In the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton promoted since-debunked claims that the Trump Organization had ties to a Russian bank.
The allegation, part of the long-running FBI investigation into the 45th president, is at the center of a new filing by special counsel John Durham — in which he alleged that the Clinton campaign paid an internet company to surveil servers at Trump Tower and the White House to try to make the Trump-Russia connection stick.
Clinton herself amplified the claim on social media, tweeting on Oct. 31, 2016: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”
Attached to the tweet was a statement from then-Clinton policy adviser Jake Sullivan, who alleged that the “secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia.”
“It certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists,” added Sullivan, who is now President Biden’s national security adviser.
Earlier that same day, Clinton tweeted: “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia.” The post included four bullet points that alleged Trump had a “secret server” to “communicate privately with a Putin-tied Russian bank called Alfa Bank.”
In September of last year, Durham announced the indictment of Michael Sussmann — a cybersecurity lawyer at powerful Democratic firm Perkins Coie — on a charge of making false statements to then-FBI general counsel James A. Baker about Sussmann’s links to the Clinton campaign while passing Baker information about the purported Trump-Alfa Bank link in September 2016.
According to prosecutors, Sussmann told Baker he was not working on behalf of the Democratic nominee, when in fact he “repeatedly billed the Clinton Campaign for his work on the [Alfa-Bank] allegations.”
The FBI investigated the purported link between the Trump Organization and Alfa-Bank and found insufficient evidence to support it. The indictment of Sussmann states that the server in question “was not owned or operated by the Trump Organization, but, rather, had been administered by a mass marketing email company that sent advertisements for Trump’s hotels and hundreds of other clients.”
The September indictment also states that Sussmann pushed the Alfa-Bank theory to at least one reporter at the New York Times. The claims about the servers were mentioned in a Times writeup published the same day as Clinton’s tweets, but the article noted that the FBI had concluded that “there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.”
Durham’s Friday filing alleged that Sussmann “assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including a technology executive” —since identified as Rodney Joffe — “and the Clinton campaign.”
Sussmann has pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Trump slammed Clinton on Saturday, saying Durham’s filing “provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia.”
“This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution,” he claimed. “In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death. In addition, reparations should be paid to those in our country who have been damaged by this.”
