Hillary Clinton finally breaks silence, calls John Durham claims ‘fake scandal’
Hillary Clinton finally breaks silence, calls John Durham claims ‘fake scandal’
If anyone knows scandals, it’s Hillary Clinton.
The former first lady, senator, secretary of state and two-time Democratic presidential candidate finally responded Wednesday to last week’s court filing by special counsel John Durham alleging that her 2016 presidential campaign paid for computer research to link then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia.
“Trump & Fox are desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones,” Clinton said on Twitter. “So it’s a day that ends in Y. The more his misdeeds are exposed, the more they lie.
“For those interested in reality, here’s a good debunking of their latest nonsense,” she concluded the post, attaching a link to a Vanity Fair article titled: “You’ll never believe it but Hillary Clinton did not, in fact, spy on Trump’s White House.”
Clinton broke her silence one day after she ignored questions from The Post about Durham’s claims after she and her daughter, Chelsea, were at a Queens restaurant.
Durham filed court papers Friday in which he alleged that a Clinton campaign lawyer enlisted a tech executive to help “mine” internet data from locations including Trump Tower and the White House “to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia.”
The documents filed by Durham, who was appointed special counsel by then-Attorney General William Barr in May 2019, have ignited a firestorm of criticism against the Clinton campaign and led to calls for a closer look at the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe, which was code-named “Crossfire Hurricane.”
Trump himself, who described the accusations as “bigger than Watergate,” called on the Justice Department Tuesday to declassify and release all of the remaining documents related to the claims that his campaign colluded with Russia.
“They have the declassification order. And they should declassify, absolutely, especially in the light of what has just happened and what has just been revealed,” the 45th president told Fox News.
Two Republican senators — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa — also asked the Justice Department Tuesday to declassify all outstanding Russia probe records. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the House minority leader, vowed on the same day to pursue Durham’s findings if Republicans gain control of the House after this fall’s midterm elections.
“Special Counsel John Durham’s continued investigation into the Russia hoax is essential to getting to the truth and protecting our democracy,” McCarthy said in a statement to The Post.
“Democrats and legacy media may want to sweep this alarming report under the rug, but if House Republicans earn the majority, we will use our oversight tools to determine whether federal funds were used, whether federal office-holders abused their power, and investigate other disturbing elements of this spying scheme to ensure nothing like it ever happens again,” he added.
Durham alleged in his filing Friday that Michael Sussmann, a Clinton campaign lawyer, “assembled and conveyed” spurious claims about the Trump Organization and Moscow-based Alfa-Bank “to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including … the Clinton campaign.”
Sussmann has been charged with lying to a federal agent, and pleaded not guilty in September.
According to Durham, Sussmann told then-FBI general counsel James Baker in September 2016 that he was not working on behalf of the Clinton campaign when he handed over documents purportedly detailing a supposed link between the Trump Organization and Alfa-Bank.
Sussmann then approached a second agency, believed to be the CIA, in February 2017 to hand over an “updated set of allegations” about the bank.
The defense team on Monday accused Durham of injecting “prejudicial — and false — allegations that are irrelevant to his Motion and to the charged offense.” Sussmann’s lawyers added that the special counsel’s claims were “plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool” and also took issue with the inference that digital surveillance by the Clinton team continued after Trump was inaugurated in 2017.
According to them, any information Sussmann handed over dated from before Trump entered the White House and Durham “conveniently overlooks the fact that Mr. Sussmann’s meeting with Agency-2 happened well after the 2016 presidential election, at a time when the Clinton Campaign had effectively ceased to exist.”
But Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said over the weekend that the latest filing proves Trump’s claim that “there was spying going on.”
“It was worse than we thought because they were spying on the sitting president of the United States,” Jordan told “Fox & Friends” on Sunday. “And it goes right to the Clinton campaign. So God bless John Durham.”
https://nypost.com/2022/02/16/hillary-clinton-calls-durham-claims-fake-scandal/
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