The trial of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann crossed a critical threshold Friday when a key witness uttered the name “Hillary Clinton” along with a plan to spread Alfa Bank’s false claim of Russian collusion ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
For Democrats and many in the media, Hillary Clinton has long had a Voldemort-like status as “She Who Must Not Be Named” in scandals. However, his former campaign manager, Robby Mook, told a jury that Clinton personally approved a plan to spread the claim of covert communications between the Trump organization and the Russian bank. It was one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in American politics, and Mook implicated Clinton as giving the electorate a green light.
The mere mention of Clinton’s name sent shock waves through Washington. In past scandals, the Clintons have always evaded direct responsibility when aides were investigated or convicted, from the Whitewater land deals for cattle futures. Even when Long-sought documents in Whitewater they were discovered outside family quarters and with Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints on them, Washington moved quickly.
Clinton was not supposed to be the subject of Sussmann’s trial, because Obama-appointed Judge Christopher Cooper issued a series of orders limiting the scope of the trial and its evidence. The orders We check as “mast[ing] the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee…potential embarrassment.”
Yet even after obtaining such restraining orders, it was the defense that called Mook to the stand: off duty, in the middle of the prosecution’s case, because he was scheduled to go on vacation – and proceeded to confirm that Clinton herself approved of the tactic.
It was the worst kept but least recognized secret in Washington.
On July 28, 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s alleged plan to link Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from your use of a private email server.Obama was reportedly told how Clinton allegedly approved “a proposal by one of his foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by causing a scandal alleging Russian security service interference.”
Thus, Mook testified that Clinton did precisely what Brennan warned Obama she was planning.
The date of Brennan’s warning is important: It was three days before the FBI’s collusion investigation began. It also took a couple of months before Sussmann contacted then-FBI General Counsel Jim Baker, stating that he was not representing any clients. (He was an adviser to the Clinton campaign and, according to prosecutors, billed the campaign for the time of the meeting.)
There is a strikingly familiar pattern in both the Steele dossier, which became the basis of the Russia collusion investigation, and the Alfa Bank story. Campaign associates developed both claims while actively seeking to hide their connections from the public and the government, including allegedly denying funding of the Steele dossier and hiding that financing as court costs.
The campaign then pushed these baseless claims to the media and the FBI. In fact, prosecutors argued this week that Sussmann continued to push Alfa Bank’s claims after Trump was elected, in an apparent effort to fuel Russian collusion claims that were breathlessly reported by the media at the time.
When Clinton supposedly approved this effort, at least some people connected to her campaign knew that the Alfa Bank theory was never seen as believable by the researchers charged with supporting it. Those researchers had warned that it would be easy”make several holes” in the claim, according to prosecutors, and that the data could be seen as “a red herring.” However, trial witnesses admitted that they hoped the media would make the claims stick.
Despite a history of Clinton associates making baseless accusations to the FBI about the Steele dossier and Alfa Bank, Mook and another witness, Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias, insisted that preferred to use the media for such efforts. The campaign found a duct in a liberal magazinefor example, whose story was later cited as a “bombshell” report, as if the campaign had nothing to do with it.
For her part, Clinton not only approved of the use of the Alpha Bank claim, but helped present it as established fact, tweeting: “Apparently, computer scientists discovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a bank based in Washington.” Russia”.
That claim was later amplified by one of his campaign advisers, Jake Sullivan, who now serves as an adviser to President Biden. national security adviser. Sullivan stated at the time: “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have discovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russia-based bank.” Sullivan added that he “could only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing investigation into Russian meddling in our elections.”
As the FBI’s Baker and other witnesses told the jury this week, there was in fact “nothing there.”
Months after approving the Alpha Bank strategy, Clinton called in December 2016 to censor opponents whom he accused of spreading falsehoods to try to influence the elections. She declared that “it is now clear that so-called ‘fake news’ can have real-world consequences.” In fact, Clinton has pushed for state and corporate censorship while he calls for a “world reckoning” with those who spread disinformation. Of course, Sussmann could still face the real consequence of conviction given the strength of the evidence against him. However, there are likely to be no consequences, let alone a “reckoning,” for Hillary Clinton.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
Reference-thehill.com