AP EXPLAINER: How the latest Trump-Russia filing generated buzz

WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest filing from special counsel John Durham in his investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe has been seized on by the conservative media and Donald Trump himself as vindication of the former president’s oft-repeated claims that he was “spied” on.

One headline said Durham had alleged that the campaign of Hillary Clinton paid to “infiltrate” servers at Trump Tower and the White House — though that verb is not used in the filing — and Trump suggested that Democrats had been caught “illegally spying” in a scandal worse than Watergate.

Neither claim is exactly what Durham alleged in a weekend filing that was ostensibly about a potential legal conflict-of-interest in the case. The filing detoured into the realm of internet traffic research and generated significant attention among followers of Durham’s probe.

Durham, the former U.S. attorney in Connecticut, was appointed in 2019 by then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate possible misconduct within the U.S. government as it investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and any ties to the Trump campaign.

In it, Durham says Sussman in February 2017 presented officials at a U.S. government agency — the CIA — with information that Sussmann said showed that “Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.” The Durham team said it has identified no support for those allegations.

Durham and his team have cast a broad net in their investigation, interviewing former officials at the FBI, the Justice Department and the CIA.

THIS JUST IN -——Biden Campaign Paid Internet Company Connected to Durham Probe

A cyber-security firm at the center of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe was paid nearly $20,000 by The Biden campaign...... and was on his payroll.

<><>The Biden campaign paid Neustar Information Services in 2020 for accounting and compliance work, according to Federal Election Commission records.

<><>According to Durham, Neustar’s chief technology officer, Rodney Joffe, accessed sensitive web traffic data that the company maintained on behalf of the White House executive office to collect “derogatory” information about Donald Trump. Joffe allegedly provided the information to Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who in turn gave it to the CIA during a meeting in February 2017. Durham charged Sussmann in September with lying to the FBI about his investigation of Trump.

That raises the question: was the same action going on against Trump in 2020?

The Biden and Clinton campaigns are the only two presidential committees to have ever paid Neustar, according to Federal Election Commission records.
<><>Biden’s campaign paid Neustar $18,819 on Sept. 29, 2020, the records show.
<><>The Clinton campaign paid the firm $3,000 in May 2015 for mobile phone services.
<><> Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee paid $3,000 to Neustar in 2017.

Neustar executives and staffers contributed $17,906 to Biden’s campaign, FEC records show.

FACTOID-—Dems Colluded with foreign countries to generate propaganda to affect a Presidential Election.
They forced a bogus investigation, and in typical Dem fashion, they accused Trump of doing what they did......

.......there are dozens of memos that make up an actual diary of moment-by-moment events, during the FBI
investigation of Donald Trump (as candidate and as president), documented by Obama’s FBI Director Comey......

SOURCE: CONSERVATIVE TREEHOUSE | 4/9/2019 | SUNDANCE / FR Posted by bitt
A late day submission to DC Circuit Court in a FOIA case reveals the content of previously
unknown James Comey memos. Obama’s entire anti-Trump operation is memorialized in writing:
<><> how Obama’s FBI Director James Comey wrote down the sources and code-names assigned;
<><> how confidential sources engaged with FISA coverage initiated by Obama’s FBI;
<><> naming foreign governments assisting Obama and Hillary with their vile efforts;
<><> and the rollout plans for Obama’s phony investigation.....”by the book.”

During her ill-fated 2016 campaign Hillary bragged about “foreign governments” supporting her election.

Are these the same “foreign governments” Comey had assisting their efforts to frame Trump? (smirk)

That would mean Obama, Comey and Hillary were colluding with
foreign governments to meddle in our elections, wouldnt it, Donald?

Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.

A Politico investigation found
<><>Ukrainian govt officials helped Hillary and trashed Trump, questioning his fitness for office.
<><>They disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption
<><>They suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election.
<><>They helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers.

Politico.com
By KENNETH P. VOGEL and DAVID STERN
01/11/2017

<>Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire; foreign aid billions threatened
<>Kiev scrambles to make amends with president-elect Trump after working to boost Clinton.
<>President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, and the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the presidential race.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

Russia’s effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect. And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said “I don’t think we’ve ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we’ve seen in this case.”

There’s little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the country — not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia — would render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country’s election.

And President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the the race.

OBAMA’s CIA Director Brennan’s Perjury Peril.

In his May 2017 testimony before the Congressional intel panel,
<><> Brennan emphatically denied the dossier factored into the Obama intel apparat’s conclusion.
<><> Obama concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 election “to help Trump’s chances of victory.”
<><> Brennan also swore that he did not know who commissioned the anti-Trump research document,
<><> even though DOJ/FBI senior natl security and counter-intel officials knew that the dossier was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
<><> One official said: “John Brennan did more than anyone to promulgate the dirty dossier. “
<><> Brennan politicized and effectively weaponized what was patently false intelligence against Trump.

