Milosia2 Loc: Cleveland Ohio

The GOP's Durham 'bombshell' is a bust
Jon Skolnik, Salon
February 15, 2022

The GOP's Durham 'bombshell' is a bust
Official portrait.

Right-wing media is having a tizzy about the apparent lack of mainstream coverage around an alleged – and highly dubious – scandal that former president Donald Trump was being spied on by the Hillary Clinton campaign back in 2016.


The conservative furor centers on a court filing by John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel probing Russia's 2016 election interference.

On Friday, Durham filed a pretrial motion alleging that Michael A. Sussmann, a cybersecurity prosecutor, lied about his connections to the Clinton campaign in a September 2016 meeting with the FBI in which Sussmann provided testimony about Trump's alleged ties with Russia. These alleged ties, according to The Washington Post, involved "possible evidence of a secret communications channel between computer servers associated with the Trump Organization and with Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked financial institution."

The motion also claims that in February 2017, Sussman told the FBI that one of his own clients, technology executive Rodney Joffe – whose company apparently maintained internet-related servers for the White House at one point – "exploited" his access to these servers to dig up dirt on Trump.

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Even though Durham never directly said in his motion that Clinton coordinated a campaign to "spy" on Trump through Joffe, The New York Times noted, conservatives have been quick to draw such conclusions, accusing liberal media of being biased for not covering the alleged scandal.

"The press refuses to even mention the major crime that took place," Mr. Trump said in a statement on Monday. "This in itself is a scandal, the fact that a story so big, so powerful and so important for the future of our nation is getting zero coverage from LameStream, is being talked about all over the world."

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"We now know that the Clinton campaign paid a tech firm to infiltrate the servers at Trump Tower and then later infiltrate the servers at the Trump White House, in other words, illegally spying on a presidential candidate," Fox News Sean Hannity said on Monday. "The goal [was to] fabricate evidence that President Trump was a Russian asset.

"This is far worse than Watergate," he added.


Fox News on Tuesday also noted the amount of media coverage the alleged scandal had thus far received by ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, and MSNBC. According to Fox News Research, all of these channels have respectively dedicated "0 minutes."

While there may be reason to investigate Sussmann, there is still little basis to believe that Joffe's work was part of a grand scheme to smear Trump.

As the Times' Charlie Savage noted, the White House data allegedly "mined" from the White House was targeted before Trump took office.


Additionally, the incitement alleges that Joffe's company "had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP [Executive Office of the President] as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP." So if Joffe's firm did record the web addresses of White House users, the Post's Glenn Kessler noted, then that may have simply been part of a pre-arranged contract rather than a politically-motivated breach of conduct.

Big Bass

You hope.

woodguru

Garland should have made Durham wrap it up, he had plenty of time, but he hasn't wanted to look political.

microphor Loc: Home is TN

Really, don't remember you saying that during the Russia Collusio Delusion! 🤔

Big Bass

Garland is not to be trusted.

PeterS

Snip>>>This was not tricky to rebut. What Durham submitted to the court was vague in its specifics, alleging that an attorney working for a law firm retained by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Michael Sussman, had been involved with research trying to link Trump to Russia. That research led, among other things, to a meeting with a government agency (understood to be the CIA) in February 2017 and included data collected from White House networks. Those individual pieces were strung together into a claim that Clinton’s campaign spied on Trump’s White House. It’s right there in the document!"

But it wasn’t, as a new filing from Durham makes clear both explicitly and implicitly.

It is not overstating things to point out that the narrative above consumed right-wing media and networks this week. Night after night, Fox News hosted guests who somberly discussed this alleged spying on the sitting president. The idea permeated the network’s non-opinion programming, as well (recognizing the blurriness of that line). As the network cut away from a Hillary Clinton speech it was airing live on Thursday, the Fox anchor declared that she was speaking even as Durham “continues the investigation into whether or not her campaign was involved in an effort to listen in to President Trump or listen in to candidate Trump.

Just a shrugging and wildly inaccurate assertion about the campaign maybe “listening in” on the sitting president, offered as an aside. A connect-the-dots puzzle showing four points from which Fox News managed to sketch out a dragon.

And then along comes Durham to ruin the fun.”

I do love how you con's can take nothing and become utterly obsessed by it. Gee, they're saying exactly what we want to hear so it HAS to be true...doesn't it???

You people honestly are so pethic...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/18/john-durham-dumps-small-bucket-water-forest-fire-he-sparked/

Antimarxist21

I guess when u read something as empty as Salon, which is so far left they're off the map u have no room left for intelligence!

RascalRiley Loc: Somewhere south of Detroit

Fact are so irritating for those in the know.😂

Milosia2 Loc: Cleveland Ohio

That so old. If you feel only the need to attack the news agency then Maybe you’re
Incapable of understanding what is the matter at hand.
Salon has all the news that faux Nouse completely over looks.
It’s isn’t a big secret. It’s everywhere else but on faux Nouse.
Be brave , expand your horizons, take a walk with the truth for a while.
Free Range news can be very exciting.

RascalRiley Loc: Somewhere south of Detroit

Do you mean go outside the bubble? But that is so scary.

Milosia2 Loc: Cleveland Ohio

Exactly.
Take a walk on the Wild Side !

Wild and crazy free range news.
Uncanned, un monkeyed around with .
Unfiltered by powers not seen ,

The Truth.
The Raw Eviscerating Independent Truth.

RascalRiley Loc: Somewhere south of Detroit

I don’t know it Trump would approve such reckless knowledge gathering.

It might encourage thinking.

Milosia2 Loc: Cleveland Ohio

Whattabouts don’t count.

Milosia2 Loc: Cleveland Ohio

Oh forsooth !!!!

MidnightRider

He couldn't.