Special counsel John Durham is sending a signal that more indictments are coming, says Kash Patel.
“When you issue an indictment for lying to the FBI, like they did [Michael] Sussmann, it’s two to five pages max. It’s unheard of to be 27 pages. So why put all that information out there?” It’s “the biggest signal that more is coming,” says Kash Patel.
Kash Patel deposed former Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann as part of his investigations into allegations of Trump–Russia collusion with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and that deposition became a key part of Durham’s indictment of Sussmann, who was a lawyer for the Clinton campaign.
In this episode, he breaks down what’s in the indictment and where Durham’s investigation is likely headed.
Below is a rush transcript of this Kash’s Corner episode from Sep 24, 2021. This transcript may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Kash Patel: Hello everybody, and welcome back to Kash’s Corner.
Jan Jekielek: So, Kash, we’re gonna talk about something that you played a pretty important role in today. We’re gonna look at Perkins Coie, a lawyer, Michael Sussmann’s, the indictment against him by special counsel, Durham. This is something a lot of people are talking about.
It’s a 27-page indictment for something that might typically take two to five pages. This is what I’m hearing from a lot of people. Briefly tell me, what is this?
Mr. Patel: So basically we’ll get into the details, but 1,001 count being a former federal public defender and federal prosecutor dealt with these cases a lot. He is basically saying, you came in and lied to law enforcement, to cops, to the FBI. And that’s what they’re saying Michael Sussmann did, they’re alleging he went in to the FBI and lied to them.
Those indictments tend to be two to five pages maximum. I’ve done them myself, I’ve defended them myself. And so a lot of folks are curious as to why you would lay out what we call a 27-page speaking indictment. And there are a number of reasons for doing it that way. I can only speculate since I’m not John Durham.
Mr. Jekielek: So why don’t you break down what is in this indictment?
Mr. Patel: Michael Sussmann is one of the top two lawyers for the Hillary Clinton campaign when she was running for President in 2016 and the DNC. His law firm, Perkins Coie, had himself, Sussmann and his partner, Marc Elias, be the top two law firms in the entire country for the whole of the Hillary Clinton campaign for President and the Democratic National Committee.
So a large role played by this lawyer because they were paid tens of millions of dollars to obtain this role and execute everything from election law to campaign finance, to any criminal allegations that might come up to state law as to how voting is supposed to be done in Alabama versus New York versus California campaign ads. The gamut runs pretty far and wide, which is why their retainer is so high, but they’re the two premier lawyers for the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign.
Mr. Jekielek: I mean, and so, this is a bigger role than say the first indictment that John Durham made, which was the indictment of Kevin Clinesmith.
Mr. Patel: So people forget, this isn’t John Durham’s first indictment, it’s his second, and John Durham charged Clinesmith with doctoring a document, an email to the federal judge in federal court that was a scene reviewing the FISA application search warrant. So that was a pretty big deal that someone who worked at the FBI was charged with lying basically to a federal court because he changed what was in an actual email, and then submitted that email to the court, knowingly doing that.
And that first individual, Clinesmith pled guilty, so he’s a convicted federal criminal. And that was the first indictment from some months ago. This is the second one, now we’re moving on to the private sector, the lawyers, the lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign. And it’s very interesting timing and a read.
Mr. Jekielek: So you have the top Hillary Clinton lawyer, or one of the two top Hillary Clinton lawyers allegedly going out and lying to the FBI. What are they lying about?
Mr. Patel: In the indictment they are alleging, John Durham is alleging that basically Michael Sussmann on behalf of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign went into the FBI and met with the general counsel. Let’s just hit pause for a real quick second. The FBI has 40 some thousand employees maybe. The general counsel is the number one lawyer at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Every other lawyer works for him. This individual, Sussmann, was able to, based on his relationships with his lawyer and his service at DoJ before he went to Perkins Coie, he is able to get a meeting and walk into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s headquarters and sit down with the general counsel of the FBI, which is a big deal in and of itself.
But he, according to the indictment, Sussmann went into this office to see Baker and provide this information that they’re talking about in the indictment, this stuff that we’ll get into about Alfa Bank. And he wrote a white paper, Sussmann had his team write a white paper that was allegedly paid for by the Clinton campaign.
