Former Clinton Campaign Lawyer Michael Sussman is on trial in Washington, D.C. on a single charge of lying to FBI agents. Special Counsel John Durham is in court now, and is proving to be a formidable adversary for the Democratic establishment.
00:03:51.000In 2016, at Hillary Clinton's campaign's request, Michael Sussman walked into the FBI, used the FBI as a political tool to dirty up Donald Trump on an October surprise.
00:04:04.240So he took the Democrats' worst fear from 1980, and he turned it around and said, you know what?
00:04:09.420The candidate you might have supported, she did it in 2016.
00:04:14.080He's going to bring back this jury to their political biases and then try to flip it around and say, if you were concerned about it in 1980, you should be just as concerned about it in 2016.
00:04:26.340Look at the evidence, and we haven't even begun to look at the evidence, and we know that's going to be quite a process.
00:04:35.800What I'm worried about is this ex-New York Times reporter, as just the news reported, asking that his testimony be protected in next week's Sussman trial.
00:05:00.280First off, let's keep in mind, he's volunteered to be a witness for the defense.
00:05:04.900So he's already shown his colors, right?
00:05:06.320He's going to try to help Michael Sussman here in this trial as a reporter who wrote one of the stories about Alpha Bank.
00:05:12.600Now, in fairness to him, that story knocked down the Alpha Bank theory and portrayed it accurately that the FBI didn't believe that there had actually been a conspiracy.
00:05:22.300There wasn't this secret communication channel.
00:05:24.280But it gives you a mindset that a reporter would feel comfortable being a defense witness willingly and then say, okay, the defense can ask me any questions they want because I'm their witness.
00:05:33.100But when John Dern comes in, I want a lot of things to be off limits.
00:05:36.640I don't think that's going to succeed.
00:05:38.320I think the judge is going to say, listen, you came in here, you opened the door, we're going where both sides want to go.
00:05:45.460But when we talk about Washington being a one-party town, one of the ingredients of the one-party town is so much of the media establishment here is in bed with the Democrats, in bed with the bureaucracy in Washington.
00:05:58.280You saw it in the text messages of Lisa Page and Pete Strzok and Andy McCabe, reporters chumming around with them.
00:06:07.680The media were a co-conspirator in the spreading of this false Russia story.
00:06:12.260And now, even as the trial comes along, you see the media still in bed with the Democratic side on the defense of this trial.
00:06:19.800Not surprising, I think, to most Americans, but at least it's laid bare for the first time in the courtroom.
00:06:25.400You know, Eric Lickbaugh is a well-known reporter.
00:06:33.680He seems to be at some risk here of getting into real trouble, because if he is not given that protection he's asking for from the prosecutor, he could be in a heck of a mess.
00:07:01.100Judy Miller, another New York Times reporter, actually went to prison for a while because she wouldn't answer questions in the Scooter Libby trial.
00:07:08.040So there is precedent in history of sending New York Times reporters to prison or former New York Times reporters to prison to compel them to testify.
00:07:18.920I think the first thing will be just the judge ruling on the day that Lickbaugh was brought to the stand what the parameters of the questioning is going to be.
00:07:26.880I think John Durham is going to play this smart.
00:07:28.740He doesn't want to get into any sideshows, but he wants to be able to ask Eric Lickbaugh, who were you talking to?
00:07:36.480You can't have it both ways and say, I want to testify for them, but not give you the truth.
00:07:40.900I think he'll draw that out and we'll see that.
00:07:44.200But you're right, Eric Lickbaugh, if he does refuse to testify, the judge has a contempt power to punish him in some way.
00:07:51.300We'll just see if it gets to that point.
00:07:52.620I want to point out something really interesting about Eric Lickbaugh because a lot of people don't remember this.
00:07:57.960But back in 2006, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the secret NSA eavesdropping program.
00:08:04.140Remember, that was a story about the government maybe abusing Americans, right, spying on Americans.
00:08:10.020This is a trial about the FBI maybe being abused to again harm Americans.
00:08:15.420And he's on the opposite side of the issue right now, right?
00:08:18.160He's testifying for the defense, trying to be a sympathetic witness for them.
00:08:22.620He saw wrongdoing when George W. Bush was president and the government maybe overreaching and invading the privacy, harming the interests of Americans.
