The most recent filingJohn Durham, special counsel, reports that a chilling story continues to unfold despite the fact that most mainstream media outlets downplay it.
The story: A presidential campaign quite possibly used its allies in the tech sector to engage in political espionage—not just against the opposition candidate, but against a sitting president. The White House improperly accessed sensitive communications as part of the underhanded activity.
On Feb. 11, Durham filed a motion about potential conflicts of interest by Latham & Watkins, the law firm defending former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussman. Sussman fed the FBI a false story about a claimed “covert communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russia-based bank,” identified in news reports as Alpha Bank.
Let’s go back in time to provide some context.
Sussman was charged with lying to FBI. When he handed over the bogus information to the bureau, he told it he wasn’t acting on “behalf of any client.” Durham’s motion alleges that, in fact, Sussman had “assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI” on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and a “technology executive” at a U.S.-based Internet company. Significantly, Sussman’s partner, Marc Elias, was the general counsel for Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
The technology executive, referred to as “Tech-Executive-1” in the motion, has been identifiedRodney Joffe is an entrepreneur and expert in internet data. According to Durham’s motion, starting in July 2016, Joffe “exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data” to “mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate [Donald] Trump to Russia.”
Joffe even “enlisted the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university, who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of Internet data in connection with a pending Federal government cybersecurity research contract.” (Emphasis added).
This cyberespionage and “mining” of data continued after the election and reached into the Executive Office of the President at the White House. How could that happen? It could, because Joffe and his company “maintain[ed]EOP servers dedicated to the EOP in a sensitive arrangement that provided for it [Domain Name System] resolution services to the EOP,” according to Durham’s motion.
Joffe “and his associates exploited” that access “for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about [then-President] Donald Trump.”
Let that sink in.
Remember how the media made funTrump and called him paranoid for claiming that his communications were being tapped. It turns out, he may have been right.
According to Durham, Joffe and his cohorts were already collecting Trump’s Internet traffic at Trump Tower and at his Central Park West apartment building, before moving on to the White House when he became president.
Joffe would be involved in cyber hacking and spying so nefarious. According to Durham, Joffe said “he was seeking to please certain ‘VIPs,’ referring to individuals at [Perkins Coie] and the Clinton campaign.” That, of course, raises the obvious question: Which individuals inside the Clinton campaign knew and approved of what Joffe was doing? How high did this go? Durham’s motion doesn’t answer these very important questions.
Durham may already know the answers to these questions. There could be more. We’ll just have to wait and watch.
Joffe and his cyber-co-conspirators were not criminally charged. The usual five-year statute that applies to many violations federal law may have expired. Keep in mind, however, that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act does not allow for criminal prosecutions. 18 U.S.C. §1030, intentionally accessing a computer including “any nonpublic computer of a department or agency of the United States [which would include the White House] without authorization” can get you up to 10 years in prison. And it’s a violation when someone “exceeds authorized access,” which would certainly apply to what was happening, at least as described in Durham’s motion.
Even if no one is criminally charged, which university’s researchers participated in this spying conspiracy? Durham says that “numerous cyber researchers, and employees at multiple Internet companies” also helped assemble the data. Who were these researchers? Who were these Internet companies and researchers? These are important questions to answer.
We know that many tech companies are captured by leftist ideologyThey are manipulating and censoring information flow, which is a serious problem. But spying on a presidential candidate, and then the president? That’s astonishing.
All of these individuals and universities, as well as companies, must be exposed, shamed publicly, and prohibited from receiving government research funds or contracts. In the cybersecurity field, anyone who is willing to use their Internet access to sensitive data for political purposes cannot be trusted.
A break-in took place at the offices of Democratic National Committee at Watergate Hotel in Washington in June 1972. As we now know, operatives from President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign were there to tap phones and steal documents. It was perhaps the biggest scandal in American politics’ history and led to the downfall for a president.
As the Durham investigation continues, we will learn whether we have seen history repeat itself, but this time with sophisticated cyber tools replacing ordinary burglars’ tools. Although technology has improved, this behavior is still deeply wrong.
Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
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