Clinton knocks Trump for 'improbably' tying her to Comey in Russiagate lawsuit

Jack Birle

July 17, 10:04 AM July 17, 10:04 AM

Hillary Clinton is pushing back at a lawsuit submitted from her and others about the so-termed Russiagate controversy in a motion to dismiss submitted by her and other allies very last week.

Clinton alleged in the motion that she has been "improbably" tied to previous FBI Director James Comey and that the lawsuit filed by former President Donald Trump's authorized group is "swollen with eighty web pages of irrelevant allegations," in accordance to the filing.

HILLARY CLINTON DOCUSERIES Checking out ‘SUPREMELY GUTSY’ Gals PREMIERES THIS Tumble

Trump submitted his lawsuit late very last thirty day period, alleging a conspiracy to build a "fake narrative" tying his 2016 campaign to Russia. The new motion stated the ties between the folks being sued are only for the reason that they are enemies of Trump. "All that inbound links these disparate people and activities is Plantiff’s antipathy toward them," the submitting reported. "This is a President who won't just record enemies: he sues them."

Clinton has been vital of Comey for his managing of an FBI investigation into her unauthorized e-mail server all through her time as secretary of condition in the heat of the 2016 presidential election, all through which she was a candidate, and even has placed blame on him for her defeat to Trump.

Clinton is joined by a number of other people as defendants in the lawsuit, including 2016 Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, former Democratic Countrywide Committee chairwomen Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Jake Sullivan, who is now President Joe Biden's countrywide security adviser and was Clinton's overseas plan adviser in the course of her unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign.

The motion was submitted in the U.S. District Courtroom for the Southern District of Florida in the scenario Trump introduced versus Clinton and her associates around bogus statements the Trump marketing campaign was linked to Russia.

U.S. District Choose Donald Middlebrooks, a Invoice Clinton appointee, will choose the motion soon after rejecting Trump's demand from customers that he recuse himself from the suit.

The Justice Office argued in a further submitting past week that Comey, alongside with other previous top rated FBI officers who became targets of Trump's ire, are guarded by federal statute and have to be dropped from the lawsuit, in accordance to Bloomberg.

Hillary Clinton rips Clarence Thomas: 'He's been a man or woman of grievance’

Ryan King

June 28, 10:21 AM June 28, 10:21 AM

Hillary Clinton got personalized with her disparagement of Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday, sniping that her previous legislation college classmate was normally a man of "resentment, grievance, [and] anger."

Recalling her time in regulation college with him, she cautioned that he has been encouraging conservative activists and point out legislatures to ship cases his way so that he could use them to challenge other precedents, such as the proper to similar-intercourse relationship and the right to contraception.

'F--- CLARENCE THOMAS': LORI LIGHTFOOT CURSES SUPREME Courtroom JUSTICE AT Satisfaction Event

"I went to law college with him. He's been a person of grievance for as prolonged as I have recognised him. [He has] resentment, grievance, [and] anger, and he has signaled in the earlier, to decrease courts, to condition legislatures, 'Find instances. Go laws. Get them up [to the Supreme Court]," Clinton advised CBS Mornings.

"And the issue that is, perfectly, you will find so lots of issues about it that are deeply distressing. But girls are likely to die, Gayle. Women of all ages will die," she added.

Clinton, who could have appointed justices experienced she won the presidency in 2016, stated she was not amazed by the ruling, swiping at senators this kind of as Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Manchin (D-WV), who claimed they had been misled into voting for justices who have because voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, by incorporating, "Anybody who is stunned by this is not spending interest."

"I assume they were misled, in aspect simply because they desired to be misled. ... They either understood or they had been blind to what is actually the history of the individuals prior to them," Clinton described.

She cautioned that the high court is poised to "convert back the clock on civil legal rights and homosexual rights."

Thomas termed for the court docket to reconsider substantive because of approach circumstances, including all those that guaranteed rights to exact-sexual intercourse relationship and contraception, in his concurrence in Friday's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Wellness Group ruling. Notably, as the most senior justice in the vast majority, he was capable to decide on the author of the Dobbs opinion, major to speculation that he did not generate the feeling himself since he does not have the votes to nix those people precedents.

