Rich Welsh| On Wednesday, Special Counsel John Durham had a federal judge agree to order documents that Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 presidential campaign said were considered protected by attorney-client privilege to be produced. Okay, who wants to bet on the documents are either lost, the dog ate them, or Qanon white supremacists stole them? Take your pick.
Durham was made a Special Counsel by former Attorney General William Barr and was assigned the task of getting to the bottom of the 2016 Trump-Russia collusion hoax that involved much of the Obama administration’s law enforcement and intelligence community that went rogue and tried to rig the election for Hillary Clinton, and then to overturn the 2016 election by fraudulently pursuing a case that was based on a debunked dossier that was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.
Durham is now prosecuting Michael Sussman, a former Clinton lawyer, for lying to the FBI when he walked into an FBI building off the street and provided false information about the servers in Trump Tower in New York City supposedly linking to the Alfa Bank, the bank of the Russian government. That information was fabricated. They added data to the server’s log files to make it appear there was communication with the bank. On top of that, Sussman told the FBI he was providing the information solely on his own, and was not working for anyone when he was really working for the Clinton campaign. It is a felony to lie to the FBI unless you’re a Democrat apparently.
They never thought Hillary would lose. They thought she was going to win the White House and all the criminal activities of the Obama administration perpetrated against Trump would just magically go away.
The New York Post earlier this week reported:
In court papers filed last month, Durham said the Democratic National Committee, Hillary for America, the Fusion GPS research company and the powerhouse Perkins Coie law firm — where Sussmann was formerly a partner — “have all withheld and/or redacted documents and communications” that could potentially be used against the defendant.
Durham said they made that decision “based on an apparent theory that political opposition research and/or public relations work … falls within the legitimate scope of attorney-client privilege and work-product protections.”
“They have done so despite the fact that almost all of these materials appear to lack any connection to actual or expected litigation or the provision of legal advice,” members of Durham’s team wrote.
Durham argued in the motion that the documents he is seeking are crucial to demonstrating the relationship between Sussmann and others, even if they were redacted. It’s the relationship he wants to prove because he’s being prosecuted for lying about not having a relationship with anyone when he turned over the false information.
According to Techno_Fog, a legal blogger at Substack, and a reliable source used a lot by Dan Bongino, a federal judge agreed.
UPDATE – Durham won the first part of the fight.
Durham's motion to compel has been granted.
"Privileged" Fusion GPS e-mails/docs will be provided to the court for in camera review.
The court will then determine whether the "privileges" apply. (Durham will get the docs.) https://t.co/sPmR8Qackg pic.twitter.com/PZTXlpVEqx
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) May 4, 2022
The court will review the documents behind closed doors, or “in camera,” before it decides they should be handed over to the prosecution so that they can be entered into evidence for the trial which begins later this month.
Out of 1,500 documents that the defendants have claimed have privilege, the court will only look at thirty-eight of them, according to a report by the Washington Examiner. That doesn’t mean other documents cann’t be introduced in future trials, according to the prosecution.
It remains to be seen how the judge will rule on the privilege claims after taking a look at the Alfa Bank-related documents. Thirty are internal Fusion emails, and eight relate to [tech executive Rodney] Joffe and Fusion.
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The judge asked Durham prosecutor Jonathan Algor whether Durham would come back for the other 1,500 documents if the judge ended up agreeing with the prosecution about these 38 records. Algor said “not for this trial” but left the door open for the future, saying that “Your Honor’s decision is important” for the investigation.
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Clinton campaign lawyer Robert Trout argued, “The government here has an erroneously cramped view of privilege” and called it a “false choice” to say something is either opposition research or covered by privilege. He said, “It is true that Donald Trump was an opposition candidate” but claimed Fusion had been hired to help with legal advice for the campaign. He said: “It may have been research about an opposition candidate, but the real purpose was to get our facts straight.”
The judge said some of the opposition research documents will be reviewed because while some of the work that was done by Fusion GPS may have been legal in nature, opposition research doesn’t qualify as privileged.
As what usually happens when it concerns the Clintons, five Hillary Clinton associates are expected to plead the 5th, where prosecutors are arguing a conspiracy to fabricate the notion that Trump colluded with Russia, and to get that information into the hands of the media and the Obama Department of Justice.
They never thought she would lose.
