WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - A cybersecurity attorney known for his work advising Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign was indicted on Thursday for lying to the FBI, as part of U.S. Special Counsel John Durham's probe into the origins of the FBI investigation of ties between Russia and former President Donald Trump's campaign. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-grand-jury-indicts-lawyer-who-represented-clinton-campaign-2021-09-16/
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9-23-2021 White House National Security Adviser
As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Last week Michael A. Sussmann, a partner in Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his clients and their motives behind planting the rumor, at the highest levels of the FBI, of a secret Trump-Russia server. After a months-long investigation the FBI found no merit to the rumor….
To mine the data the Clinton campaign enlisted a team of Beltway computer contractors as well as university researchers with security clearance who often collaborate with the FBI and the intelligence community. They worked from a five-page campaign document called the “Trump Associates List.”…The indictment states that Sussmann as well as the cyber experts recruited for the operation “coordinated with representatives and agents of the Clinton campaign with regard to the data and written materials that Sussmann gave to the FBI and the media.”’ One of those campaign agents was Sullivan, according to emails Durham obtained. On Sept. 15, 2016--just four days before Sussmann handed off the materials to the FBI--Marc Elias, his law partner and fellow Democratic Party operative, “exchanged emails with the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser concerning the Russian bank allegations” (rumor that Trump used as backchannel to Kremlin) as well as with other top campaign officials, the indictment states.
Sources say Jake Sullivan was briefed on the development of the opposition-research materials tying Trump to Alfa Bank and was aware of the participants in the project. These included the Washington opposition-research group Fusion GPS, which worked for the Clinton campaign as a paid agent and helped gather dirt on Alfa Bank and draft the materials Elias discussed with Sullivan, the materials Sussmann would later submit to the FBI. Fusion researchers were in regular contact with both Sussmann and Elias about the project in the summer and fall of 2016. Sullivan also personally met with Elias, who briefed him on Fusion’s opposition research, according to the sources.
Sullivan maintained in congressional testimony in December 2017 that he didn’t know of Fusion’s involvement in the Alfa Bank opposition research. In the same closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, he also denied knowing anything about Fusion in 2016 or who was conducting the opposition research for the campaign. Sullivan also testified he didn’t know that Perkins Coie, the law firm where Elias and Sussmann were partners, was working for the Clinton campaign until October 2017, when it was reported in the media as part of stories revealing the campaign’s contract with Fusion, which also produced the so-called Steele dossier. Sullivan maintained he didn’t even know that the politically prominent Elias worked for Perkins Coie, a well-known Democratic law firm. Major media stories from 2016 routinely identified Elias as “general counsel for the Clinton campaign” and a “partner at Perkins Coie.”…
It turns out that the supposed “secret server" was housed in the small Pennsylvania town of Lititz, and not Trump Tower in New York City, and it was operated by a marketing firm based in Florida called Cendyn that routinely blasts out emails promoting multiple hotel chains. Simply put, the third-party server sent spam to Alfa Bank employees who used Trump hotels. The bank had maintained a New York office since 2001. Nonetheless Jones and Sullivan kept promoting the canard as true.
With help from Sullivan and Podesta in 2017, Jones launched a nonprofit group called The Democracy Integrity Project, which raised some $7 million mainly from Silicon Valley tech executives. TDIP hired computer researchers, as well as Fusion opposition researchers and Christopher Steele, the British author of the now-discredited Steele dossier, to “prove” the rumors in the dossier….
Remarkably the CIA did not ask for the source of Sussmann’s walk-in tip, including where he got several data files he gave the agency. The FBI exhibited a similar lack of curiosity when Sussmann told it about the false Trump/Alfa Bank connection.
Attempts to reach Sussmann to get his side to the additional CIA allegations leveled by Durham were unsuccessful.
In late July 2016 during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia the CIA picked up Russian chatter about a Clinton foreign policy adviser who was trying to develop allegations to “vilify" Trump. The intercepts said Clinton herself had approved a “plan" to “stir up a scandal” against Trump by tying him to Putin. According to hand-written notes, then-CIA chief John Brennan warned President Obama that Moscow had intercepted information about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump.” That summer Brennan had personally briefed Democrats, including then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, on the Alfa Bank-Trump server rumors, according to congressional reports. https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/09/23/biden_security_adviser_sullivan_tied_to_16_clinton_plan_to_co-opt_cia_and_fbi_to_tar_trump_795498.html
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