Michael Sussmann, the Democratic-aligned attorney, was indicted in September 2021, days before the five-year statute of limitations would have expired.
Durham, however, appears to have objected to that. Per a filing from Lichtblau, Durham not only wants to retain the right to question the former reporter about other interactions apart from those with Sussmann, the investigation has already obtained some ācommunicationsā involving Lichtblau and others.
Lichtblau and the NYTimes are known to be hiding elements of a Hunter Biden plot to fire a hurricane gun at Mar-a-Lago.
Yeah, theyāre not going to get enough smoke from this to cover the Jan 6 spectacle. Dāoh.
This is going to be a really embarrassing and spectacular failure of a criminal prosecution. Durhamās brain has been melted by Fox News, and his theory of the case has more holes than the New York City sewer system.
ETA: Let me expound upon that.
Durham has charged Sussman with lying to the FBI. The alleged lie is that Sussman supposedly said on September 19 that he was not acting on behalf of a client when he brought a hot tip to the FBIās general counsel that a Trump Tower server was in contact with a Russian bank. Durham alleges that Sussman was actually secretly acting on behalf of the Hillary campaign, and that this alleged lie is important because if the FBI had known that it was Hillary behind the hot tip about Trump being in contact with the Russians, they just would have ignored it. Or something. In any event, the hot tip didnāt check out, but therefore dodgy dossier and Trump definitely didnāt collude with Russia, no sirree.
Thatās the case. Itās Underpants Gnomes material, and Iāll be deeply disappointed if Sussmanās attorneys donāt explicitly use the term āUnderpants Gnomesā before their client is acquitted.
But wait, thereās more!
The guy Sussman allegedly lied to was the FBIās general counsel, James Baker (no, not the Bush family consigliere). Baker supposedly told a couple of other FBI guys tasked with following up on the hot server-on-server action tip that Sussman wasnāt reporting it on behalf of any client, and their notes record that statement. But their notes are hearsay and arenāt ever going to see the light of day in this trial. But then Baker goes in front of a congressional committee and testifies under oath that Sussman said he was reporting on behalf of a client. But now, 5+ years later, Durham assures us all that Bakerās memory has been refreshed, and heās going to testify that Sussman definitely, totally, unambiguously stated that nope, he wasnāt reporting on the Trump server on behalf of any client.
Also, the FBI has abundant documents reflecting that it knew Sussman was working for Hillary, the DNC, and basically every Democrat you would otherwise care to name.
It gets stupider from there. For instance, thereās an email from Sussman to Baker on September 18 where he plainly says heās not wanting to meet on behalf of a client, but that isnāt charged as a lie because Durham is so goddamned incompetent that he didnāt know about it and instead got Sussman indicted on the last day of limitations for the September 19 meeting.
By the way, this whole thing is supposed to show that Fat Donnie Two Scoops was unfairly targeted for the Russia investigation by those rascally Dems, when the actual investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trumpās complicity with it began months earlier. Crossfire Hurricane, bitches.
ETA2: Next week is going to establish exactly why Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco allowed Durhamās investigation and prosecution to continue: Because it was always going to faceplant, and a Durham faceplant is far more definitive than handing Republicans a ācoverup.ā
A complete an utter waste of time and taxpayer money. Even if he succeeds in getting a conviction, Durham will have no more luck proving his conspiracy theory than to establish the the Sun rises in the West. Heās just another hack trying to get in the good graces of the DFP.
A sh_tshow wrapped in a clusterf_ck.
WhY eVen boTher? TrUmp wouLd just kiLL it wiTh a nuclear BoMb.
Feels like this whole thing ended up being a way for Durham to funnel shit to Fox News and OAN on the government dime. If this were a Jimmy Stewart movie (Jimmy playing the judge) Durham would be excruciatingly humiliated in the courtroom, before the TV cameras, and disappear utterly from public life thenceforth forever. Life does imitate art sometimes.
Happily, Durham has shot his wad and at the end of his career. he has also trashed his reputation.
Itās a feedback loop.
Thank you so much for sharing your understanding of legal matters over the years.
This says it all:
āIt seems to me less like a logical first step in an up-the-chain prosecution, and more like an attempt by a prosecutor to justify a tremendous amount of time and expense in an investigation,ā he said.
Just waiting for Durham to go on Fox and endlessly bullshit about how he was sabotaged by Garland.
This.
ā¦analysis of internet data which he said showed a Trump Organization server was secretly communicating with Alfa Bank, a Russian-owned financial institution. Those claims have mostly been discredited.
Mostly? Perhaps. But not completely:
Fear has now silenced several of the computer scientists who first analyzed the data.
āTea Leavesā refused to be interviewed by CNN and is now āhiding under a rock,ā according to an intermediary contact.
Paul Vixie, who helped design the very DNS system the internet uses today, was quoted in the Slate story saying that Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization āwere communicating in a secretive fashion.ā Vixie declined to go on the record with CNN.
Even the skeptics have unanswered questions.
Robert Graham is a cybersecurity expert who wrote a widely circulated blog post in November that criticized computer scientists for premature conclusions connecting the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.
But heās still wondering why Alfa Bank and Spectrum Health alone dominated links to this Trump server.
āItās indicative of communication between Trump, the health organization and the bank outside these servers,ā he told CNN. āThere is some sort of connection I canāt explain, and only they are doing it. It could be completely innocent.ā
So a further question:
Letās say the judge, reasonably, throws this whole thing out or finds that thereās no there there.
Is it possible to appeal this decision and where does the appeal path go?
Durham clearly thinks he has an on-air future at Fox News, but I think heās rather more likely to get memory-holed. If he ever does get on air, it will more likely be to complain that the trial judge wouldnāt let him present the jury with the full scope of his fabulist conspiracy theory about how the Russia investigation was ginned up by the Democrats (because none of that garbage bears any relevance to whether Sussmann lied on September 19).
He was sabotaged by Garland. Garlandās refusal to fire him is denying him desperately needed publicity.
Heās not going to do that. Heās clearly stated that heās going to let this thing go to the jury, and heāll deal with the āNo there thereā problem after trial, if the jury makes it necessary.
Many judges have a strong preference for letting the jury definitively reject a shitty case than to do it themselves in advance, because itās much harder to appeal a jury verdict than it is to appeal a judgeās legal decision. Also, in criminal trials, the prosecution canāt appeal a not guilty verdict at all thanks to the Double Jeopardy clause.
Great post, but Iām still confused by this part - youāre saying he missed the statute of limitations for the email by one day?
For a jury trial, if this is allowed to be presented to the jury in spite of not being charged, couldnāt it still influence them? I mean, the whole thingās bogus, but thereās always a strong presumption that the government wouldnāt have gone through all this time and expense to prosecute unless there was some āthereā there.