And he presented it to James Baker of the FBI and said, I’m just being a good Samaritan, I need you guys to review this, and thanks for meeting with me. What the indictment alleges as a criminal conduct is not the handoff of that information. It’s that Sussmann, according to the indictment lied about who his client was.
Who he was doing on behalf of, who paid him to collect that information and submit it to the FBI, which is a lie, if you’re lying to the FBI about it. He never revealed to Baker, according to the indictment that his client was the Hillary Clinton campaign. In fact, according to the indictment, Sussmann actually goes out of his way to say, he is not there on behalf of anyone, he’s just stumbled upon this information and I’m presenting it to you, James Baker, at the FBI.
Mr. Jekielek: And, of course, the information, what Sussmann was alleging was, of course, could have been incredibly significant if it were true.
Mr. Patel: Yes, if it were true. What Sussmann is alleging is that, to get into a little bit of the weeds on the whole Russiagate scandal from 2016 onwards is, and you have to remember the timing of this. This was before the presidential election in 2016, in September-ish, October-ish of 2016, he goes to the FBI and says, I have information that Trump, the other candidate, not his candidate, but the opposing candidate for President, his building and his enterprise have been permeated by a Russian bank and a Russian internet server that’s allowing them to conspire with the Russian government or people in Russia to steal the election, was the allegation.
Pretty significant and pretty damning if it were true. The only problem is per the indictment and per my own investigation when I ran Russiagate for Chairman Nunes on House Intelligence, we knew at the time none of that information was true. And in fact the FBI and this indictment comes out and flat out says that the people who did the research for Michael Sussmann said themselves, they didn’t believe that the connection between the Alfa Bank server and the Trump campaign even existed, and it would be a stretch to even put it down on paper. That’s all in the indictment.
So if it were true would be pretty damning, but I have a little bit of a personal role in this because of my 2016 job back on the House Intel Committee.
Mr. Jekielek: Right, well, you actually wrote the deposition that forms a significant part of this indictment.
Mr. Patel: When we were doing, when we were charged by the speaker at the time in 2016 to invest what they call the Russian active measures against the US election, part of our job under Chairman Nunes was to call in 60 some witnesses and swear them in under oath and depose them, question them, interrogate them.
And we depose principals, attorney generals, FBI directors, deputies, private individuals, Clinton campaign officers. And one of the people we interviewed and deposed was Michael Sussmann. And I actually took that deposition, and that deposition of Michael Sussmann sworn testimony from 2016 is cited in John Durham’s indictment from just the other week.
And what it says was, it takes part of the questioning and it says, were you, Michael Sussmann, working on behalf of anybody in regards to this Alfa Bank information? And he in the deposition that I took said, yes, it was on behalf of a client, and he repeated it and confirmed it, the deposition is in the indictment, it speaks for itself, but he wouldn’t tell me back then in 2016 who the client was, even though we knew.
They claimed attorney client privilege and that they wouldn’t let us get into who the campaign or who the figure was, but we had proven it back then, which is why we took that deposition with such rigor on those line of questions.
Mr. Jekielek: Well, and it’s very interesting because, well, let’s actually sketch this out.
Mr. Patel: So Perkins Coie, this huge international behemoth law firm, very well-respected is hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to be their lawyers for the presidential election cycle of 2016. Big job, right? Obviously you’re representing the Democratic nominee for President and the entire Democratic National Committee.
So Elias and Sussmann are the two guys overseeing this entire architecture of legal representation. And those guys get paid, those guys, Perkins Coie, get paid tens of millions of dollars from the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
What do Sussmann and Elias do? They take that money and go out and hire Fusion GPS, which I’m sure many of our viewers are familiar with, an internet research firm. And I believe they’re the ones cited in the indictment is Fusion GPS and their CEO, Glenn Simpson. They paid Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS millions of dollars to conduct research against President Trump’s campaign, including all the Russia stuff.
Then Fusion GPS hires Christopher Steele who also I’m sure viewers are now familiar with in the Steele dossier. So the money, just to simplify goes from the Hillary Clinton campaign to the Hillary Clinton campaign’s lawyers to the people doing the internet research firm, Fusion GPS, and Steele. So they are paying, they, the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign are paying for this research.
Mr. Jekielek: You mean opposition research?
Mr. Patel: Yes, opposition research. So they, the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign through Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS and Steele are paying millions of dollars to get opposition research against President, or then at the time candidate Trump and his entire campaign. Bottom line, they’re spending millions of dollars on that.
