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What Did John Durham Really Find Out About the Clinton Campaign?

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the Intramural Fields at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. By Gage Skidmore.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the Intramural Fields at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.

John Durham, the former United States attorney for the District of Connecticut, was appointed by former Attorney General William Barr in October 2020 as special counsel for the Department of Justice. He was tasked with investigating the origins of the high-profile FBI investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

On Friday, February 11, Durham filed a motion in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleging that Hillary Clinton’s campaign allies paid a tech company to spy on candidate Donald Trump’s communications.

Here’s What Durham Was Tasked With Investigating

In May 2017, Robert Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to serve as special counsel to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”

Durham was later tasked with investigating the origins of Mueller’s investigation, known as “Crossfire Hurricane,” which set out to determine whether allegations from the Hillary Clinton campaign about then-candidate Donald Trump operating a secret server that facilitated communications with Russia were true.

On October 31, 2016, Clinton’s campaign issued a statement from Jake Sullivan, who was then a senior policy advisor for Clinton’s campaign.

In the statement, Sullivan alleged that a “secret server registered to Trump Tower” may be the “most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.”

“Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump organization to a Russian-based bank,” the statement said.

Sullivan now serves as President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor.

In 2019, the Mueller Report revealed that there was no evidence former President Trump had colluded with Russia in any way.

What the Latest John Durham Court Filing Reveals

Durham’s investigation is not yet over. However, this month a motion was filed in federal court in the case of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman, who has already been charged with making false statements to the FBI about his work for the campaign.

Sussman was a partner at law firm Perkins Coie, which is well known for working with Democrat campaigns. The firm also hired Fusion GPS, the company responsible for the Russian “dossier” that contained inaccurate and unsubstantiated claims about then-candidate Donald Trump, tying him to Russia.

In Durham’s latest filing, he discusses a possible conflict of interest relating to Sussman’s attorneys at Latham & Watkins LLP. The law firm has represented others accused in the investigation.

The filing also alleges that Sussmann was involved in a coordinated effort to spy on Donald Trump’s communications from Trump Tower, which was his official private residence during the 2016 campaign. Durham explains how Sussmann was involved in a campaign to obtain data from a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project at a U.S. university, which has been identified in some reports as Georgia Tech. Durham suggests that the intention was to monitor communications coming in and out of Trump Tower.

The filing also suggests that the spying could have continued into Trump’s presidency, and that the Clinton campaign’s hired tech expert tasked researchers to “mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia.”

“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,” the filing says.

It goes on to state that the government’s evidence at trial will establish that among the Internet data that was exploited by the unnamed tech executive was domain name system (DNS) Internet traffic that pertained to “a particular healthcare provider,” “Trump Tower,” and “the Executive Office of the President of the United States.”

While the matter still needs to go to trial, the court filing from John Durham appears to suggest that tech executives hired by or connected to the Clinton campaign obtained Internet data relating to Trump’s campaign, his personal residence, and his presidential office.

You may read the full filing here.

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and report on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.

Written By

Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive's Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.