www.pbs.org /newshour/show/new-details-on-2016-russia-probe-prompt-flawed-allegations-of-espionage

New details on 2016 Russia probe prompt flawed allegations of espionage

By — 4-4 minutes 2/16/2022

William Brangham:

This all stems from a court filing from special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by former Attorney General William Barr to investigate any potential wrongdoing during the 2016 Russia probe.

The filing relates to a low-level case that Durham has brought against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer who'd represented the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign. Durham alleges Sussmann lied to the FBI about who his client was during a meeting where Sussmann shared information about possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

But in a few extra sentences, Durham's filing mentions a second instance where Sussmann tried to raise concerns of a Trump-Russia connection, this time apparently to the CIA. That information came from one of Sussmann's clients, technology executive Rodney Joffe.

Durham's filing noted that Joffe's company, Neustar, had an arrangement to provide security-related work on computer servers, including the White House's. But, according to the filing, Joffe used that access to mine Internet data to establish an inference and narrative tying then-candidate Trump to Russia.

Joffe has not been charged with any crime.

All of this has now been spun by conservative media and former President Trump himself to say Sussmann and Joffe were Clinton operatives who were paid to illegally hack into and spy on the Trump campaign and Trump White House.

Former President Trump wrote: "In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death."

In a column this week, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage of The New York Times wrote that the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news, and its conclusions "based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation."

Charlie Savage joins me now.

I wonder if you could help us understand just initially how we got to this point, how Durham's investigation has morphed into this sort of explosive story in conservative media.

Charlie Savage, The New York Times:

So, back in the Trump administration, right after Robert Mueller, the Russian special counsel, finished his report, Donald Trump shifted — tried to shift the narrative to or escalated his attempt to shift the narrative to the idea that he was actually a victim of a deep state conspiracy.

And his attorney general, Bill Barr, as you mentioned, appointed John Durham, then a U.S. attorney, to be what became another special counsel, a special counsel to investigate the investigation.

And the whole idea and expectation then was he was going to prove Trump's narrative that there were high-level officials who — in the FBI and the CIA who had essentially framed him for collusion.

But we're almost three years in now, and he has yet to bring any charges against the high-level officials. He has developed two cases against outsiders, and one of them is this Sussmann case. Both of these are merely false statement cases. They're not charging a conspiracy.

But Mr. Durham has used court filings and indictments and so forth, related to these cases to put out large amounts of information that are not directly related to the charges. And this information is imbued with insinuations that there is some kind of vast anti-Trump conspiracy.

He just hasn't been able to prove it yet or charge it. It all goes back to Hillary Clinton, is the implication.