Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign hired a technology firm to “infiltrate” Trump Tower and White House servers in an effort to tie President Donald Trump to pro-Russian operatives, according to a filing from Special Counsel John Durham.
Durham filed a motion on Friday pertaining to potential conflicts of interest surrounding Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman, Fox News reported. According to the indictment, Sussman told the FBI he was not working for “any client” when he held a meeting to present findings of a “covert communications channel” between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank – a Moscow-based bank with ties to the Russian government. Though Sussman told then-FBI General Counsel James Baker he was working independently, Durham’s filing indicates otherwise.
The filing shows Sussman’s “billing records reflect” multiple charges to the Clinton campaign for work on the speculative tie between President Trump and Russia. Durham alleges that Sussman met with a tech executive and a lawyer working for the Clinton campaign to discuss ways that Trump’s supposed ties to Russia could be investigated. One of those ways, according to Durham, included hacking into Trump’s servers – both at the White House and Trump Tower.
“. . . Tech Executive-1 exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data. Tech Executive-1 also enlisted the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract … Tech Executive-1 tasked these researchers to mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia.”
Special Counsel John Durham’s filing
President Trump fired back on Saturday stating, “This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution.” Trump’s statement also contends that Durham’s report provides “indisputable evidence” that his campaign was spied on by the Clinton campaign.
Following the Friday filing, Trump adviser Dan Scavino tweeted a clip of a “60 minutes” interview from October 2020 where President Trump told host Leslie Stahl that Hillary Clinton spied on his campaign. Stahl staunchly denied his claim, however Trump insisted that there is evidence “everywhere.”
Clinton’s campaign lawyer has pleaded not guilty to making a false statement. And he is set to go on trial in late spring.
