Special Counsel John Durham has issued additional subpoenas as part of his ongoing investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) probe into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential election, according to a Thursday report.
CNN reports:
The grand jury subpoenas for documents came earlier this month after Durham charged Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann with lying to the FBI in a September 2016 meeting. During that meeting, Sussmann handed over data purporting to show links between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. That tip became part of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election but the FBI ultimately couldn’t find evidence of a link.
In seeking additional documents from Sussmann’s former law firm, Perkins Coie, investigators from the special counsel’s office appear to be sharpening their focus on the Democratic political machinery during the 2016 campaign and efforts to tie Trump to Russia.
As Breitbart News previously reported, top Democrat election lawyer Marc Elias, regarded as a chief figure in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, departed Perkins Coie on August 22 — before Sussmann was charged. In 2016, Elias reportedly arranged for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democrat National Committee (DNC) to hire the Fusion GPS opposition research firm, a move which was hidden in federal election filings. In 2017, the Washington Post revealed details regarding Elias’s alleged involvement in the matter:
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.
Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.
After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The infamous dossier compiled by Steele was given to the FBI and was used to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to surveil one-time Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The FBI did not disclose the political origins of the document. The agency later misled the FISA court during the warrant renewal application process after learning that the dossier’s contents were discredited.
In announcing his departure from Perkins Coie, Elias made no mention of the Durham probe, instead saying that he was leaving the law firm with “eleven partners and three counsel” to launch his own new election law office, Elias Law Group LLP.
Some personal news.@EliasLawGroup pic.twitter.com/2R2PLT6fmY
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) August 22, 2021
Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), have expressed optimism about the prospect of Durham’s investigation bringing some form of justice.
“I’ve been probably the only guy in America who’s actually had confidence in John Durham,” Nunes told SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily earlier this month. “I’ve been saying this for a very long time, and that’s largely because he’s run a very closed investigation, unlike what you saw with [Robert] Mueller’s, and it’s an investigation like they should be, where you don’t have leaks to the fake news companies.”
“In this case, it is a quintessential definition of an indictment of lying to the FBI that I think is really a slam dunk,” Nunes continued, “and now the question becomes, can Durham get the next set of charges, which would be the larger conspiracy? No one believes that Sussmann and all these cats at the FBI and the Clinton campaign … didn’t know about this, right?”
“This is the first step, hopefully, of many,” he added.
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