Brennan, a fiercely loyal Obama appointee, talked up the dossier to Democratic leaders, as well as the press, during the 2016 campaign and fed allegations about Trump-Russia contacts directly to the FBI, while pressuring the bureau to conduct an investigation of several Trump campaign figures.

Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, sucked up bigtime to get a job with Hillary; he worked tidbits from the tidbits from the phony ‘Pee Dossier’ into Obama’s Daily Intel Briefing (PDB). Wadda ya know ‘bout that? Brennan and Hillary pegged Obama correctly......
<><> Obama was stupid enough to believe it...... and
<><> too stupid to understand he was reading falsified intel.

AND THIS-—
Devin Nunes is investigating Obama intel officials’ roles in promoting the salacious Steele dossier — and is said to be focusing on:
<><> Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan,
<><> Obama’s first CIA director, Leon Panetta,
<><> Obama’s intel czar, James Clapper,
<><> Obama’s NSA adviser, Susan Rice, and,
<><> Obama’s hand-picked UN Amb Samantha Power.
<><> Val/Jar

The Unstated Scandal: The CIA Collected Info On President Trump
Techno Fog ^ | 2-15-2022
Posted on 2/15/2022, 6:33:24 PM by blam

On Friday, Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion relating to a defense firm’s potential conflict of interest in the Michael Sussmann case. The conflict itself is certainly intriguing, with Sussmann’s lawyers at Latham & Watkins LLP (Latham) having represented potential witnesses in the case, including Perkins Coie, former Perkins Coie (and Clinton Campaign general counsel) Marc Elias, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, and Hillary for America.

The issue that made more noise, however, was Durham’s disclosure that Rodney Joffe – a contractor with deep ties to the Clintons, and what appears to be a deep hatred for Trump – had exploited Executive Office of the President of the United States data he obtained from a “sensitive arrangement” with the U.S. Government to damage President Trump. Here is our initial post on the topic.

And here is the talented Lee Smith providing a great explanation on Tucker:

Twitter avatar for @AKA_RealDirtyThe Dirty Truth (Josh) @AKA_RealDirty .@LeeSmithDC says he keeps hearing people comparing the scandal to Watergate when it doesn’t compare to Watergate at all. We are talking about some of the most secure communications in government been Surveiled by political operatives.

February 15th 2022

733 Retweets1,522 Likes

Yet the data from the Executive Office of the President wasn’t all that Joffe had obtained. He also collected domain name system (DNS) internet traffic pertaining to a healthcare provider; Trump Tower; and Trump’s Central Park West apartment building.

Yesterday, February 14, Sussmann’s attorney’s disputed the Durham filing – to an extent. They said Sussmann provided the CIA with Executive Office of the President data from “when Barack Obama was president.”

I have a theory about this.

If Sussmann’s attorney is telling the truth (never a given), then we suspect the Executive Office of the President data included that from the 74 day the Trump transition period (between the November 8, 2016 election and the January 20, 2017 inauguration) – which would still be spying on the incoming Trump Administration.

For background, the Executive Office of the President includes a number of Executive councils (National Security Council, Office of Management and Budget, etc.) that support the President. It is involved generally in the transition from one president to the next.

What about the data involved with the Trump transition? On August 1, 2016, Trump reached an agreement with the General Services Administration (GSA) “for telecommunication and internet technology services for both the pre- and post-election transition period.”1 This is the agreement. Fool Nelson pointed out to me that Joffe’s other company, Packet Forensics, has a 2010 - 2025 contract with GSA. I wonder if Joffe’s company, Neustar, helped the GSA in the execution of that agreement. Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not sure it matters, as Neustar already had an agreement to provide “DNS resolution services” to the Executive Office of the President.

Regardless, the “transition theory”, if we can call it that, matches the timeline in the Sussmann indictment, which states that Joffe and his team continued to target “Trump-related computer networks” in late 2016 and early 2017. And it makes sense in context of Sussmann’s conduct, as Sussmann tried to put this information out there in late December 2016.

Anyway, back to the point of this post.

According to Durham, Joffe and his associates manipulated that data to make it seem like Trump, and those in Trump’s world, had suspicious interactions with internet protocol (IP) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider. They then combined those allegations with the Alfa Bank hoax materials (the subject of Sussmann’s Fall 2016 meeting with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker).

