As Twitchy reported earlier, Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman was found not guilty of lying to the FBI about the supposed secret server connecting the Trump organization to Russian Alfa Bank. As one juror pulled from the deep blue jury pool told the media, “There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI.”
Jonathan Chait already has his piece up about how the Durham investigation has thus debunked Donald Trump’s conspiracy theory about the Russia investigation.
John Durham tried to prove Donald Trump's conspiracy theory about the Russia investigation. Instead, he debunked it. https://t.co/iwb46YlI9f
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) May 31, 2022
What we learned at the trial is that the FBI didn’t take the server issue seriously.
In light of Russian hacking, this is hard to understand.
— Em (@emm_257) May 31, 2022
From what we’ve learned from the testimony given by FBI agents, they knew the Alfa Bank server story was bogus from the outset, but “the Seventh Floor” pushed for an investigation. Text messages from Sept. 22, 2016, show that the FBI was “leaning toward this being a false server.”
NRO’s Isaac Shorr has a thread debunking Chait’s piece.
Factual errors and missing context in this @jonathanchait piece, a thread: 1/7 https://t.co/KFNwz0TaCg
— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) May 31, 2022
Chait said the Durham inquiry has produced one indictment. That's incorrect, the FBI's Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to falsifying records to obtain the Carter Page FISA warrant. 2/7
— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) May 31, 2022
Chait calls the evidence against Sussmann "threadbare" and somehow neglects to mention the text message in which Sussmann does EXACTLY what Durham alleges. As I explain here, Durham's team is guilty of incompetence, but they weren't wrong on the merits.3/7https://t.co/eFjTwDKzEv
— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) May 31, 2022
Chait says that the researchers who uncovered the Alfa Bank-Trump connection "were not sure" if it was a secret communications channel, but one of the whitepapers handed over to the FBI stated that was "the only plausible explanation" for the data provided to the bureau. 4/7
— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) May 31, 2022
Email communications unveiled during the trial revealed that those researchers (namely Rodney Joffe) knew that the claim was dubious. Joffe asked other experts to read the whitepaper and answer "Is this plausible as an explanation… 5/7
— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) May 31, 2022
…not to be able to say that this is without doubt, fact, but to merely be plausible.”
Joffe was a client of Sussmann's, as was Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Sussmann billed all of his time spent working on the Alfa allegations to the campaign. 6/7
— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) May 31, 2022
Chait is entitled to his opinion on the Durham probe and Sussmann's actions, but he's doing his readers a major disservice here. 7/7
— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) May 31, 2022
Thanks for pointing out the Clinesmith omission. I have corrected.
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) May 31, 2022
So Chait’s entire rebuttal is that Schorr was right in pointing out his mistake.
Related:
AYFKM?! What Sussmann juror said to ‘some media’ after verdict tells us this was kinda sorta totally NOT an unbiased juryhttps://t.co/KVa5gTXUNP
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) May 31, 2022