussmann for allegedly making a false statement to the FBI in September 2016. The prosecutor alleges that Sussmann and his alleged collaborator, tech executive Rodney Joffe, exploited Joffe’s access to EOP records — among other Internet-traffic records — in order to frame Trump as a clandestine agent of Russia. They are said to have suggested that Trump and the Kremlin were using servers at Alfa Bank, a significant Russian financial institution, as part of a communications back channel.

Last week, in the course of making a motion to ask the court to address defense counsel’s potential conflicts of interest (see my Corner post), Durham disclosed that Sussmann also met with the CIA in early February 2017 and provided Trump–Russia data (from Joffe) that updated what he had given the Bureau in September. Sussmann and his supporters now grouse that Durham’s motion is prejudicially misleading. The gist of this complaint is that Durham was hiding the ball: The EOP records in question cover the period from 2014 until early 2017 — the period during which the president was Obama, not Trump. How could it be, Sussmann supporters theatrically pine, that Trump could be framed by using data from another president’s time in office? How could Trump supporters seriously contend that the Clinton campaign was “spying on the Trump White House” when the Internet-traffic records in question reflect activities of the Obama White House?

The Sussmann-camp claim is itself misleading.

To begin with, as noted above, the objective of Durham’s motion was not to ignite a media frenzy over political spying. It was to lay out, as Durham was obliged to do, the evidence that might be relevant to conflicts of interest under which Sussmann’s lawyers are potentially laboring.

That aside, Durham’s motion expressly states that the relevant EOP records are from 2014 to 2017, when Obama was president. There is no ball-hiding on that. Durham further asserts, moreover, that Sussmann based his framing of Trump as a Russian spy on data Joffe had mined from EOP Internet traffic. There is no reason to doubt that this is true — indeed, in their pushback, Sussmann apologists are not claiming that EOP traffic mined by Joffe formed no part of Sussmann’s presentation to the CIA; they are claiming that the DNS data from EOP is from the Obama years (and they want you to believe it must all be from the Obama years, even though a small portion of it is almost certainly from Trump’s first weeks in office). Again, Durham was entirely transparent about that.

Answers on Ukraine Evacuation

POLITICS & POLICY
The Misleading Claim That Durham’s Reference to Trump White House Records Was Misleading
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
February 19, 2022 9:06 AM
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on Flipboard
Email this article
Print this article

Left: U.S. Attorney John Durham. Right: Hillary Clinton at a rally in Cleveland, Ohio, during her 2016 presidential campaign. (United States Attorney's Office, District of Connecticut/Wikimedia; Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters)

The media–Democrat complex’s main gripe about special counsel John Durham’s Feb. 11 motion is the prosecutor’s supposedly misleading reference to Internet traffic records (i.e., domain name system data, or DNS) derived from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) — i.e., the president’s staff or the White House.

Durham, of course, has indicted Democratic Party lawyer Michael Sussmann for allegedly making a false statement to the FBI in September 2016. The prosecutor alleges that Sussmann and his alleged collaborator, tech executive Rodney Joffe, exploited Joffe’s access to EOP records — among other Internet-traffic records — in order to frame Trump as a clandestine agent of Russia. They are said to have suggested that Trump and the Kremlin were using servers at Alfa Bank, a significant Russian financial institution, as part of a communications back channel.

Last week, in the course of making a motion to ask the court to address defense counsel’s potential conflicts of interest (see my Corner post), Durham disclosed that Sussmann also met with the CIA in early February 2017 and provided Trump–Russia data (from Joffe) that updated what he had given the Bureau in September. Sussmann and his supporters now grouse that Durham’s motion is prejudicially misleading. The gist of this complaint is that Durham was hiding the ball: The EOP records in question cover the period from 2014 until early 2017 — the period during which the president was Obama, not Trump. How could it be, Sussmann supporters theatrically pine, that Trump could be framed by using data from another president’s time in office? How could Trump supporters seriously contend that the Clinton campaign was “spying on the Trump White House” when the Internet-traffic records in question reflect activities of the Obama White House?