This damaging information, purporting to demonstrate at least circumstantial evidence of Trump/Russia collusion, was presented on February 9, 2017 to what Durham describes as U.S. Government “Agency-2.”

That agency was the CIA. We know for sure that Sussmann met with the CIA General Counsel. We learned in January 2022 that, if Sussmann is to be believed, there were two other CIA employees at that meeting.

In other words, a Clinton supporting contractor (Joffe) obtained sensitive information (perhaps unlawfully) about the Office of the President of the United States (Trump), manipulated the information, passed it to a DNC/Clinton lawyer (Sussmann), who then delivered it to the CIA.

All on American soil.

This is important because the CIA is generally prohibited from conducting domestic operations. The FBI explains:

“The CIA collects information only regarding foreign countries and their citizens. Unlike the FBI, it is prohibited from collecting information regarding ‘U.S. Persons,’ a term that includes U.S. citizens, resident aliens, legal immigrants, and U.S. corporations, regardless of where they are located.”

In the CIA’s own words:

“The FBI is responsible for coordination of clandestine collection of foreign intelligence through human sources or human-enabled means and counterintelligence activities inside the United States.”

Yet when it came to Trump, here was the CIA doing what it is prohibited: “collecting information regarding U.S. persons” inside the United States.2 (See also the CIA’s bulk surveillance program.)

A top CIA official answered the call of a DNC lawyer who alleged that these suspicious internet “lookups” proved “that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.” Accusations that were baseless, according to Durham.

In other words, the secret police was more than willing to accept politically damaging information against the President. I’m curious what they did with it. It seems naive to think the information stayed at the CIA. I bet it was passed onto the FBI or DOJ, who may have used it to further the Trump/Russia investigation.

The scandal we are seeing come to light just isn’t about Hillary and Joffe and Sussmann. It’s not limited to Fusion GPS, FISA abuse, or Igor Danchenko.

It’s also about the willingness of U.S. intelligence to target the President. And on that topic, the CIA has some serious questions to answer.

Joe knew. Jake Sullivan made sure of it
Flopping Aces ^ | 02-15-22 | DrJohn
Posted on 2/15/2022, 6:44:16 PM by Starman417

It’s all hands on deck for democrats as John Durham continues his pursuit of the truth about Hillary Clinton paying operatives to hack Trump servers in the Trump Tower and in the White House itself. The NY Times is manning one of the guns, once again trying to push the BS Russian collusion allegation.

Joe Scarborough is panicking, saying Fox News is lying about the Clinton spying. democrats, who know better than anyone how to concoct and spread a false narrative, are once again complaining that the Durham investigation is politically motivated.

Here’s one more thing for them to whine about. Joe Biden knew. It came up yesterday in a White House briefing:

The White House on Monday refused to be drawn into the growing controversy over claims that Hillary Clinton‘s allies tried to smear Donald Trump, and whether internet data collection amounted to spying.

Three times Joe Biden‘s principal deputy press secretary was asked whether the president had any concerns about campaigns hacking into opponents’ computer systems to gather dirt.

And three times during the White House daily briefing Karine Jean-Pierre referred all questions to the Department of Justice.

Of course she did. Biden knew.

Joe Biden was present in the infamous January 5 meeting in the Oval Office when the trap for Trump was set. As it so typical of democrats, serial cable liar Susan Rice’s constant harping on “by the book” means it was anything but by the book. It took the one honest man in the obama White House- Admiral Mike Rogers– to warn Trump that he was being spied upon.

Trump then moved his campaign out of Trump Towers and to New Jersey. Little did he expect that Hillary Clinton would be so malevolent as to hire a cyber firm to hack into the servers of the White House.

But there is a nexus between Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden- Jake Sullivan.

Sullivan worked in the Obama administration as Deputy Assistant to the President and the vice president’s National Security Advisor, when Biden was U.S. Vice President. He also served as the Director of Policy Planning at the Department of State.

The arrogant pasty-faced little Ivy League boy inserted himself into a big-time game- falsely undermining the President of the United States. Sullivan was a senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and he played a direct and significant role in the Russian Alfa Bank hoax.

It was disclosed that Sullivan was passing emails with Marc Elias just before Sussman gave the FBI the phony assertions about Trump’s alleged involvement with Alfa Bank and the Russians.

One of those campaign agents was Sullivan, according to emails that special counsel John Durham obtained.

On Sept. 15, 2016 — just four days before Sussmann handed off the materials to the FBI — Marc Elias, Sussmann’s law partner and fellow Democratic Party operative, “exchanged emails with the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser concerning the Russian bank allegations,” as well as with other top campaign officials, the indictment states.

Sullivan then went on CNN to spread the lies
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...

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