While Baker may no longer work for the FBI, he did at the time Sussmann fed him the Alfa Bank folly. As an American, he should have been appalled that the former Clinton campaign attorney would play the law enforcement and intelligence communities for political purposes. Also, had Baker pulled his cell phone records earlier, the text could have served as a separate false statement charge—one proven in black-and-white—but the delay in Baker finding the text allowed the statute of limitations to expire.
Bill Priestap, the assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division for the FBI in 2016, likewise displayed a grudging demeanor when testifying on behalf of the special counsel. When asked whether it was “important” for Sussmann “to fully disclose his ties to the Clinton campaign,” rather than provide a straightforward answer, Priestap sparred with the prosecutor, first saying it “would have been part of several factors.” Then, when pushed, Priestap said, “I’m struggling on your use of the word ‘important.’ It’s a motivation that is relevant, but not the only factor.”
Prosecutors, however, had ample other evidence that established the materiality of Sussmann’s misrepresentation to Baker. But the jurors didn’t care because the jury, in the truest sense, was a jury of Sussmann’s peers. Just as his actual colleagues, Baker and Priestap, shrugged off the Section 1001 false statement offense, so did the jury, who could easily envision their neighbors and friends sitting in his stead.
But the proof that the FBI is no longer “ours” came even before the jury verdict—months earlier, when Special Counsel John Durham revealed in a discovery update that the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General withheld evidence from Durham’s team.
The DOJ’s OIG is charged with conducting independent investigations related to DOJ employees and programs, including alleged misconduct by FBI agents. In preparing for the Sussmann trial, the special counsel’s office met with the OIG in October 2021 “to discuss discoverable materials that may be in the OIG’s possession.”
Even though the OIG possessed two of Baker’s FBI cellphones, prosecutors were not told of the phones’ existence by the OIG. Rather, the special counsel only learned of the two cellphones on January 6, 2022, when another FBI employee mentioned them.
The same discovery update that revealed the OIG had failed to mention Baker’s cell phones also noted that the OIG had falsely told Durham’s team that “a written forensic report” was the only information it possessed concerning a meeting between Sussmann and the OIG.
That meeting had occurred in early 2017, when Sussmann, on behalf of an unnamed client now known to be Joffe, went to the IG with a report that his client “had observed that a specific OIG employee’s computer was ‘seen publicly’ in ‘Internet traffic’ and was connecting to a Virtual Private Network in a foreign country.” The OIG provided the special counsel with the forensic report, but in doing so, also represented to prosecutors that it had ‘no other file[] or other documentation’ relating to this cyber matter.”
However, after Sussmann’s defense team informed Durham that Sussmann had personally met with the IG, the special counsel’s office circled back and, amazingly, the OIG discovered additional documentation related to Sussmann’s meeting with the IG. That the OIG—the entity charged with investigating FBI misconduct—withheld not one, but two pieces of evidence from the special counsel’s office until cornered should crush any remaining faith our country holds in the FBI.
And there was little trust left after the FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane on the most ridiculous of pretexts; after text messages revealed Lisa Page and Peter Strzok’s anti-Trump sentiments drove the Crossfire Hurricane team members; after the FBI and DOJ obtained four court surveillance orders based on fraud and then illegally surveilled Carter Page; after fired FBI Director James Comey leaked to the press, via an attorney friend, memos he had written following meetings with then-President Trump, to prompt the appointment of a different special counsel; and after FBI agent William Barnett told investigators that he believed Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office used the prosecution of Gen. Michael Flynn “to get Trump.”
The special counsel’s prosecution of Sussmann offered an opportunity for the country to see at least a small acknowledgment that the politicization of the FBI would not be tolerated. Instead, Americans witnessed confirmation by former FBI agents, the OIG, and the DC jury that the FBI is theirs, not ours.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/01/the-special-counsel-proved-the-fbi-belongs-to-the-swamp/