Clinton prompt that Thomas may possibly not have the desired guidance now, but he will proceed striving to whip votes to overturn these other authorized precedents.

"Very well, he could be on his have, but he is signaling as he often did," Clinton replied. "He has signaled in the earlier to reduce courts, to point out legislatures, 'Find situations. Move laws. Get them up. I could not earn the initially, the 2nd, or the third time, but we're going to maintain at it.'"

Hillary Clinton dismisses 2024 presidential run speculation

Jenny Goldsberry

June 18, 06:21 PM June 18, 06:21 PM

Hillary Clinton wants the country to know she is not running for president again in 2024.

The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee told the Financial Times in an interview published Friday that another presidential bid was not in the works.

"No, out of the question," Clinton told the outlet. "First of all, I expect Biden to run. He certainly intends to run. It would be very disruptive to challenge that."

CHARGE: CLINTON AND DNC BREAK PLEDGE TO STOP LYING ABOUT TRUMP DOSSIER

Discussing the current state of political affairs, Clinton said the possibility of a Republican recapturing the White House in 2024 was "so frightening." As a result, she explained, doing anything to hurt the Democrats was not a priority.

"We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy, and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window," Clinton, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, said.

"Look, the most important thing is to win the next election," she continued. "The alternative is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority."

The former secretary of state speculated that former President Donald Trump will run again "if he can," noting the $130 million he's raised to organize campaigns.

"I don’t know who will challenge him in the Republican primary," Clinton said.

Former President Bill Clinton offered similar sentiments during a television appearance earlier this week.

“I actually think there is a fair chance we could completely lose our constitutional democracy for a couple of decades if we make bad decisions," the 42nd commander-in-chief said in an interview with CBS's The Late Late Show with James Corden.

President Joe Biden, who is hoping to avoid a red wave in the 2022 Midterm elections as experts continue to predict Republicans will retake the House of Representatives, has also mused about the state of democracies recently.

Speaking at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles earlier this month, the 46th president warned that: "Democracy is under assault around the world."

'Winning the war': Ratcliffe says Durham can 'expand' indictments after Sussmann demo

Daniel Chaitin

June 05, 11:42 AM June 05, 02:29 PM

Former Director of Countrywide Intelligence John Ratcliffe voiced self-confidence in specific counsel John Durham just after the prosecutor misplaced the high-profile situation against Democratic cybersecurity law firm Michael Sussmann.

The Trump-era spy chief produced a prediction on Fox News's Sunday Early morning Futures that Durham placing his concentration on British ex-spy Christopher Steele's now-discredited anti-Trump file will provide as a turning stage immediately after critics piled on when the Sussmann trial ended in acquittal.

"I’m optimistic that not only will he [Durham] be prosperous in some of the ongoing prosecutions, but can expand the indictments that he would like to bring supplied the involvement of certain FBI officers in spreading a phony narrative to the American individuals," Ratcliffe informed anchor Maria Bartiromo.

Sussmann was billed with lying to the FBI about whom he was symbolizing when, in September 2016, he offered world wide web data that proposed a now-discredited link between Trump and Russia's Alfa-Bank. In unique, Sussmann was indicted on expenses of concealing his shoppers — Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and “Tech Govt-1,” identified to be former Neustar govt Rodney Joffe — from FBI general counsel James Baker. Sussmann denied lying to the FBI and pleaded not guilty.

BARR Claims DURHAM 'ACCOMPLISHED Some thing Far A lot more IMPORTANT' THAN SUSSMANN CONVICTION

The jury in Washington, D.C., sided with Sussmann on Tuesday. "Despite getting falsely accused, I believe that that justice finally prevailed in my case," Sussmann said in a brief assertion just after the verdict.

Ratcliffe opined there was not a "just" verdict, bemoaning how the judge would not make it possible for particular evidence of the "Clinton conspiracy" to be integrated in the demo. He also griped about there being Clinton donors on the jury and the revelation that one juror's daughter was on the same substantial faculty crew workforce as Sussmann's daughter.

