When one junior assistant to John Durham hit the send button on Monday evening’s motion filing, they had one of those not real good for your career moments. In the text, the special prosecutor made it clear that Exhibit A was supposed to remain sealed but the totally unredacted document was attached by mistake. That’s a really big “oops.” It was quickly corrected but not before reporters got an eyeful.
Durham tips his hand
It was one of those things that happen in the legal industry a lot more often than they should. Normally, transmitting an unsealed document through the court system would go totally unnoticed before the mistake was corrected. This isn’t a typical case. Reporters with connections have been watching the Durham docket log for changes, to read the filings even before the opposing lawyers do.
The effect, this time, is the same as a poker player accidentally tipping his hand so the other players can see it. The word “fold” is rumored to be circling the table but the stakes are too high for Hillary to back out now.
On Monday, April 25, the special prosecutor’s office “appeared to accidentally release numerous emails from the political consulting firm Fusion GPS in relation to the debunked Trump-Russia collusion hoax.”
Durham, it’s been reported, requested permission to file Exhibit A “under seal,” and suggested that “Exhibit A remain SEALED until further order of this Court, in order to protect privacy of those individuals whose names appear in the Exhibit.”
When the error was detected Tuesday morning, the document was instantly scrubbed and now the emails are properly sealed.
What the public knows about it is that the Durham request “involved 38 records that are to be reviewed by the judge, all dealing with the investigation’s case against Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann.” The Clinton fixer is basically accused of cooking up the whole Trump-Russia collusion fantasy.
Cue Christopher Steele
When Sussmann sat down and lied to the FBI, Durham knows, he told them all about the “secret communications between the Trump Organization and the Russian Alfa Bank,” which he helped engineer. Sussmann had two clients he should have told them about but didn’t. Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Rodney Joffe.
What he did tell the bureau that fateful day became the genesis of the now thoroughly debunked “dirty dossier” whipped up by Christopher Steele. Eventually Grand Inquisitor Robert Mueller even had to admit that his investigation “ultimately exonerated Trump,” concluding that “there was no evidence of collusion with the Russian government.”
Everyone knows that Steele was hired by Fusion GPS, “which had already been hired by Clinton-aligned law firm Perkins Coie and top Clinton lawyer Marc Elias.”
Durham pointed out on Monday that “if the purpose of Fusion GPS’s retention was — as Mr. Elias implies — to determine the bounds of what could (and could not) be said publicly without committing libel or defamation, then the record would reflect genuine efforts to remain within those bounds.” It doesn’t.
According to John Durham, “the facts and documents available to the Government tell a different story.” The truth is that these “documents produced by Fusion GPS to date reflect hundreds of emails in which Fusion GPS employees shared raw, unverified, and uncorroborated information — including their own draft research and work product — with reporters.”
It’s clear that the whole idea was “to trigger negative news stories about one of the Presidential candidates.” It wasn’t Hillary. The uncovered filing confirmed “this media-oriented campaign, with correspondence mostly coming from Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, along with Fusion’s Jake Berkowitz, and being sent to numerous reporters throughout 2016 to continuously push the Russian collusion narrative.“
