The perjury case against Michael Sussmann, the Clinton presidential campaign torpedo charged with lying to the FBI, turned for the worse Thursday and Friday: two key witnesses backed two key allegations from federal prosecutors.
Sussmann is on trial for telling former FBI General Counsel James Baker that he, Sussmann, wasn’t representing a client when he approached Baker with hoked up dirt on then-GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. That dirt was allegations central to the Trump-Russia Collusion hoax.
Friday, campaign chieftain Robby Mook said Hillary Clinton herself OK’d the hit job. Thursday, Baker confirmed that Sussmann did indeed say he did not represent Hillary for America.
The latest testimony should, as a practical matter, seal the case brought by Special Counsel John Durham.
Defense Witness
Under cross-examination by federal prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis, Mook confessed the truth about Hillary Clinton’s deep involvement in the scheme to smear Trump.
“Mook was asked about the campaign’s understanding of the Alfa Bank allegations against Trump and whether they planned to release the data to the media,” Fox News reported:
Mook said he was first briefed about the Alfa Bank issue by campaign general counsel Marc Elias, who at the time was a partner at law firm Perkins Coie.
Mook testified that he was told that the data had come from “people that had expertise in this sort of matter.”
Mook said the campaign was not totally confident in the legitimacy of the data, but had hoped to give the information to a reporter who could further “run it down” to determine if it was “accurate” or “substantive.”
Yet, in addition to discussing the hoax with top campaign officials, Mook also talked to Clinton. “I discussed it with Hillary as well,” he testified:
“I don’t remember the substance of the conversation, but notionally, the discussion was, hey, we have this and we want to share it with a reporter,” Mook said.
The government asked Mook if Clinton approved “the dissemination” of the data to the media.
“She agreed,” Mook testified.
Mook later said he “can’t recall the exact sequence of events,” when asked if he shared the idea to give the Trump-Alfa Bank allegations to the media with Clinton before or after the decision was made.
“All I remember is that she agreed with the decision,” Mook testified.
In subsequent testimony, Mook seemed to back off, Fox’s account says. But the damage to Clinton was done.
No Substance
Perhaps worse for Sussmann, Baker confirmed the keystone allegation in Durham’s case: That Sussmann claimed he was not working for Clinton’s campaign when he offered the Russia collusion hooey to Baker.
That lie, prosecutors allege, is in a text to Baker. “I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the Bureau,” Sussmann texted Baker.
Baker also testified the FBI “concluded there was no substance” to claims that Trump was secretly linked to a Russian bank, or that Trump or his officials used Russian cell phones around the White House.
“There was nothing there,” Baker said.
An FBI agent testified likewise early this week.
Before trial, Durham had shown that the Clinton campaign and a team of political hitmen conceived and executed the Russian “collusion” tale.
The media endlessly recycled the hoax during the campaign and all through Trump’s presidency. The yarn included not only fables about Russian banks and imaginary cell phones, but also the bogus Steele Dossier, which peddled ridiculous falsehoods about Trump that the FBI used to get wiretaps on a Trump campaign aide.
Worse still was the Obama administration’s direct collusion with Clinton to keep it a secret. The CIA knew that Clinton concocted the dirt on Trump, Durham has alleged in filings. And, as The New American reported in October 2020, handwritten notes from John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director, show that Obama was well aware that Clinton targeted Trump.
But Obama didn’t try to stop it, and neither did then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Indeed, the only “collusion” during the 2016 presidential campaign was between the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and myriad Ukrainians. Clinton and the DNC sought dirt from Ukrainians that supposedly tied Trump to Russia.
Democrats hoped the information would force Trump off the ballot.