This Alfa-Financial institution make any difference tied to the Clinton team may perhaps not have spurred the FBI's investigation into Trump's inbound links to Russia, but the steps taken by some bureau officers above the course of that inquiry have occur below increased scrutiny thanks to disclosures all through the trial.

"We learned that a senior FBI agent concerned in the Trump-Russia investigation, Joe Pientka, despatched a observe to a further agent about the Alfa-Bank idea: 'People on the 7th floor to include things like Director are fired up about this server. Reachout and set resources on ... it's not an possibility — we ought to do it.' The FBI building's seventh flooring is the place major management, together with then-Director James Comey, experienced places of work," the Washington Examiner's Byron York wrote Tuesday.

Durham has one particular other lively prosecution: a circumstance against Igor Danchenko, a vital supply for British ex-spy Christopher Steele's anti-Trump file, who has pleaded not responsible to 5 counts of building false statements to the FBI about the information he presented to the former MI6 agent for his discredited file. That demo is slated to start in October in Virginia. The prosecutor has obtained a solitary responsible plea, which arrived from previous FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to altering an electronic mail about a Trump marketing campaign aide less than governing administration surveillance.

Durham was appointed by then-Attorney Common William Barr in 2019 to perform the overview of the Russia investigation. Even though Durham still left his purpose as U.S. attorney immediately after the Trump administration ended, the Biden administration allow the inquiry keep on immediately after Barr appointed him particular counsel. The endeavor has been criticized by Democrats and some legal observers, who claim the inquiry is intended to undercut Robert Mueller's distinctive investigation into ties in between the Trump 2016 marketing campaign and Russia.

Critics have turned up the pressure on Lawyer Common Merrick Garland to pull the plug on the inquiry, primarily after the Sussmann verdict, but Ratcliffe argued that Durham's team is "profitable the war."

Ratcliffe, a previous Republican congressman from Texas who oversaw the nation's 17 intelligence agencies in the latter aspect of the Trump administration, contended that testimony throughout the demo vindicated documents he declassified even though in business.

In making his stage about expanded indictments, Ratcliffe claimed the "most highly effective" testimony for the duration of the demo came from Robby Mook, the campaign supervisor for Clinton in 2016, who claimed the applicant individually signed off on sharing the Trump-Russia allegations relevant to Alfa-Lender with the media in the course of the election. Ratcliffe also noted testimony from Marc Elias, the top rated law firm for Clinton’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign, about his function in pushing collusion claims.

The Trump-Russia inquiry began in late July 2016 following Trump campaign overseas coverage adviser George Papadopoulos bragged to an Australian diplomat that he listened to the Russians experienced detrimental details on Clinton. The FBI's counterintelligence investigation, dubbed "Crossfire Hurricane," was later on wrapped into exclusive counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference. Mueller's staff did discover contacts amongst the Trump marketing campaign and Russia but was not able to establish a criminal conspiracy in between the Trump crew and the Kremlin.

Justice Department Inspector Standard Michael Horowitz established there was enough cause for the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the Trump marketing campaign, but both Barr and Durham publicly disagreed with that summary in late 2019.

Standing by his statement more than two decades in the past, Barr reported in the course of a Fox News job interview on Wednesday that Durham has "accomplished some thing significantly far more important" than acquiring a conviction in the Sussmann situation.

"Initially, I consider he crystallized the central role played by the Hillary marketing campaign and launching as a dirty trick the total Russiagate collusion narrative and fanning the flames of it," he stated. "And, 2nd, I think he uncovered definitely dreadful habits by the supervisors in the FBI, the senior ranks of the FBI, who knowingly utilised this details to start out an investigation of Trump and then duped their very own brokers by lying to them and refusing to convey to them what the true supply of that data was. And that was appalling."

Espousing a identical point of perspective, Ratcliffe on Sunday asserted there was a "deliberate effort" by sure federal law enforcement officers to "mislead the American persons for political causes."

Was Russia collusion server data pushed in violation of Senate ethics rules?

Pamela K. Browne

June 01, 07:00 AM June 01, 07:01 AM

Lurking behind the mountains of prosecutorial evidence presented in over 150 exhibits and testimony by nearly two dozen witnesses in the now-concluded Michael Sussmann trial, questions swirl about how widely the debunked Trump-Russia collusion computer data spread among Washington, D.C.’s most powerful committees, including the Senate Armed Services Committee in early 2017.