Now in and of itself, I’ll tell you that there’s nothing wrong with going to get opposition research against your opponent, that’s what political cycles do all the time, but this is problematic for reasons I think we’re gonna get into.
Mr. Jekielek: At the same time as they’re kind of running the whole legal operation and everything you just mentioned. Sussmann goes to someone he knows well at the top of the FBI legal team, Baker. And he shows him this connection, this alleged connection, Alfa Bank, Trump campaign or Trump organization.
And at the same time, from what we know, actually from this UK legal case-Where Christopher Steele was actually on the stand. We also know that it was Sussmann who introduced this Alfa Bank, Trump connection into the Steele dossier in the first place.
Mr. Patel: Right.
Mr. Jekielek: Which is, again, fascinating.
Mr. Patel: You’re talking about another track of this entire operation that’s sort of outlined in Durham’s indictment. Not only did Sussmann on behalf of the Clinton campaign per the indictment take this information to the FBI, he’s also taking the information and seeding it into areas of the media.
So that’s the other problematic portion of the allegations in the indictment because this information that was false per the indictment, and that from my belief, from my investigation of Russiagate, we knew then that back then and now it’s coming out that it is so.
He’s not only seeding it to a law enforcement agency, which we’ll get to the details of that in a second as to what they did with it, but the media because they want the media to start running these stories before the election. And that’s exactly what happened.
So he gives it to Christopher Steele, and Steele starts giving it through Fusion GPS and others to people in the media. And Sussmann himself allegedly meets with people in the media to start planting these stories. And what happens? Right before the election there’s a story that breaks nationally that says, it looks like President Trump is somehow connected with the Russian government through these Alfa Bank servers.
And Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, even tweets it and said, and pretends like she didn’t know anything about it. Look at President Trump, he’s connected with Russians, don’t vote for him. And that’s pretty damning information to put out a week or two right before an election.
Mr. Jekielek: So basically what you’re saying is that information from the same source, which is a highly politically motivated source is going both, to the press and going to the FBI.
Mr. Patel: Yes. And you’re probably asking, well, what’s the problem with that? And we just highlighted why it was a problem for the media because the information wasn’t true and you have a presidential candidate pushing out and national media pushing it out on a US presidential election.
Here’s the other problem, shifting back to the FBI component of this, right? This information, which we knew back in 2016 and ’17 and ’18 when we were uncovering the Russiagate investigation on House Intel was, we knew was false. But at the time what Sussmann was doing was propping it up as true and accurate, or at least credible.
And he asked his FBI friends to take it and then use it in their investigations into the Trump campaign. So now not only do you have a political media sort of scandal investigation on one side, but as we now know also the FBI was on the verge of obtaining a FISA warrant against Carter Page, the then Trump campaign associate.
FISA warrant, federal search warrant, extremely intrusive, goes up on your phones, on your computers and everyone you’re talking to, you can see text messages, you can hear stuff, you could read emails. It’s very, very invasive.
But as we now know, the FBI used that information, partly that was given from Sussmann to help a federal judge obtain probable cause and go up and surveil this guy. So it’s a pretty big deal now for the first time in that I know of in US history that you have a presidential candidate who is under surveillance right before the election because of this information.
Mr. Jekielek: One of the things that’s been alleged is that they were kind of expecting they would actually find something having these incredible surveillance tools at their disposal.
Mr. Patel: And that’s one of biggest problems I have with that as a former national security prosecutor who used the FISA process and applied for FISA against terrorist targets and the like, and went to the FISC and made those applications and the extensive work behind them. You’re not supposed to go to a federal judge and say, well, we think this guy is bad and we hope to find out why he is bad, please give us a warrant.
That’s simplifying it enormously, but that’s the essence of it. You’re supposed to go to a federal judge and say, these are the reasons the target is bad, these are the reasons we think he’s breaking the law. And sometimes you’re proven wrong, but if you do it on a good faith basis, that’s okay, the law allows for that.
What the Hillary Clinton campaign did through Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS and Steele was, and ultimately the FBI is take information. They knew, they, the FBI couldn’t verify, and they knew that there was this culpatory information that they withheld from the court. And more importantly, if that wasn’t enough, they also knew there were sourcing problems with the information that was coming in, but they put it in an application anyway.