00:08:31.300But he's going to be on the opposite side of that debate when the FBI was used to smear the reputations of people like Carter Page and Mike Flynn and Donald Trump.
00:08:40.480Very interesting flip on a guy who once hung his shingle on the idea that government overreach was a bad thing.
00:08:48.620It is also to be considered, I think, that the New York Times and Blick Blau was a member of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the Russian collusion hoax.
00:09:03.040Do you suppose this trial will have an impact on whether or not that is returned or asked for by the Pulitzer Committee?
00:09:13.820I keep hearing rumblings, but we can't get it confirmed that the Pulitzer Committee is, in fact, doing a review of some of the behavior.
00:09:21.260I do know that there's a reporter for Columbia Journalism Review that's doing a look back at the failures of the New York Times, particularly in the Russia collusion story.
00:09:32.140I believe that will come out this fall.
00:09:37.960It won't be the sort of thing we'll be lampooning, but let's go back and remember the Eric Lickbaugh of 2017, because he's one of the writers.
00:10:23.220And we're going to hear from, we believe, we're going to hear at this trial in the next couple of days, Lou, CIA witnesses coming in saying, hey, we looked at the Sussman stuff and we not only dismissed it, it wasn't true.
00:10:35.340We believed it might have been contrived, manufactured.
00:10:38.500So some of the headlines that Eric Lickbaugh wrote back in 2017, people ought to go back and look at.
00:10:44.500He isn't exactly been very good on the facts when it came to this Russia story.
00:10:49.300He was a sympathist for the deep state, a sympathist for the Democrats, as he's now showing as a defense witness.
00:10:55.860But some of his reporting is worth going back to.
00:10:58.720Certainly some of these headlines are worth revisiting.
00:11:03.520We're going to go back and go through all of that as this unwinds in court and on the pages of Just the News.
00:11:11.680Do we know just exactly who both sides are working for?
00:11:17.300You know, that's a great question, right?
00:11:21.060We have a lot of understanding of this case.
00:11:24.420While this case is a very narrow case, really, at the end of the day, the facts for the jury to consider are, did Michael Sussman come in and tell the FBI falsely he wasn't working on behalf of a client when he was and he brought this in?
00:11:38.440We know now for certain he made the claim because John Durham produced what I would call a smoking gun text message showing that he told the FBI general counsel, James Baker, I'm coming to you on behalf of no client.
00:11:52.280We now know that that can't be disputed.
00:11:54.400He's going to try to waffle and say, well, that's not what I meant.
00:11:56.780Or the FBI knew, even though I said that, that that wasn't what I meant.
00:11:59.980It's a very narrow question, but John Durham is using this trial to talk about the bigger story.
00:12:07.640And early on in his court filings about three, four weeks ago, he talked about a joint venture, a conspiracy, that this was a conspiracy or joint venture between a law firm working for Hillary Clinton, the Hillary Clinton campaign,
00:12:20.240a tech executive named Jaffe, who was certainly close to the Clinton campaign and chairing them and wanted to work for Hillary Clinton if she got to be president.
00:12:30.440And I think the fourth co-conspirator in that joint venture is the news media.
00:12:36.600One of the things I wrote about two weeks ago was all of these messages between Fusion GPS, the research firm and Sussman and others with the news media, feeding the news media,
00:12:48.140telling the news media who they could interview in Congress that would give them the quotes that would affirm Russia collusion.
00:12:54.820The coziness of the news media is going to be a subliminal message or a subplot of this trial.
00:13:01.320And I think people will walk away at the end of this trial saying, you know what?
00:13:05.460The media was on the side of the people who gave us a false Russian story.
00:13:09.720So I think John Durham is going to tell a much larger story in a narrow case.
00:13:13.300And the media, the Democratic machinery and the deep state bureaucracy are all going to be on one side.
00:13:22.080There is so much to this story now that, you know, the idea that the that the CIA would be debunking the FBI story.
00:13:33.200Yes, it runs against the grain a bit because we all know that the CIA was enmeshed in this, quote, unquote, joint venture to push this material and did so.
00:13:47.240So how do we how do we start to square all of that up?
00:13:50.920It's a really interesting dynamic because the more I've dug into this and I had the same theory as you, Lou, that the CIA was all the way in on this.
