For years, conservatives and Republican Party insiders have demanded to know how the misguided Russia probe into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign happened.
Who started the probe that Trump regularly lambasted as a “witch hunt”?
In just hours, America may finally start to get some answers.
And the first domino to call could be someone well connected to top Democrats… and specifically to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign.
A former lawyer for Hillary’s camp and well-connected political insider, Michael Sussmann, is reportedly facing imminent indictment by a grand jury.
John Durham, the federal prosecutor tapped to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation, has stretched his investigation for years — longer than the original probe in question by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Durham has reportedly targeted a Sept. 19, 2016 call between Sussmann and an unnamed FBI agent. The statute of limitations for prosecution expires on Sunday, Fox News reported.
Lawyers for Sussman deny any wrongdoing and told Fox News their client is a highly respected lawyer.
“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” his lawyers told Fox News. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented, and unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work. We are confident that if Mr. Sussmann is charged, he will prevail and vindicate his good name.”
It’s the first major development from the Durham investigation, which has been criticized for being extremely slow to produce results.
Durham was first appointed to the position in 2019 by then-Attorney General William Barr, with a mandate to examine how the FBI and intelligence community set about investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and potential coordination with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which later launched the Mueller investigation.
Mueller ultimately concluded there was no evidence that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia.
Durham’s team has interviewed a broad swath of officials across the Justice Department and intelligence community, including former CIA Director John Brennan.
His investigation is in addition to a separate inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general, which issued a December 2019 report finding significant errors and omissions in FBI applications to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The report did not find evidence that any actions by FBI or Justice Department officials were motivated by partisan bias.
Weeks before he resigned as attorney general, Barr appointed Durham — who for years served as the U.S. attorney in Connecticut — as a special counsel, a move designed to give him extra protection to complete his work under the Biden administration.
One area of focus in Durham’s inquiry has been the FBI’s reliance on anti-Trump research that was conducted by former British spy Christopher Steele, and which U.S. officials cited in applications to a secretive surveillance court for warrants to monitor Page’s communications.
Durham has also been examining whether anyone presented the U.S. government with information that they knew to be false about potential connections between Alfa Bank, a privately-owned, commercial bank in Russia, and a Trump campaign server, according to the person familiar with the matter. The FBI investigated but concluded that there were no cyber links, according to the inspector general report.
Alfa Bank has, meanwhile, alleged in a lawsuit in Florida state court that it was the target of “highly sophisticated cyberattacks” in 2016 and 2017, and that it was victimized by a disinformation campaign aimed at publicly and incorrectly linking the bank to the Trump campaign. Durham’s line of inquiry resembles the claims in that suit, the person said.
Last August, Durham reached a plea deal with Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer who admitted doctoring an email about Page as the FBI was renewing its applications to eavesdrop on Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Clinesmith was sentenced to probation.
Now, the investigation has arrived at Clinton’s doorstep.
Finally.
The Associated Press contributed to this article