by Washington Examiner
A Big Tech executive conspired with a top research university and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to spy on presidential candidate Donald Trump.
That, all on its own, is bad enough. But it is much worse that the spying continued into Trump’s term in office. It included the exploitation of data from the Executive Office of the President. That this could occur, and that it should go unpunished so long, should frighten everyone.
Last September, special counsel John Durham indicted Democratic National Committee and Clinton Foundation lawyer Michael Sussmann on charges of lying to the FBI. Durham’s indictment revealed a broad conspiracy whereby a “Technology Executive 1” (reported to be Neustar Senior Vice President Rodney Joffe) used his access to nonpublic internet information to collect domain name system data on candidate Trump.
Joffe then enlisted researchers at a “U.S.-based university” (reportedly Georgia Tech) who were working on a “federal government cybersecurity research contract” (reported to be the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) that helped Joffe analyze the stolen data. Joffe and his researcher friends then produced a white paper, with Sussmann’s help, that made the (later debunked) allegation that Trump was involved in a nefarious relationship with “Russian Bank-1” (reported to be Russia’s Alfa Bank).
Sussmann then took this white paper to the FBI, allegedly claiming that he was not working for any client — he was only coming to the FBI as a concerned citizen. In reality, Sussmann had been billing both Joffe and the Clinton campaign for his work in writing and disseminating the white paper to the press. The goal of both Joffe and the Clinton campaign was to use the white paper to further the “narrative” that Trump had been compromised by Russia and, in turn, to use any official investigation he could initiate to legitimize the white paper.
As bad as the original indictment was, Durham filed a new motion Friday alleging that even after Trump was sworn into office, Joffe continued to collect data not only from Trump’s private properties but also from the EOP. Joffe’s firm, Neustar, had a contract with the EOP to provide DNS resolution services. Joffe then shared this data again with Sussmann, who this time took his “narrative” against Trump to “Agency-2” (reported to be the CIA).
The specific motion that Durham filed Friday is unusual, but it speaks again to the breadth of institutions tied into perpetrating and now covering up the theft of sensitive and private data and its attempted exploitation for partisan political purposes.
Durham asked the court to procure a waiver from Sussmann acknowledging that the firm now defending him, Latham & Watkins, has defended the Clinton campaign and the DNC in the past and therefore may have a conflict of interest between Sussmann’s interests and the interests of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Over seven pages, Durham details how intimately involved Latham & Watkins has been in representing other members of Joffe and Sussmann’s conspiracy.
While Sussmann’s alleged crimes are concerning by themselves, the public should be even more worried about the ease with which the power of elite institutions was so easily co-opted into this scheme.