00:13:57.620And what you learn at the end of the day is the career CIA people, the people that are on the ground, were actually doing the right thing, telling the FBI, hey, you really should check this guy, Steele, out.
00:14:07.800He needs to be revetted because we think he's too close to Russian oligarchs.
00:14:11.320He's been infiltrated by Russian intelligence.
00:14:13.960They tell him, hey, why are you looking at Carter Page?
00:14:17.980Of course, the FBI lies and doesn't tell that to the court.
00:14:20.580Even doctors, the documents to hide it from the court.
00:14:23.440There are the career people that actually were doing the right thing, flagging time and time and time again that the FBI was on the wrong case.
00:14:32.120They were looking at the wrong things.
00:14:49.940Then there's John Brennan and the political people at the top of the CIA.
00:14:55.720And those are the ones that we can now go out and see are on television fanning a Russia collusion story that they themselves knew was false.
00:15:05.580Well, we know that John Brennan fanned this and was on TV relentlessly both as CIA director and then as a consultant media player.
00:15:14.120But remember what he tells Barack Obama in July of 2016, before this all started.
00:15:19.960He goes in and tells the president, Mr. President, there's been an intercept and Hillary Clinton's people are being caught on overseas saying they're going to pull a dirty trick on Donald Trump.
00:15:29.080They're going to try to make him look like a Russian collusion spy or patsy because they want to get the attention off her email scandal.
00:15:41.240Then he goes on television and fans a different story.
00:15:45.540And I have a funny feeling when this is all done, John Brennan's not going to get charged with any wrongdoing.
00:15:49.420But when the final report comes out, if it becomes public, John Durham writes the final report.
00:15:53.720I strongly believe that you're going to see a comparison between what the CIA knew and said behind closed doors and were telling people the truth and what John Brennan went on TV and said.
00:16:04.400And I don't think John Brennan will fare very well in the court of public opinion when all that evidence is laid bare to the American public.
00:16:12.960Well, that's a wonderful wish to ask for.
00:16:18.160It is also noteworthy that Brennan hasn't been out in public of late.
00:16:35.080Yeah, he must be lost in the clouds or in the trees or wherever he was tweeting from a couple of years ago because we haven't heard from him either.
00:17:02.900Most of the witnesses for John Durham are government witnesses.
00:17:07.880They're an FBI agent who worked the case and probably was involved in the opening of the Alpha Bank phase of the case.
00:17:13.400We expect him to come in based on the filings and say, listen, if we had known that Sussman was working on behalf of Jaffe, the Clinton tech executive, and the Clinton campaign, we might have treated this differently.
00:17:25.100We might not have opened up on this in the middle of a campaign.
00:17:28.760We believe there's going to be some CIA experts who looked at this when Sussman didn't get what he wanted from the FBI, right?
00:17:35.400They ultimately decide, ah, this part of the investigation is bogus.
00:17:38.600So then he tries to repackage it and sell it to the CIA in February of 17.
00:17:43.340We expect some of those CIA people to come in.
00:17:46.200The Durham, and then one of the surprise witnesses for the prosecution, he may not be a willing prosecution witness, but Sussman's boss, Sussman's colleague, Mark Elias at Perkins Coie is going to be called on behalf of the government.
00:18:02.540He may be a cooperating witness, but we expect that to be a very important moment in the trial about what he knew, what his emails will show.
00:18:10.780And that'll be a moment where some of the Perkins Coie internal communications get before the jury.
00:18:16.280That's going to be a very interesting moment in the trial.
00:18:19.340Well, Sussman is facing a charge of lying to the FBI.
00:18:44.360Four years later, we now know that almost everything Adam Schiff wrote was wrong in his counter report, and everything Devin Nunes wrote has turned out to be true and proven.
00:18:53.460But remember that Devin Nunes made a large number of criminal referrals of people he believed were not honest to the Congressional Committee.
00:19:05.440I want to point out one thing that will come up at this trial.
00:19:07.440We now know from the text message that Michael Sussman, the Clinton campaign lawyer, told the FBI, I'm not coming to you on behalf of any client.
00:19:16.780A year later, a year and a half later, he goes to the House Intelligence Committee and tells the exact opposite story, which is I did approach the FBI on behalf of a client.
00:19:27.060He couldn't keep his own story straight in those two spheres.
