John Durham vs. the Beltway Swamp Michael Sussmann’s trial showcased the incestuous culture of elite Washington. By Kimberley A. Strassel
The Michael Sussmann trial is over, but the stench lingers. Special counsel John Durham did more than expose Hillary Clinton’s dirty political tricks. He exposed the incestuous elite Washington world that enabled those tricks to succeed. America, meet again the Beltway swamp.
Mr. Sussman was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI, but not before the Durham team revealed the Clinton campaign’s work in 2016 to use both the FBI and the media to smear Donald Trump. The campaign relied on outside techies for false accusations of Trump links to Russia’s Alfa Bank, which Mr. Sussmann fed to the FBI. Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele separately funneled their infamous dossier to the Bureau. Then the Clinton team shopped the dirt to the media, using the fact of FBI investigations as proof it deserved coverage.
Still, it’s a long way from unfounded smears to full-fledged FBI investigations. The entire Clinton operation depended on getting the FBI to bite. The Durham trial was a glimpse at the chummy web of brokers who used their access and influence to make that happen.
One trial revelation was that Rodney Joffe —the tech executive who used privileged access to nonproprietary data to create the Alfa claims—was a confidential human source for the FBI in 2016. Yet Mr. Joffe, according to testimony, didn’t take his accusations to his regular handler. He instead gave them to . . . Mr. Sussmann, a lawyer in private practice whose clients included Mrs. Clinton.
Why? Mr. Sussmann was tight with the FBI. So tight that according to trial evidence, the bureau in 2016 allowed him to edit the draft of one of its press releases. Mr. Sussmann was even on a first-name basis with then-FBI general counsel James Baker. He was able to text his “friend” (Mr. Baker’s description of their relationship) and score a meeting the next day. He assured “Jim” he didn’t need a badge to get in the building—he already had one. All this allowed Mr. Sussmann (who later sought to recruit Mr. Baker to his firm, Perkins Coie) to avoid the pesky agents and questions that would accompany any average Joe trying to sell the FBI on wild claims.
Mr. Joffe meanwhile called a separate special contact at the FBI (again, not his handler), an agent who had once nominated the techie for an award. Mr. Joffe relayed his Alfa data again and asked the agent to pass it along but not tell anyone he was the source. The prosecution during trial dryly asked this agent if he was familiar with “circular reporting”—where a source plants info with two different parts of the FBI to make it look corroborating. It’s a crafty tactic—one that most people wouldn’t have the access to pull off.
The Steele dossier likewise received special handling. Fusion GPS happened to choose for its dossier duties a guy who’d also worked as an FBI source. Mr. Steele initially went to regular FBI agents. But he followed up with his own top contact—former senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife worked for (where else?) Fusion. Mr. Ohr handed the dossier up to Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe. Mr. Steele separately shopped his dossier to a top State Department appointee, Jonathan Winer —who also handed it up the chain.
Getting the dirt to the top made all the difference. Prosecutors in the trial introduced an internal message from FBI agent Joseph Pientka two days after the Sussmann-Baker meeting, reading: “People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server. . . . Did you guys open a case? . . . Its [sic] not an option—we must do it.” This despite testimony from rank-and-file agents who said they’d quickly dismissed the claims as ludicrous.
And the powerful guys at the top continued to work their influence. Former CIA director John Brennan tipped Harry Reid to the collusion claims, prompting the Senate minority leader to write a letter that went public with the accusations. Mr. Comey engineered a Trump briefing in January 2017 that served as catalyst for BuzzFeed to publish the dossier. Mr. Comey secretly memorialized his privileged conservations with the president, later leaking these to provoke the appointment of his colleague and mentor Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate President Trump. All this was aided by the Beltway media, which ably served as scribes for their claims, and those of their buddies at Fusion GPS, some of whom formerly worked for the Journal.
The trial environment was no less intimate. Judge Christopher Cooper worked with Mr. Sussmann at the Clinton Justice Department in the 1990s. Merrick Garland, today attorney general, officiated at the judge’s marriage to Amy Jeffress, an Obama Justice Department official and now a private lawyer representing former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. And on and on the special circles go, down to the judge’s refusal to grant prosecutors’ request to dismiss a juror who admitted her daughter is on the same crew team as Mr. Sussmann’s child.
None of this—the special access, the abuse of power—would be granted to an average American, and it explains how the Clinton team was able to spiral a dirty trick into a national hysteria. If Washington institutions want to reclaim the public trust, they’ll first need to remember that the country is rooted in the notion of one set of rules for all. Not a special set for D.C. operators.
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