On Tuesday, a D.C. jury found Sussmann, the 57-year-old former Perkins Coie lawyer, not guilty of lying to the FBI.

Despite this setback to special counsel John Durham’s investigation, the public learned how a powerful attorney, in a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign, deliberately bypassed protocol to get a meeting with the FBI general counsel in September 2016 to pass along the Alfa-Bank materials that Sussmann participated in preparing with the help of Fusion GPS and his client, Rodney Joffe.

BOTH SIDES ACCUSE EACH OTHER OF MAGIC TRICKS IN SUSSMANN CLOSING ARGUMENTS

In addition, in a surprising revelation in the two-week trial, it was revealed that Sussmann’s client Joffe was fired as a confidential human source for the FBI in 2021. Joffe, identified as “Tech Executive 1,” may now be a focus in Durham’s investigation.

Lingering questions remain: if, for example, Sussmann, along with Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, Daniel Jones of the Democracy Integrity Project, and Joffe, worked together to promote the same fabricated allegations of a secret communications channel between Russia’s Alfa-Bank and the Trump Organization to the Senate Armed Services Committee after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.

Jason Foster, president of Empower Oversight, a nonprofit group dedicated to increasing accountability for government and corporate wrongdoing, told the Washington Examiner: “It remains unclear to what extent TDIP’s report allegedly produced for the Senate Armed Services Committee overlaps with the information Sussmann provided to the FBI, although they appear to be closely related. The testimony at the [Sussmann] trial has not explored that question, but it is an important one that the Senate Ethics Committee should examine.”

The debunked computer data “white papers,” written and assembled by Fusion GPS, Joffe, and Perkins Coie attorneys Sussmann and Marc Elias, were delivered to FBI General Counsel James Baker by Sussmann on Sept. 19, 2016, via hard copy and thumb drives.

This opposition research, down to the thumb drives passed, was paid for by the Clinton campaign while at the same time promoted by Fusion GPS into select reporters’ stories.

The “white papers” alleged a covert communications channel between Russia’s Alfa-Bank and the Trump Organization. Ultimately, the FBI determined there was insufficient evidence, and Sussmann would later try to peddle the data to the CIA with no success.

Troubling to Foster, who worked for two decades as a congressional investigator, is whether or not the Senate Armed Services Committee knowingly allowed Daniel Jones’s TDIP to “work for free” for a year in violation of Senate Rule XXXV, which prohibits any gift, which includes gifts of services, over $100 per year.

On Oct. 8, 2021, three weeks after Sussmann was indicted by Durham for allegedly lying to the FBI, Foster wrote to Sen. Christopher Coons (D-DE), the Senate Ethics Committee’s chairman, and Vice Chairman Sen. James Lankford (R-OK). He specifically asked if the Senate Armed Services Committee violated rules “by requesting and accepting professional services from TDIP and Daniel J. Jones.”

Foster pointed out “TDIP’s research … began in 2017, continued for more than a year, involved hiring computer science experts at no cost to the Committee … [and] aimed at evaluating data that the Committee had received for alleged connections between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization servers.”

Foster emphasized the need for transparency, noting: “The advice we followed was to avoid accepting professional services without paying for them, even if it was related to the Committee’s official business.”

A review by the Washington Examiner of Alfa-Bank court filings, including Jones’s Aug. 18, 2021, deposition, congressional testimony, and other public documents, offers context into the relationship between TDIP and Fusion GPS.

On the Sunday following Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Fusion’s Simpson and Fritsch met with Jones. By Jan. 31, TDIP was incorporated as a new nonprofit organization. In their book, Crime in Progress, Simpson and Fritsch described how “TDIP intended to tap the super-wealthy to fund work to protect the democratic system of government from a new and insidious assault.”

Jones, with considerable input and fundraising efforts by Simpson and Fritsch, raised $7 million in the first year, and Jones paid half of that, $3.3 million, to Bean LLC, Fusion GPS’s limited liability company. TDIP also paid nearly $700,000 to discredited dossier author Christopher Steele’s entity, Walsingham Partners.

