Former Attorney General William Barr said Friday he is "disappointed" that special counsel John Durham failed to get a conviction in his case against ex-Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann, but added several reasons why he is "happy" with how the probe into the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation has turned out so far.
BlazeTV host Glenn Beck interviewed Barr on Friday and asked the two-time attorney general for his thoughts on where Durham's investigation goes next.
Barr said that there are "two different goals" for the Durham probe. The first is to "lay the facts bare" and get some "accountability" for the FBI's handling of the Trump-Russia probe by showing the American people how it was conducted.
"The other goal, obviously, would be to punish people to the extent that you can achieve convictions," Barr said. " That latter goal is more difficult, because of the way the system operates. The high standard of proof. You need admissible evidence. And, you know, D.C. juries are not the most favorable forum for these cases, by a long stretch. And I think everyone recognized that."
Sussmann, a former Perkins Coie lawyer, was indicted on one count of lying to the FBI in September 2016 when he presented since-debunked evidence that the Trump Organization had ties to a Russian bank. Durham's prosecutors alleged that Sussmann had pretended to be a concerned citizen without disclosing that he was working for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. They claimed that Sussmann went to the FBI with unverified information so that the bureau would open a case against Donald Trump and that the Clinton campaign subsequently used leaked information from the investigation to attack her Republican rival ahead of the presidential election.
However, a Washington D.C. jury found Sussmann not guilty of the charge.
Barr said that Durham knew "there would be a tough jury" but likely "felt he had the duty to bring this case."
"I'm disappointed, in the outcome. But I am actually happy, that [Durham] blew up the case," he told Beck.
He continued: "I think it actually achieved a lot of progress on the issue of getting at the truth. He shed a lot of light, and demonstrated the central role play by Hillary Clinton's campaign. And also, the very troubling behavior of the FBI leadership, that — that duped its own agents about the source of this information. And that's a lot of progress."
Barr said he is looking forward to the trial of Igor Danchenko later this year. Danchenko was a source for the infamous and debunked Steele dossier, a discredited opposition research report that falsely alleged that Trump's campaign was colluding with the Russian government. He predicted that Durham will "write a very illuminating report about how this went down" once his probe is finished.
He also cautioned that Trump supporters who may be frustrated that no one is going to jail yet over the FBI's conduct need to understand there's a large gap between what they think happened and what is provable in a court of law.
"One of the things that's always frustrated me about the frustration of Trump's allies, and I include myself on that in this issue, is this idea that just because we think we know what happened, it should be easy to throw people in jail," Barr said.
This case illustrates that in a sense. We knew, or thought we knew, that Hillary Clinton in July, had given the green light on this thing — on the idea of her putting out a story to tie Trump to Putin. But the reason we knew that is because the CIA gave a report saying that they had some indications of this. And immediately — well, 'throw them in jail.'
That's not admissible evidence. And you could never build a case on that. The hard work had to be done, to actually get evidence of hearsay. But direct evidence, that happened. And through a lot of hard work, [the] people [who] were trying to bring people to justice, they were able to tell that story.
With direct evidence, as to the role of the campaign. And that's the kind of hard work that's required, to actually present a case in court. And to achieve a ... conviction. But I think the public has been conditioned that just because ... there's information out there in the ether that suggests something, that that should be enough. And it's not enough.
According to a report just filed by Special Counsel John Durham, lawyers for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign paid a technology company to “infiltrate” servers belonging to Trump Tower and the White House in order to fabricate a narrative connecting Donald Trump to Russia.
Durham’s filing focuses on potential conflicts of interest related to the representation of Michael Sussman, a former lawyer for the Clinton campaign. Sussman has been charged with making a false statement to a federal agent. He has pleaded not guilty.
The indictment against Sussman alleges that he told then-FBI General Counsel James Baker, less than two months before the 2016 presidential election, that he was not working “for any client” when he requested a meeting in which he provided the FBI with “purported data and ‘white papers’ that allegedly demonstrated a covert communications channel” between the Trump Organization and the Kremlin connected Alfa Bank.
In a section of Durham’s filing titled “Factual background,” it is revealed that Sussman “had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including a technology executive (Tech Executive 1) at a U.S.-based internet company (Internet Company 1) and the Clinton campaign.”
