5 ex-Hillary campaigners 'invoked 5th Amendment' in Durham probe
'Russia collusion' investigation continues to rock Washington with 'bombshells'
By Bob UnruhPublished April 18, 2022 at 12:06pm
Hillary Clinton (Video screenshot)
Special Counsel John Durham's investigation into the origins of the "Russia collusion" conspiracy theory that Democrats projected on the 2016 Trump campaign – for years – continues to be rocked by bombshells.
Among the latest, according to constitutional expert and popular commentator Jonathan Turley, is that so far "at least five of the former Clinton campaign contractors/researchers have invoked the Fifth Amendment," refusing to cooperate "in fear that they might incriminate themselves."
In Turley's column he explains those details came in a filing in Durham's case against former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman, who is accused of lying to federal investigators.
Durham "is now moving to give immunity to a key witness while revealing that the claims made by the Clinton campaign were viewed by the CIA as 'not technically plausible' and 'user created,'" Turley reported.
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The court filing by Durham explained he proposed the immunity deal for an individual known as "Researcher 2" because it was "necessary."
"The only witness currently immunized by the government, Researcher-2, was conferred with that status on July 28, 2021 – over a month prior to the defendant’s Indictment in this matter. And the Government immunized Researcher-2 because, among other reasons, at least five other witnesses who conducted work relating to the Russian Bank-1 allegations invoked (or indicated their intent to invoke) their right against self-incrimination," Durham explained. "The Government therefore pursued Researcher-2’s immunity in order to uncover otherwise-unavailable facts underlying the opposition research project that Tech Executive-1 and others carried out in advance of the defendant’s meeting with the FBI."
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The investigation is into how the Democrats created and used against then-candidate and later President Trump for years false allegations that his campaign was colluding with Russia. In fact, the facts now show Hillary Clinton spurred the conspiracy theory in order to distract the American public from her own email scandals at the time.
Further, it was those who were assembling the false claims against Trump who actually used "Russian" sources, and there was some concern that a key piece of the conspiracy theory, the Steele dossier of unfounded claims, was influenced by Russian disinformation.
Sussman and others have tried to use attorney-client privilege to keep evidence out of Durham's hands, even as he detailed now the false Russian collusion claims related to Alfa Bank involved Clinton General Counsel Marc Elias and Christopher Steele.
"The Alfa Bank hoax and Sussmann’s efforts paralleled the work of his partner Elias at the law firm Perkins Coie in pushing the Steele Dossier in a separate debunked collusion claim," Turley explained. "The Federal Election Commission recently fined the Clinton Campaign and the DNC for hiding the funding of the dossier as a legal cost by Elias at Perkins Coie."
Durham also said the CIA and FBI both were dispatched, effectively, on a "wild good chase" by the Clinton campaign, because the allegations against Trump were found to be "manufactured and not even technically possible."
The Washington Examiner reported Jason Chaffetz, of Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures, described the "incestuous relationship" Durham is uncovering in the Clinton campaign.
"The allegation here is that Michael Sussmann got in with a meeting with the general counsel there at the Federal Bureau of Investigation by representing that he wasn't representing anybody," Chaffetz said, "But there's other documentation and flow of money and logs and whatnot. That's why this is a case that is important, because these people had this incestuous relationship to be able to actually go in and access things that other people that are on the receiving end of these — of these types of prosecutions don't get to do."
Chaffetz, a former congressman from Utah, was joined by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.
"I'm hearing that there's some emails that Durham has found that, again, show that they're — that Sussmann lied to the FBI and that he also lied and misrepresented regarding the connection of all of this with DNC, which is the Democratic National Committee, and the Clinton campaign and who paid for his bogus information that he was throwing out there," Biggs said.
"So, it's pretty interesting to see. And I'm not sure that the Clinton campaign folks or the Democratic Party wants to see this go to trial and air their dirty laundry even further," he said.
Durham has two active prosecutions going at this point, including a case against the main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele's anti-Trump dossier and the case against Sussmann, whose trial is scheduled to begin May 16.
The Examiner explained, "Some allies of Trump suspect Durham is building a conspiracy case that will envelop people in and around Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Clinton has denounced what she dubbed a 'fake scandal' stemming from Durham's investigation, though she was vocal about the Alfa Bank allegations when they began to emerge publicly in the closing weeks of the 2016 election."
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