The Russia hoax must be the biggest political story of the past five years. I certainly have treated it as such. The details added by Special Counsel John Durham in his filing last week in the case of Michael Sussman add slightly to the story and to the questions surrounding it. The unnamed “tech executive” at the heart of the filing is Alex Joffe.
On Monday Joffe released a statement responding to the filing. The statement is quoted in this NBC News story on the latest developments in the Sussman case. The Wall Street Journal breaks it down in its related editorial as follows:
Mr. Joffe’s response, in a Monday statement, is worth parsing. It describes Mr. Joffe as an “apolitical internet security expert” who “legally provided access” to the internet data from the White House.
“Under the terms of the contract, the data could be accessed to identify and analyze any security breaches or threats,” says the statement. And since there were “legitimate national security concerns about Russian attempts to infiltrate the 2016 election,” Mr. Joffe and “cyber-security researchers” prepared a “report of their findings,” which they gave to the CIA.
The Russians were a legitimate 2016 electoral threat, but Mr. Joffe’s statement doesn’t explain how or why he cooperated with Clinton representatives. If the contractor’s job was to monitor security threats to the U.S., then the responsibility was to report any suspicious activity to the government—immediately and in a classified manner.
But according to Mr. Durham’s filing, Mr. Joffe took his information to others—namely, lawyers for the Clinton campaign, who also brought in the oppo-research hit squad Fusion GPS. This partisan team spent months writing anti-Trump white papers full of unproven claims that they spread to the media. We doubt government contracts include: “In case of threats, first call Democrats.”
There is more to come, but it would be foolish to hold out hope that the Durham investigation will administer justice in the outrages committed on American citizens by Hillary Clinton, the Clinton campaign, the involved Perkins Coie attorneys, GPS Fusion, the FBI, the press and others in their pursuit of Donald Trump before and after the election.
It would certainly be nice to have all the perpetrators brought to justice. Short of that, it would be nice to have a full account of the relevant facts.
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