00:19:29.960And I think that's going to become one of the issues the jury is going to get to see.
00:19:34.240But there's a lot of people who testified before the House Intelligence Committee.
00:19:37.920Jake Sullivan, the current National Security Advisor, is another guy whose testimony has been called into question by Republicans.
00:19:44.300We'll have to see if any more false testimony cases come out of this John Durham investigation.
00:19:50.300So, a couple of questions as we wrap up here, John.
00:19:55.540Do you expect any surprises, I mean, real big surprises to come out of this Durham proceeding?
00:20:02.280You know, and the reason I'm asking is it looks like this thing is stacked against John Durham and the prosecution big time.
00:20:09.740Christopher Cooper, Obama appointed judge and acting freely in the interest of the Democrats and the left wing, the Hillary Clinton campaigns, the Obama campaigns.
00:20:21.720It's it's a massively biased environment into which Durham and his prosecutors are marching.
00:20:32.780The jury poll, the city, the media are all going to be stacked against John Durham.
00:20:36.580And they have from the moment he was appointed the you never can underestimate what happens when a career government official, someone who works in the bowels of the FBI and just goes in and does his job every day, comes out and says, you know what?
00:21:59.180If this is the drug lord in your neighborhood that's terrorizing you, if this is somebody that gunned down someone in your neighborhood, do you want them to be lying to the FBI?
00:22:07.800Because it's the same crime, whether it's a political person in the Hillary Clinton campaign or that drug lord.
00:24:27.340He's a guy that has a very good track record.
00:24:29.680And I don't think just because the jury poll is stacked against him that you should bet against him.
00:24:34.400I think he's going to make a very convincing case.
00:24:37.020And all through this case, every time it looked like, oh, Hillary Clinton scored a win, the next day, John Durham would come in and say, oh, I forgot to tell you about this.
00:27:34.380They've made some major blunders in this investigation.
00:27:36.960But here's how I think this commission is going to work out when it comes to the five Republicans that you're trying to compel testimony from.
00:27:45.780There is a structural legal problem that this commission has had.
00:27:50.500There are rules that Nancy Pelosi's House put into place that says that subpoenas and compelled testimony can only come from a committee that has been properly seated.
00:28:03.260In order for a committee, under Nancy Pelosi's rules, by the way, these aren't Republican rules.
00:28:07.980These are the rules that Democrats put in place.
00:28:10.220You have to have a ranking member on a committee in order for this to happen.
00:28:54.100Be careful what you wish for, because Republicans could be in control next year.
00:28:57.760And their first, I guarantee you, their first subpoena on a January 6th-related investigation is not going to go to anyone other than Nancy Pelosi,
00:29:05.700because she has never been questioned about what she knew, why she turned down the National Guard on January 4th,
00:29:12.780what she was told the day of, could she have prevented this attack?
00:29:15.740So Democrats may have some buyer's remorse on this come January of next year if Republicans are in control.
00:29:21.800But I think what plays out between now and then, my reporting indicates that there is a legitimate legal challenge to this committee,
00:29:29.760because it isn't following Nancy Pelosi's own rules.
00:29:32.840And that may give these Republicans a way to contest these subpoenas, saying they're not lawful under the rules of Congress.
00:29:39.980As always, we give our guests the last word, John Solomon, if you will.
00:29:45.740Yeah, listen, this is going to be a dramatic few weeks in Washington, whether it's January 6th,
00:29:49.760whether it's the elections playing out in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and other key battleground states, and the Sussman trial.
00:29:59.060America is still trying to grapple and come to grips with what happened in the last two elections.
00:30:06.0402020, some of the rule changes and other things that occurred that put the 2020 results into question in many people's minds.
00:30:13.500The next few weeks, we're going to see a lot of that play out with court cases, assessment trial.
00:30:18.180And I think people will walk into the 2022 election with a certain, a more factual certainty about what happened in 16 and 20 than they did going into these weeks a few weeks ago.
00:30:29.640It's shocking that we're almost at the 2022 election and we're still trying to figure out what happened in 16 and 20.
00:30:35.160But I think we're going to get some factual clarity for the first time, and that'll be satisfying to people no matter what side of the political aisle you're on.
00:30:42.380I think we're going to learn some things that we'll all agree will be facts, and that is always a good thing.