Durham’s filing says Sussman’s “billing records reflect” that he “repeatedly billed the Clinton campaign for his work on the Russian Bank-1 allegations.”
Sussman and Tech Executive 1 had met and communicated with a law partner who served as General Counsel on the Clinton campaign. Fox News reports that this lawyer is Marc Elias.
Per Durham, in 2016, Tech Executive 1 worked with Sussman, an American investigative law firm, several cyber researchers and employees at multiple internet companies to “assemble the purported data and white papers.”
The filing states, “In connection with these efforts, Tech Executive-1 exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data. Tech Executive-1 also enlisted the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.”
“Tech Executive-1 tasked these researchers to mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia,” Durham states, “In doing so, Tech Executive-1 indicated that he was seeking to please certain ‘VIPs,’ referring to individuals at Law Firm-1 and the Clinton Campaign.”
Fox News reports that at Sussman’s trial, Durham will establish that among the ill begotten data foraged by Tech Executive-1 and his associates is the domain name systems (DNS) internet traffic pertaining to “(i) a particular healthcare provider, (ii) Trump Tower, (iii) Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and (iv) the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP).”
The former chief investigator of the Trump-Russia probe for the House Intelligence Committee, Kash Patel, said the filing “definitively shows that the Hillary Clinton campaign directly funded and ordered its lawyers at Perkins Cole to orchestrate a criminal enterprise to fabricate a connection between President Trump and Russia.”
Joe Rogan tore into the mainstream media on a recent episode of his podcast "The Joe Rogan Experience," highlighting what he believes is coordination between members of the media and factions within the government.
After speaking with guest Jocko Willink about a recent story disclosing that 19 of the top 20 Christian Facebook pages in 2019 were operated as "troll farms" by eastern European operatives, Rogan tore into the media.
"The collusion between the media and the government is pretty apparent, especially the left-wing media and left-wing government," Rogan said. "It's pretty f***ing apparent that there are some narratives that get shared back and forth."
To bolster his claims of coordination, Rogan cited two notorious stories in particular: Trump-Russia collusion and the incident with Hunter Biden's laptop.
"They have talking points, and they don't talk about things that they're not supposed to, like the Hunter Biden laptop story or something that's actual news," Rogan explained. "Crazy story because if that was the Donald Trump Jr. laptop, holy f***ing s**t would that lead every night."
"I mean this whole Russia collusion story [was] completely nonsense," Rogan added.
"That's insane. That was three and a half years the American public was getting beat down with the Russia collusion thing," Willink agreed. "It was created. It was created by the Democratic Party ... it was created by insiders that were in the Democratic Party."
Content warning: rough language
Joe Rogan on Russian collusion hoax: \u201cNo one is being held accountable\u201dpic.twitter.com/Wt83z9TER0— Benny (@Benny) 1638309959
One of the major problems with the alleged coordination, Rogan explained, is that "no one is being held accountable."
"They were trying to literally impeach [Donald] Trump for some s**t that they made up," Rogan said. "Look, Trump's not a perfect guy. But this f***ing thing that he kept saying about the 'deep state'— it's real! It's 100% real!"
"The swamp is real. They're f***ing real monsters, and they were trying to get rid of him by lying," Rogan continued. "They were not spending their time trying to make the government work more efficiently and make the country a better place for everyone and prop up the middle class. No. They were trying to regain power, and they got it."
Rogan has been outspokenly critical of mainstream media in recent months, particularly after his bout with COVID-19 resulted in CNN pushing a narrative that he took a "horse dewormer" to treat it, a reference to ivermectin.
Rogan, in fact, took ivermectin while infected with COVID, but only the version made for humans. As the media pushed a certain narrative about ivermectin over the summer months, the fact that the drug has a human version, as well as a version for animals, was often (conveniently) left out.
Rogan floated suing CNN over claims the network perpetuated about the medicine he took.
John Durham's report shows the Obama admin had no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion when it launched the Crossfire Hurricane inquiry.
After years advancing the debunked conspiracy theory that Trump colluded with Russia in 2016, Strzok is pushing the same, garbage narrative.
Auten was deeply involved in Crossfire Hurricane, the counterintelligence investigation by the FBI into supposed Trump-Russia collusion.
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