TDIP donors include George Soros, deep-pocketed Democrats in Silicon Valley, and a group tied to Tom Steyer, the California businessman-turned-failed 2020 presidential candidate.

As TDIP’s president, Jones, a former FBI analyst and former staffer to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), was paid more than $380,000. Besides TDIP, Jones also operates a for-profit firm, Penn Quarter Group, in Washington, D.C.

Jones told the FBI in March 2017 that Penn Quarter Group “was being funded by 7 to 10 wealthy donors located primarily in New York and California, who provided approximately $50 million.”

Foster stressed: “Allowing Senate committees to accept free investigative services by an unknown group of billionaires raises potential conflict of interest issues that the Gift Rule is intended to prevent."

“If Committees need to engage outside consultants for official business, there is a process for doing so," he continued. "It’s unclear who on the Foreign Relations Committee was aware of the arrangement for free services provided and to what extent it was officially authorized. An Ethics Committee investigation could help clear up some of those questions.”

Apparently, nothing stopped Fusion GPS from figuring out ways to promote the Alfa-Bank narrative, with the help of TDIP.

In the now-ended Alfa-Bank civil litigation, Jones testified how he met with the Senate Armed Services Committee’s T. Kirk McConnell, at McConnell’s request, in the spring of 2017 “in the Senate Armed Services space … and they asked for my insights into the alleged connection between Alfa-Bank servers and Trump Organization servers.”

“[McConnell] relayed that he had information from a trusted source about the server allegation … and the Senate Armed Services Committee was in possession of information about the server allegations.“

Jones described in his deposition how the DNS (domain name system) data was “already in the hands of the committee.”

Specifically, Jones said: “They asked me to evaluate that information. … The next step was to meet with an individual named Michael Sussmann.”

Jones had multiple meetings with Michael Sussmann in the spring of 2017. Sussmann also represented Joffe.

Curiously, Jones said Sussmann chose to refer to his client Joffe as “Max” or “John Galt.” But Jones said he figured out the expert was indeed Joffe. During the Sussmann trial, it was revealed that Joffe was “terminated” as a confidential human source for the FBI in 2021.

HILLARY CLINTON SIGNED OFF ON PUSHING ALFA-BANK CLAIMS TO THE MEDIA

Jones detailed, in his August 2021 deposition, that Fusion GPS was paid $3.3 million for a “hefty” 687-page Alfa research backgrounder that he admitted was produced “rather quickly.”

In a key exchange in his deposition, Jones was grilled by Alfa-Bank attorney Margaret Krawiec over a TDIP report dated March 21, 2017.

Jones claimed Fusion GPS had no knowledge that the background report that TDIP paid millions for would be included in the report he gave to the Senate Armed Services Committee for analysis sometime early to mid-2017.

The timing is notable, as this is shortly after TDIP was created on Jan. 31, 2017, and two months later, the Fusion report had a new home.

Was the data described in Durham’s indictment of Sussmann the same data obtained and analyzed by TDIP for the Senate Armed Services Committee? Was this also part of the core research that Fusion GPS provided? As Durham's investigation continues to unfold, this remains a mystery.

Simpson and Fritsch bragged about what TDIP could do in their book, writing: “Without the deadline of an election … TDIP had the luxury to roam into underexplored areas while also opening up entirely new inquiries. It could bring on specialists: linguists, accountants, campaign finance nerds, Web scraping data gurus.”

The reality was TDIP served as another way for Fusion GPS to earn even more money in lucrative contracts than in their previous work with Perkins Coie. This would enable them to continue the amplification of the Russian collusion narrative against Trump’s presidency.

Seven months after Foster sent his letter, he said: “We have received no reply or communication from anyone at the Senate Ethics Committee” regarding Empower Oversight’s request for an investigation. “The Ethics Committee’s procedures don’t require it to respond to complaints from the public like ours. However, our filing argues that a public resolution would be in the best interests of the Senate. If the Gift Rule was violated, then there should be accountability.”

The Washington Examiner did not receive a response to questions submitted to Coons and Lankford.