Jake Sullivan, national security adviser in the Biden administration, may be guilty of perjury related to the Hillary Clinton campaign’s dirty tricks against Donald Trump.
Last week, Michael A. Sussmann, a partner at Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Hillary campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his clients and their motives behind planting the rumor, at the highest levels of the FBI, of a secret Trump-Russia server.
The indictment states that Sussmann, as well as the cyber experts recruited for the operation, “coordinated with representatives and agents of the Clinton campaign with regard to the data and written materials that Sussmann gave to the FBI and the media.”
One of those campaign agents was Sullivan, according to e-mails special counsel John Durham obtained. On Sept. 15, 2016 — just four days before Sussmann handed off the materials to the FBI — Marc Elias, Sussmann’s law partner and fellow Democratic Party operative, “exchanged emails with the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser concerning the Russian bank allegations,” as well as with other top campaign officials, the indictment states.
Sources close to the case confirmed the “foreign policy adviser” referenced by title is Sullivan.
They say Sullivan was briefed on the development of the opposition-research materials — which tried to allege that a “secret” server of the Trump organization was communicating with Russia’s Alfa Bank. The conspiracy theory, pushed by opposition firm Fusion GPS, was later dismissed, as the “communication” was likely marketing e-mails.
Yet Sullivan maintained in congressional testimony in December 2017 that he didn’t know of Fusion’s involvement in the Alfa Bank opposition research. In the same closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, he also denied knowing anything about Fusion in 2016 or who was conducting the opposition research for the campaign.
“Marc [Elias] . . . would occasionally give us updates on the opposition research they were conducting, but I didn’t know what the nature of that effort was — inside effort, outside effort, who was funding it, who was doing it, anything like that,” Sullivan stated under oath.
Sullivan also testified he didn’t know that Perkins Coie, the law firm where Elias and Sussmann were partners, was working for the Clinton campaign until October 2017, when it was reported in the media as part of stories revealing the campaign’s contract with Fusion, which also produced the so-called Steele dossier.
Sullivan maintained he didn’t even know that the politically prominent Elias worked for Perkins Coie, a well-known Democratic law firm. Major media stories from 2016 routinely identified Elias as “general counsel for the Clinton campaign” and a “partner at Perkins Coie.”
“To be honest with you, Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing,” Sullivan testified. “I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler in this — in this campaign effort.”
Although he acknowledged knowing Elias and his partner were marshaling opposition researchers for a campaign project targeting Trump, Sullivan insisted, “They didn’t do something with it.”
In truth, they used the research to instigate a full-blown investigation at the FBI and seed a number of stories in the Washington media, which Elias discussed in e-mails.
In fact, on the eve of the election, Sullivan put out a written campaign statement that claimed Trump and the Russians had set up a “secret hotline” through Alfa Bank and he suggested “federal authorities” were investigating “this direct connection between Trump and Russia.” He portrayed the shocking discovery as the work of independent experts — “computer scientists” — without disclosing their attachment to the Clinton campaign.
“This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow,” Sullivan said.
Lying to Congress is a felony. Though the offense is rarely prosecuted, former special counsel Robert Mueller won convictions of two of Trump’s associates on charges of that very offense.
An attorney for Sullivan did not respond to questions, while a spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined comment.
Adapted with permission from RealClearInvestigations.
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