The Sussmann-camp claim is itself misleading.

MORE IN JOHN DURHAM
Durham’s Jaw-Dropping Revelation
Why Durham Filed the Motion That Generated a Feeding Frenzy
Hillary Clinton Responds to Durham Investigation, Laments ‘Conspiracy Theories’
To begin with, as noted above, the objective of Durham’s motion was not to ignite a media frenzy over political spying. It was to lay out, as Durham was obliged to do, the evidence that might be relevant to conflicts of interest under which Sussmann’s lawyers are potentially laboring.

That aside, Durham’s motion expressly states that the relevant EOP records are from 2014 to 2017, when Obama was president. There is no ball-hiding on that. Durham further asserts, moreover, that Sussmann based his framing of Trump as a Russian spy on data Joffe had mined from EOP Internet traffic. There is no reason to doubt that this is true — indeed, in their pushback, Sussmann apologists are not claiming that EOP traffic mined by Joffe formed no part of Sussmann’s presentation to the CIA; they are claiming that the DNS data from EOP is from the Obama years (and they want you to believe it must all be from the Obama years, even though a small portion of it is almost certainly from Trump’s first weeks in office). Again, Durham was entirely transparent about that.

THE MORNING JOLT
Get Jim Geraghty’s tour of the political news of the day.


Email Address
Let’s look at exactly what Durham’s motion (at p. 3) said in this regard (my italics):

5. The Government’s evidence at trial will also establish that among the Internet data Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited was domain name system (“DNS”) Internet traffic pertaining to (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 (“EOP”). (Tech Executive-1’s employer, Internet Company-1, had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP as 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.)

The Indictment further details that on February 9, 2017, the defendant provided an updated set of allegations — including the Russian Bank-1 data and additional allegations relating to Trump — to a second agency of the U.S. government (“Agency-2”). [ACM: Agency-2 appears to be the CIA.] The Government’s evidence at trial will establish that these additional allegations relied, in part, on the purported DNS traffic that Tech Executive-1 and others had assembled pertaining to Trump Tower, Donald Trump’s New York City apartment building, the EOP, and the aforementioned healthcare provider. In his meeting with Agency-2, the defendant 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 (“Russian Phone Provider-1”). The defendant further claimed that these lookups demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations. The Special Counsel’s Office has identified no support for these allegations. Indeed, more complete DNS data that the Special Counsel’s Office obtained from a company that assisted Tech Executive-1 in assembling these allegations reflects that such DNS lookups were far from rare in the United States. For example, the more complete data that Tech Executive-1 and his associates gathered — but did not provide to Agency-2 — reflected that between approximately 2014 and 2017, there were a total of more than 3 million lookups of Russian Phone-Provider-1 IP addresses that originated with U.S.-based IP addresses. Fewer than 1,000 of these lookups originated with IP addresses affiliated with Trump Tower. In addition, the more complete data assembled by Tech Executive-1 and his associates reflected that DNS lookups involving the EOP and Russian Phone Provider-1 began at least as early 2014 (i.e., during the Obama administration and years before Trump took office) — another fact which the allegations omitted.

Now, a couple of things to notice here. First, Sussmann’s meeting with the CIA is said to have occurred on February 9, 2017. By that date, Trump had been president for nearly three weeks. Furthermore, Durham says that the information Sussmann brought the CIA was “updated.” Obviously, that means it included new data since Sussmann’s September 19, 2016, meeting with FBI general counsel James Baker (the meeting at which Sussmann made the alleged false statement). The data that Sussmann showed the CIA has not been made public, but we can safely assume that if Joffe still had access to EOP Internet traffic (as it appears he did), the data included traffic from Trump’s early presidency — i.e., drawn from January 20 up to February 9, 2017 (or shortly before February 9).