And like you said, Jan, took it to the FISC and said, and were basically like fingers crossed, hopefully we get a warrant, then we’ll find out what we’re actually looking for, which violates the purpose of a FISA warrant.
Mr. Jekielek: Okay, let’s cover a couple of things. We know that some of the people in this tech company that we’re looking at this Alfa Bank, Trump organization connection, we knew that they didn’t think there was anything really there. Basically I think what you said was that they knew it wasn’t true. This is what you’re saying. So just qualify that for me.
Mr. Patel: Sure, if you look at the Durham indictment, it’s not anything I know because I never talked to these tech companies or these researchers during our investigation, but what Durham is saying is, during through his investigation is that the people that Sussmann hired to do the research regarding Alfa Bank, they themselves said in the indictment, we don’t believe that there’s a connection here.
And that per saying so in writing would almost be putting down a lie. I’m using my own words, but it’s in the indictment. So that’s where that information for me comes from. And that’s pretty damning. If the person that Sussmann hired to say, there’s a Trump, Alfa Bank, Russia connection, is he himself the expert saying there isn’t, and we can’t really get it there. But then there’s more emails in the Durham indictment that say, well, how do we make it look so?
Which is really problematic because now you have the person who is the expert saying, we can’t get there because the information doesn’t support it, but now there’s an exchange between the individuals involved who say, how do we couch it? How do we mask it? So it’s like that anyway.
And I think that’s why Durham took, and one of the reasons Durham took so much time in laying out a 27-page indictment. So you see the extent to which Sussmann’s work product for the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign, what went into the FBI and the level it went to deceive, I believe people in the FBI and the FISC and the FISA warrant.
Mr. Jekielek: Fascinating. Okay, so there were a whole bunch of elements to sort of crafting this Trump, Russia collusion narrative, but how important was this Alfa Bank, Trump organization connection from, which was highlighted in I think late October?
Mr. Patel: Well, I’ll just couch it like this. Flip the seats around the deck, move the deck chairs a little bit, right? Say President Trump’s campaign in 2016, hired law firm X to go in and research a connection between the Clinton campaign headquarters and the government of Russia and a bank, and say, whatever you find, make sure you put it down in paper and find experts to say that the Clinton campaign, irrespective of the facts, was coordinating and working with the Russian government right before the 2016 presidential election.
That would have been international headline news, right? That’s exactly what per the indictment what John Durham is saying, the Clinton campaign did to the Trump campaign. And that’s why it’s so problematic, but that’s also why it’s not getting a lot of coverage because the roles are, as they are, it’s against President Trump coming from the Clinton campaign. And most of the media doesn’t wanna cover it, but I don’t think they’re gonna be able to avoid it for much longer.
Mr. Jekielek: I guess another way to ask, would there have been a Mueller investigation without this specific piece of the puzzle?
Mr. Patel: That’s a great point, and I think I overlooked that. Yeah, I don’t know because this is another facet of what the Sussmann work product here does is not just the media operation that they launched, not just the FBI investigation and FISA process against the presidential candidate, but ultimately we had a special counsel.
And that special counsel was charged with finding out among other things how this Alfa Bank stuff worked with the Trump campaign because by that time Mueller was up in late spring, early summer of ’17. One of the questions that he was charged with answering was, these Russian connections surrounding Alfa Bank because the information behind it hadn’t come out in our investigation.
Remember, Congress is very limited in terms of what we can get. The documents we can get, the witnesses we can get to come forward. We don’t have the grant subpoena power, the investigatory powers, the law enforcement agents doing our work. It’s just staffers on the Hill trying to do an oversight investigation.
Mueller comes in and can use all of the Department of Justice’s powers to go in and investigate this stuff. And one of the main legs of his investigation was to look at some of this Alfa Bank stuff because if true, it would have shown that Trump was coordinating with the Russian government.
Mr. Jekielek: Okay, so we keep talking about, and I find this really fascinating that this is a very large 27-page indictment compared to what was necessary. Now I know you think there’s something bigger afoot here other than just simply this indictment and then this charge.
Mr. Patel: I do, I do. And remember, it’s not just this one, it’s this coupled with the Clinesmith indictment, okay? These two indictments cover two big components that we’ve been talking about, about the Russiagate investigation. This one is largely involved with the media campaign right before the election, and then seeding that into the FBI.
