Special counsel John Durham issued trial subpoenas for members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee as he pushed his theory of a “joint venture” in the case against Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, who represented the Clinton campaign, and Rodney Joffe.
Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, and the Perkins Coie law firm are fighting Durham’s efforts to compel the submission of withheld documents, arguing their claims of attorney-client privilege should keep the records concealed. However, Durham is continuing his legal pressure as he insists those groups played a coordinated role in pushing false Trump-Russia collusion claims.
Fusion “was not primarily providing or supporting expertise relating to legal advice; instead, it appears that the investigative firm’s primary, if not sole, function was to generate opposition research materials that the firm then shared widely,” Durham said this month.
“Meeting to agree on the express goal of a joint venture is precisely what happened here, on more than one occasion,” the special counsel said early Saturday morning.
“Tech Executive-1” Rodney Joffe, “Originator-1” April Lorenzen of the information services firm Zetalytics, and other researchers began to discuss “searching for and collecting derogatory internet data about the online activities of Donald Trump and his associates“ in June 2016, Durham said, adding Lorenzen “assembled and shared initial purported data” with Joffe, “who, in turn, shared the data“ with Sussmann.
“The joint venture continued and crystallized early in August 2016,” when Sussmann, Joffe, and “agents of the Clinton Campaign” met, Durham said, pointing to an Aug. 12, 2016, meeting where Sussmann, Joffe, Elias, and the co-founder of Fusion met in Elias’s office to discuss “the same Russian Bank-1 allegations that the defendant would later bring to the FBI.”
“The parties agreed to conduct work in the hope that it would benefit the Clinton Campaign, namely, gathering and disseminating purportedly derogatory data regarding Trump and his associates’ internet activities,” Durham wrote…….
Story continues at: She’s in trouble