In addition, Durham relates that Sussmann told the CIA that “Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.” That is clearly a reference to records generated during Trump’s presidency — Trump was not in the vicinity of the White House during Obama’s presidency, and Durham’s reference to the White House “and other locations” clearly relates to the other Trump locations discussed in the motion (Trump Tower in Manhattan, Trump’s Central Park West apartment, and a health-care provider that news coverage indicates is Spectrum Health). That is, this reference to the White House is to the Trump White House, not the Obama White House.

Durham further relates that Sussmann connected his claims about the use of Russian-made wireless phones at the Trump White House and other Trump locations to “purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by these entities of Internet protocol (“IP”) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile-phone provider (“Russian Phone Provider-1”). That is, DNS data connected these Trump “entities” — including the Trump White House — to the Russian mobile-phone provider.

The Russian phones are known as YotaPhones. I know that because I read the New York Times, particularly reporting by Charlie Savage, the Times’ best reporter on things cyber. That is why I’m surprised by Savage’s intimation that the “data” to which Durham referred — which Savage suggests means all of the DNS logs addressed in the prosecutor’s motion — “came from Barack Obama’s presidency.” The Times report quotes a pair of lawyers who represent a data scientist “who helped develop the Yota analysis.” They maintain that the data being analyzed was “nonprivate DNS data from before Trump took office.” But a caveat: The lawyers take pains to qualify that assertion: “To our knowledge” the data are pre-Trump — but we don’t know how complete their knowledge is, or why they felt the need to add that qualification.

In any event, the suggestion that none of the data relate to Trump’s presidency is not consistent with what Durham’s motion states. It is also inconsistent with the implications of the Times’ own prior reporting. Here is what Savage and his colleague Adam Goldman explained in a news article published on September 30, 2021 (i.e., before there was any Durham motion to push back against):

[T]he Alfa Bank suspicions were only half of what the researchers sought to bring to the government’s attention, according to several people familiar with the matter. Their other set of concerns centered on data suggesting that a YotaPhone — a Russian-made smartphone rarely seen in the United States — had been used from networks serving the White House, Trump Tower and Spectrum Health, a Michigan hospital company whose server had also interacted with the Trump server.

Mr. Sussmann relayed their YotaPhone findings to counterintelligence officials at the C.I.A. in February 2017, the people said. It is not clear whether the government ever investigated them.

Now, the Times does not say flat out in this passage that the data suggesting YotaPhone usage “from networks serving the White House” were from the Trump White House, but that certainly is the implication. There is no reason to think Sussmann was trying to warn the CIA that Obama might be using a YotaPhone. In his more recent reporting, Savage dismissively says that it is problematic for conservative news outlets suddenly to highlight this information because it is “old news,” which he and Goldman previously reported. I don’t see how the vintage of the reporting makes any difference when the question now being raised is whether some of the relevant data traces to Trump’s administration rather than Obama’s.

A final point. Durham was completely clear that the vast majority of the EOP data was from the Obama era. And that’s not just because he saw a need to elucidate the obvious. It is because this fact helps Durham’s case. As Durham’s motion stressed, the complete data going back to 2014 — i.e., the data that Sussmann allegedly did not include in his presentation to the CIA — shows that the Trump traffic that Sussmann couched as suspicious was not suspicious at all. It’s worth repeating what Durham wrote on this score (my italics):

For example, the more complete data that Tech Executive-1 and his associates gathered — but did not provide to Agency-2 — reflected that between approximately 2014 and 2017, there were a total of more than 3 million lookups of Russian Phone-Provider-1 IP addresses that originated with U.S.-based IP addresses. Fewer than 1,000 of these lookups originated with IP addresses affiliated with Trump Tower. In addition, the more complete data assembled by Tech Executive-1 and his associates reflected that DNS lookups involving the EOP and Russian Phone Provider-1 began at least as early 2014 (i.e., during the Obama administration and years before Trump took office) — another fact which the allegations omitted.

