https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/durham-limited-in-presenting-evidence-that-collusion-claims-were-untrue-judge-says/ar-AAWA4qN?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=41cd67b5272d42cf90bde3e5a1ab294e
Washington Examiner
Durham limited in presenting evidence that collusion claims were untrue, judge says
Jerry Dunleavy - 1h ago
Special counsel John Durham will not be allowed to present “extensive evidence” of the inaccuracy of the Trump-Russia collusion claims in his case against Michael Sussmann — unless the Democratic cybersecurity lawyer argues their accuracy first.
Sussmann was indicted last September for allegedly concealing his clients, Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and “Tech Executive-1" Rodney Joffe, from FBI general counsel James Baker in September 2016 after Sussmann pushed since-debunked claims of a secret backchannel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank. Durham says Sussmann similarly concealed his client, Joffe, when he pushed further Trump-Russia collusion claims to the CIA in February 2017.
Judge Christopher Cooper, appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, said he would not allow Durham to present detailed evidence from the CIA demonstrating the falsity of the Alfa-Bank allegations unless Sussmann first tried to argue the collusion claims were true.
Durham had said if Sussmann “were to concede or decline to dispute the fact that no secret channel of communications actually existed” between the Trump Organization email server and Alfa-Bank, then prosecutors “would not seek to offer proof concerning the ultimate accuracy and reliability of the relevant data.”
The judge said the defense team had promised at last week’s hearing that it “will not seek to affirmatively prove the existence of a link between Alfa Bank and the Trump Campaign," and so “the Court will hold the government to its word, and will not allow it to put on extensive evidence about the accuracy of the data Mr. Sussmann provided to the FBI unless Mr. Sussmann does so first.”
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“The Court will permit the government to put on evidence reflecting the FBI’s ultimate conclusions — which the Court understands to be that the Alfa Bank allegations were unsubstantiated — as well as the ‘particular investigative and analytical steps’ the FBI took to reach them,” the judge ruled. “Such evidence is relevant to the government’s theory of materiality: that Mr. Sussmann’s alleged statement that he was not representing a client caused the FBI to handle the subsequent investigation differently than it otherwise would have.”
But the judge said he “will not allow representatives of the companies who maintained the servers that purportedly received communications from Alfa Bank servers to testify about their involvement in the FBI’s investigation.”
The judge also said he “will not allow extensive discussion of another federal agency’s [the CIA] investigation into the same data Mr. Sussmann provided, except to the extent that agency’s findings and analysis had direct bearing on the course of the FBI’s investigation.”
The judge said, “Sussmann would not open the door to further evidence about the accuracy of the data simply by seeking to establish that he reasonably believed the data were accurate.”
Sussmann’s lawyers objected to the various statements their client allegedly made to the CIA in 2017 being introduced as evidence during the May trial, but Durham insisted on it.
Durham revealed last week that while the FBI “did not reach an ultimate conclusion regarding the data’s accuracy,” the CIA concluded that the Alfa-Bank and Russian YotaPhone claims were not “technically plausible,” did not “withstand technical scrutiny,” were “user created and not machine/tool generated," “contained gaps,” and “conflicted with [themselves].”
Durham said his prosecutors expect to cite evidence at trial reflecting that “the FBI and Agency-2 concluded that the Russian Bank-1 allegations were untrue and unsupported."
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said the FBI concluded there were "no such links," while special counsel Robert Mueller said, "It's not true." A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report did not support the Alfa-Bank allegations.
Durham had pushed back on Sussmann’s efforts to limit the testimony of special agent David Martin of the FBI's cyber unit, with the special counsel saying if the defendant attempted to obtain trial testimony about the accuracy of the data he provided, then Martin would explain that the data "did not support the conclusions set forth in the primary white paper which the defendant provided to the FBI.”
The special counsel said Martin would also testify that “numerous statements in the white paper were inaccurate and/or overstated” and that people familiar with areas such as DNS data “would know that such statements lacked support and were inaccurate and/or overstated.”