A technology executive was paid to spy on former President Donald Trump’s residences and the White House when Trump was president, according to Special Counsel John Durham’s team of federal investigators.
Trump had made the claim early in his presidency, based on internal security sweeps at the time, but media outlets labeled it as false and did little or nothing to investigate the claims themselves.
The revelations are so scandalous, new polls find even a majority of Democrats want Clinton investigated. In a poll last month, 66 percent of Democrats wanted Clinton questioned. That’s 22 percentage points higher than how many in her party demanded a probe last fall, according to TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics (TIPP) research, according to Britain’s Daily Mail.
Lawyers for the Clinton campaign allegedly paid the technology executive to infiltrate servers at the Trump Tower and the White House, Durham said in court filings, in order to establish an “inference” and “narrative” to tie Trump to the Russian government. Durham’s office made the claim as part of his investigation that had brought charges against Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who had worked on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. He currently is charged with making a false statement to the FBI.
“Yep, there was spying going on, and it was worse than we thought because they were spying on the sitting president of the United States,” Jordan told Fox News. “And it goes right to the Clinton campaign. So God bless John Durham.
“His investigation is taking a long time. But we’re getting to now what we all suspected,” Jordan said. “The only thing we didn’t understand was it was worse than we thought.”
Durham alleged Sussmann “had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including a technology executive at a U.S.-based internet company and the Clinton campaign,” according to a section in the court filing, titled “Factual Background.”
Billing records he obtained suggest that Sussmann “repeatedly billed the Clinton campaign for his work on the Russian Bank-1 allegations” and that the unnamed technology executive met and communicate with Mark Elias, a left-wing lawyer and operative who has filed numerous election-related lawsuits on behalf of the Democrats. Sussman previously pleaded not guilty and accused Durham of acting in a politically motivated manner.
After Durham’s court filing was unsealed, Trump issued a statement claiming it provided “indisputable evidence” his campaign and office were being spied on by Democrats in a bid to connect him to the Russian government. The former president has long decried the Trump–Russia collusion narrative as a falsified witch hunt designed to imperil his political chances while bolstering left-wing mainstream media outlets’ ratings.
“This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution,” Trump said.
Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) said Sunday that Durham’s investigation uncovered a “whole new level of corruption and is of grave concern.
“I mean, this is a threat to our democracy itself,” Turner said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “It doesn’t matter really which political campaign this is or which political party this is. This is so wrong and allegations of such a level of illegal activity that goes directly to our faith in our own government that the truth must be found.”
Turner predicted that Durham’s probe could implicate former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey. Former President Barack Obama would likely also be implicated because it was his administration that oversaw security as the new Trump administration was coming into office.
“I think that what we see is not just political shenanigans or opposition research that you would see in the normal campaigns where people are trying to find information out about their opponents,” Turner said.
Trump’s allegations of being spied upon came when the media was reporting a Trump-Russia collusion narrative, also partly funded by the Clinton campaign through the Steele dossier. The $30 million Mueller investigation testified before the Senate and impeachment proceedings that there was no Trump-Russia collusion.
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice and wire services