To summarize, Durham was not trying to spark a “spying on the Trump White House” controversy. There is abundant basis to believe a small amount of the EOP data at issue — relating to YotaPhone usage in the vicinity of the White House — is from the early days of the Trump administration. And far from hiding the fact that the vast majority of relevant EOP data was from the Obama years, Durham expressly emphasized this fact because it helps him: It tends to show that Sussmann and his collaborators were deceptively cherry-picking data to create the illusion of a corrupt Trump–Russia connection, when the broader context they withheld would have revealed their data to be unremarkable.

Durham is not the one who’s spinning here.

Why does all this come so late? Durham (or someone similar) should have been engaged 2-3 years earlier in order to find all this out in a timely (pre-election 2020, and even better pre-election 2018) manner. With control of the white house and both houses of congress, democrats can pretty much stonewall this until they lose control of at least one of them.

Republicans do not seem to grasp the basic concept that at the national level things are decided by who has control instead of by who is right. You can't do anything without winning elections. And they just don't seem to grasp the urgency of winning elections.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, but my enemies need better enemies.

(02-18-2022 06:01 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 05:26 PM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote:  Man, I'm tired from just from being a spectator to all the mental gymnastics being used by our friends on the other side of the aisle in this thread.

I have always found it to be a healthy inclination to not listen to, or attempt to reason with, fools. You owe yourself peace of mind, and a peaceful countenance. Letting idiots rile us only shortens life, and our time with loved ones. If fools press upon you dispatch them quickly, as they will not listen to, or reason, with you and as the Bible says they reject correction.

Yeah

Yall leave that to me. Yall do the contemplative stuff

(02-18-2022 02:48 PM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 01:14 PM)maximus Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 11:58 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 11:03 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  

(02-18-2022 10:53 AM)Gamenole Wrote:  Here you go, here's a couple stories about it that aren't behind paywall -

https://news.yahoo.com/john-durham-dista...12065.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...uxbndlbing

Thanks, because what Durham said is also the exact opposite of what these left wing rags said he said. Here's Furhams quote:

"If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government's Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government's inclusion of this information," Durham's team wrote in a court filing Thursday.

What Durham said is that its not his fault if the media, whether right or left, cant read his indictment. If he's saying some right wing media is overstating his indictment, he's also saying the left wing media is understating his indictment.

This is another case where its better to read what Durham said instead of some left wing rag trying to tell us what he said.

I think we agree on what he is saying, which is what a Special Counsel should say - EVERYONE back off, calm down and let me finish my work. But if the left went wild with rampant speculation and said that he hadn't found anything and his investigation should be shut down, I missed that. Given that it was the right who has gleefully predicted that his filing heralds their dreamed of reckoning for the ever elusive Mrs. Clinton, I think the interpretation that he is distancing himself from that is a fair one. Certainly, if there is speculation on the left that his investigation is a witch hunt or that Hillary has been exonerated, that too is premature and I would agree he also seeks to distance himself from that.

"But if the left went wild with rampant speculation and said that he hadn't found anything and his investigation should be shut down, I missed that"


You can gind that all over the place.... hell, Hillary Clinton literally did that yesterday



Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

No she didn't, not that I have seen. Certainly not in this Fox story about her remarks yesterday -

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hillary...ontroversy

She attacks Trump and the rightwing media for spreading disinformation regarding the Special Counsel's investigation, not the investigation itself. There's a tendency here to want to believe that the Durham filing implicates Secretary Clinton in a way that it simply doesn't. That is what she pushed back against, not what the filing does say or the investigation itself.

Perhaps that day will come and if it does I don't doubt she'll proclaim her innocence, then it will be up to the courts to decide. But the filing is the filing, and the fact remains that it simply doesn't state the conclusions that many of you want to draw from it.

Here are the facts. People close to her were spying on both candidate Trump and President Trump. It was her employees.

So to believe she knew nothing about it is a real stretch, especially given her misconduct related to her e-mail server.