The Clinesmith indictment goes one step further, I think, and says, he, the lawyer at the FBI took information from the intelligence community and doctored it and when presenting that to the FISC, the FISA court. And so now you have a layered investigation in reverse almost.
He, Clinesmith was the one closest to the FISC and the intelligence community. He, Michael Sussmann is closest to the FBI and the media portion as it relates to Alfa Bank servers. So I think there’s a larger conspiracy at play here.
And it’s sort of laid out in the 27-page indictment Durham put out because he identifies not by name, but he identifies six to eight individuals by title. And I think I can recognize most of them, if not all of them. And those are major players that we deposed and investigated during our 2017-18 investigation into Russiagate. So I think he’s just starting, if you want my opinion.
Mr. Jekielek: Okay, so that’s really interesting because there’s a lot of people that didn’t think, maybe didn’t even expect to see an indictment of someone like Michael Sussmann, but so one of the things that folks concerned about justice being done, I’m hearing from, they’re saying, well, actually it’s very likely that Durham may actually be defunded, there’s only a few days left in his official funding. So what do you think about that?
Mr. Patel: I think it’s tragic that, that so many in the media are sort of focusing on that and not a federal indictment for one of the biggest political scandals in US history, if not the biggest. This individual, Michael Sussmann, was just charged a federal trial, a federal case on average takes 12 to 18 months to adjudicate whether it’s by plea or trial.
So I laugh at anyone in the media who tells me, they are worried about John Durham being defunded. He literally can’t because he is in the middle of a federal prosecution, so I don’t worry about any of that. And I think he’s gonna keep going, so there’s no defunding issue for me.
Mr. Jekielek: Again, this is very interesting because I guess, you’ve been one of the people that’s been kind of bullish on Durham. Right? Expecting that that, that he would actually come through with something. It seems like he has. So another cause for concern, which I’ve seen, and this is something that our friend, Lee Smith, has actually written about. And I’ve talked to him about it is this, is the fact that, that the judge in the case actually has some pretty strong connections with the Democratic party.
Mr. Patel: Yeah.
Mr. Jekielek: Is this something people should be concerned about?
Mr. Patel: It’s something that should be at least be looked at. I think as a former federal prosecutor and federal public defender. There is canons of ethics that apply for recusal, so conflicts of interest, right? If I were the judge and someone brought forth an individual before me that I knew or had a relationship with through my universe, it would be a conflict of interest for me to sit over and preside over that trial, that proceeding. That’s sort of simplifying it.
So in this case, the judge that was assigned in the Sussmann case, his wife happens to be a prominent lawyer in town, and she represented Lisa Page, and still does. Who is Lisa Page? Just a quick refresher, she was the central FBI attorney who reported to Andy McCabe, a special counsel for him, and also who worked for James Baker at the time, who was the attorney who reviewed this entire FISA application process and worked hand-in-hand with Peter Strzok, the lead counterintelligence FBI investigator for the investigation in the Trump presidency.
And, oh, by the way, they were having an affair and kept that information withheld from the American public and the FBI. So it would seem that question should be asked of in this larger conspiracy that I believe is coming, is Lisa Page going to be a witness? Is she going to be a witness for the defense or the prosecution? Is someone calling her? Is Durham working with her? Is she cooperating?
Because conflicts of interest are supposed to be adjudicated, not on the eventuality that they’ll happen, but on the possibility that they might. And so how can this judge have, let’s just say this is how it plays out. Sussmann goes to trial and Lisa Page is brought into the courtroom, and this judge’s wife is the lawyer for the witness.
To me, that’s a conflict worth looking at, there are canons of ethics that guide that and adjudicate that, but I think what ticks off American people so much about Washington is this sort of, this style of inside beltway operation that most of the public doesn’t even know about, and the few that do are calling for it to be examined.
And the best person to examine it is the judge and the Department of Justice. They should just say, hey, I can do my job fairly and the case isn’t going here, or John Durham can have a ex parte communication with the judge and say, look, this individual that your wife represents was a target, is a target, is an unindicted co-conspirator, could be a witness for the government, could be a witness for the defense. And you might find yourself overseeing a trial in which your wife represents the witness.
Mr. Jekielek: As we’re speaking here, I’m thinking, man, this is like, this is pretty big news, right?
Mr. Patel: Yeah.
Mr. Jekielek: And it doesn’t seem to be getting the attention that you might expect with big news like this, but the funny part is I’ve almost been conditioned to not expect it to be treated that way. That’s what I just realized, right?
Mr. Patel: Yeah, me too. Me too, and I think I’m glad we’re talking about it, but I don’t know if more people are gonna be talking about it.
And just to remind you who Lisa, not you, but the audience who Lisa Page and Peter Strzok were, you have the number one lawyer responsible for Russiagate investigation, and the number one Intel FBI agent. These two were literally while having an affair texting each other before the election and saying, they would stop candidate Trump from being President.
I mean, just hit pause on that alone. The individuals charged to lead the investigation into the Trump campaign were texting each other before the election saying, all the ways that they would stop it.
And now this person, Lisa Page, might be a witness or an unindicted co-conspirator in the suspend indictment. And this is the type of stuff that should be newsworthy, should be talked about. And when it gets buried, this is the type of stuff that ticks off so many people in America because the rules are applied differently to those that were in and running the Russiagate hoax versus those that revealed the Russiagate hoax.
And now you see the John Durhams of the world all of a sudden being excoriated. This guy, I remind you, is a 30 plus year federal prosecutor, he’s worked for Democrats and Republicans alike.
Mr. Jekielek: And he’s known for getting his man, so to speak.
Mr. Patel: Yeah, look, Democrats have appointed them to be US attorney and Republicans have appointed him to be US attorney. What more could you ask for in terms of a career prosecutor who is just doing the job and he established himself over and over again, but namely during the rendition investigation back when the CIA was investigated about its enhanced interrogation techniques. That was led by John Durham. So his work kind of speaks for himself.
Mr. Jekielek: So in these kinds of situations, I can’t help thinking about how it’s only something like 3% of cases ever go to trial.
Mr. Patel: Sure.
Mr. Jekielek: Most everything gets resolved by plea these days. That has its own issues that we’re not gonna, that we’re not gonna discuss today, but it makes me think that a seasoned, multiple time US attorney like Durham has a broader plan with this indictment. Like he’s hoping probably to get some people to cooperate, to talk, to expose some things that weren’t exposed before to build this case, maybe build the case of this broader conspiracy. So how do you think he might be using this indictment?
Mr. Patel: For me, I think the 27-page indictment is the biggest signal that more is coming because when you issue an indictment for lying to the FBI, like they did with Sussmann, it’s two to five pages max, it’s unheard of to be 27 pages. So why put all that information out there? It’s exactly for that reason, to put it out there.
The public can now go and read the indictment and see what John Durham has been working on. It’s a way to announce pieces of investigation. By name, by title, all the six to eight individuals in the indictment that they identify that were working with Sussmann or on behalf of Sussmann, and who was paying Sussmann and where the information was going because people are gonna figure out who those individuals are.
The other thing is you talk about cooperation. Look, I’ve tried 60 federal cases or 60 cases trials to verdict in state and federal court, and sometimes people cooperate and sometimes they don’t. You don’t bring an indictment on the hopes that someone is going to cooperate. That’s not how federal trials are conducted. If you’re doing that, you’re going to fail.
You bring the best case that you can, and if someone cooperates along the way, then you can enhance your conspiracy charges, maybe bring in other people that you weren’t initially looking at.
And my question is, well, we’ve got two people that have been charged, who hasn’t been charged and is cooperating. Are the Peter Strzoks of the world cooperating? Are the Lisa Pages of the world cooperating? James Baker, is he cooperating? He hasn’t been charged, but he’s been a central figure in all of this. Remember he was the one who had to sign-off on the fraudulent FISA warrant.
So are those people cooperating? Are there people at Perkins Coie cooperating? What about at the Hillary campaign? This indictment cites individuals who are in communication at the Hillary campaign, the Hillary Clinton campaign Manager, the Communications Director and one of their advisors were all in contact directly with Sussmann for the indictment about all this Alfa Bank stuff. So have they been talked to?
I would imagine, you put all those people in grand juries for interviews and you obtain documents, and I think that’s what’s coming.
Mr. Jekielek: So this has been going on for at least five years. I saw someone noted that perhaps one of the reasons why Durham made this indictment at the time he did was because the statute of limitations on making the false statement, the limit is something, is five years, right? So, I guess at this point, right, five years in, and the bigger picture for people that maybe don’t know the details, don’t know the nuance, maybe didn’t understand what actually happened. Why is this important?
Mr. Patel: Sure, let me address the timing first, and then the importance of it. So having run complex investigations, federal investigations, let me give you a perspective. Healthcare fraud investigations or Medicare fraud investigations, they take the government anywhere on average from three to seven years to adjudicate, investigate. Okay?
So those are going on for years and years and years and years, and then you finally have an indictment five years later. I’ve defended those cases, I’ve even brought conspiracy charges myself as a federal prosecutor that were years in the making. So five years I know sounds like a long time, especially for people who aren’t familiar with the criminal justice system at the federal level, but it’s not, and I have to remind people, and this segues to the second point.
John Durham has been charged with investigating arguably the biggest political scandal in US history. For him to do it, he’s only been on the job, mind you, two years, right? He didn’t come into play on day one, he came into play way later. So he’s bringing out conspiracy… Or he’s bringing out charges to now inside of two years. I know it might not sound fast, but it’s kind of fast for federal level work, especially at that complicated level.
And the other reason why I think in terms of the importance and the timing is to simplify it. For those who haven’t been following this, like you have for three, four, five years, and many in our audience is, just think of it this way. In the United States of America in 2016, in 2020, in 2024, is it okay for a political opponent during a presidential election to go out and buy false information? Know that information is false, submit it to the US media in an effort to castigate your opponent in the presidential election.
And then is it okay to take that same information used in the media and submit it to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and say, we know that this information is false, we’re not gonna tell you guys, but please go up on a warrant, on a federal search warrant on my opponent to be the President of the United States, so we can dig up more dirt and make sure he does not become President of the United States. Should that be allowed?
And what we’re saying, what we’ve been talking about for the last three, four, five years, and during this episode is that’s what happened. It took a couple of years, it took two congressional investigations. It took Bob Mueller, special counsel, and John Durham as a special counsel to see through some of all of this information.
And now we’re finally showing the American public what happens. So, yeah, it’s hard to simplify, but I think the magnitude can’t be highlighted anymore than that. If you want free and fair election for the President of the United States, you should care about John Durham’s investigation and where it goes.
Mr. Jekielek: Just to pick up on something we discussed a little bit earlier. It seems bizarre that media are so reluctant in some ways to pick up on the story, many media. And, of course, in so many media in the past got it so terribly, terribly wrong.
Mr. Patel: I agree, and instead of you and I just going through the litany of articles that people got wrong, here’s what I suggest for our viewers. Go online and go back to 2016, ’17, ’18, ’19, ’20, and look up an article. It doesn’t matter what outlet it’s from, on the Russiagate investigation, and look at the headlines. You don’t even have to look at the body of the work, look at the headlines and see which outlets got it wrong time and time again, and which outlets got it right, and see if you can do that.
See if the outlets you relied on so much to get your factual information were correct when they said, then candidate Trump was in the pocket of Putin. Go online and see if they were correct when the FBI and the DoJ came out and said, there’s no way the FISA process could be abused in this fashion. There’s too many people in charge, there’s too many principals at play for that to occur. See who wrote those articles?
Go ahead and see who wrote articles about private citizens and political campaigns, and what their involvement in the Russiagate scandal was then, and what it actually has shown to be now, i.e. Michael Sussmann and the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign and Perkins Coie and the like, and don’t forget Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson. Go back and look at that trail and just look at the headlines, and I think you’ll see how broken the media is and why they’re not covering it as much as they should be today.
Mr. Jekielek: Well, and we’ll definitely link some of these infographics that we’ve created at The Epoch Times that kind of, sort of maybe will identify some leads for this investigation that you’re suggesting here.
Mr. Patel: That’d be great.
Mr. Jekielek: Well, so I think we’re about at the end here. I think it’s time for our shout out.
Mr. Patel: Okay, I’ve got a unique shout out this week, so just bear with me for a second. So the shout out is for my Objective Medusa team. And for those of you that don’t know who that is or what that is, you have to read and watch the plot against the President to get the full picture of it.
But the Objective Medusa team was the warriors that I was able to work with under Chairman Nunes on House Intel to run the Russiagate investigation. And this indictment that we’re talking about today, Sussmann and also the Clinesmith indictment is for us a validation of so much of the work we did in 2017 and 2018 and were excoriated for personally. So to my Objective Medusa team, I miss you guys, and this one is definitely for you.
