Trump-Russia hoax

How Durham Bombshell Made a ‘Birther’ Out of Me

By Jack Cashill

Upon reading special counsel John Durham’s 27-page indictment of attorney Michael Sussman, I found myself asking, “Is there anything Perkins Coie lawyers would not do to keep their Democratic clients in power?” Thanks to Durham, we know they launched a cyberwar against candidate Donald Trump that makes their work on the Steele dossier seem half-hearted. What we need to know is whether their work in producing Barack Obama’s birth certificate was any more legit than these other misadventures.   

As to Sussman, he stands accused of lying to the FBI, “to wit, on or about September 19, 2016, the defendant stated to the General Counsel of the FBI that he was not acting on behalf of any client in conveying particular allegations concerning a Presidential candidate, when in truth, and in fact, and as the defendant well knew, he was acting on behalf of specific clients, namely, Tech Executive-I and the Clinton Campaign.” 

Durham could have summed up the charge in a page. Instead, he spent 27 pages outlining the skullduggery behind the deep state war on Donald Trump. According to Durham, Sussman worked with at least three high-tech firms, two university researchers, and several media outlets on a cyber smear campaign against candidate Trump that dwarfed the Steele dossier both in scope and in sophistication. 

The Steele dossier was commissioned by Perkins Coie attorney Marc Elias, managed by Fusion GPS, and executed by international man of mystery, Christopher Steele. Elias makes a cameo appearance in the Durham report as “campaign lawyer 1” as does Fusion GPS, here labeled “U.S. Investigative Firm.” 

The real star of the indictment, however, is not Sussman but the still-unidentified “Tech Executive-1.” Sussman was billing time, ample time, both to the tech exec and to the Clinton campaign. According to the indictment, the exec used “his access at multiple internet companies to conduct opposition research and create a ‘narrative regarding Trump.’” 

The “narrative” in question is that Trump’s people were using the Russian Alfa Bank as a backchannel to the Kremlin. What becomes shockingly clear in the Durham document is that none of the key players cared a whit whether the narrative was true. In an email to Sussman, the tech exec called the idea of “a secret communications channel” between Trump and the Alfa Bank “a red herring," 

Red herring or not, the conspirators persisted. Their goal was to create a story “plausible” enough to seduce a much too credulous FBI and a lapdog media. As a former Justice Department attorney, Sussman knew what strings to pull. He sought out then FBI general counsel James Baker and shared his bogus intel, all the time denying he was working as a political operative. Choosing to believe Sussman, the FBI launched an investigation into the Trump-Alfa allegation, the news of which was promptly leaked to the media. 

Durham has Sussman dead to rights. Only a D.C. jury can save him at this point. The tech exec may be just as culpable. If the exec is who I think he is, his involvement would bring the murdered DNC staffer, Seth Rich, back into the mix, but that is a story for another day. The story for today, the one alluded to in the headline, involves a third Perkins Coie attorney, Bob Bauer, and a fourth, Judith Corley. 

In 2008, Bauer worked with the Barack Obama campaign and the DNC not so much to “create a narrative” regarding Obama as to sustain the narrative Obama had already created. Beginning with his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, Obama repeatedly told the story of his parents’ “improbable love.” Obama biographer David Remnick called the use of this multicultural love story Obama’s “signature appeal.” To help preserve the integrity of that appeal, Bauer fended off requests to see Obama’s long-form birth certificate. The tenacity of his and Obama’s resistance to sharing that document created the impression they had something to hide. Democrat Philip Berg certainly thought so. A former Pennsylvania deputy attorney general and a lifetime member of the NAACP, Berg initiated the first serious suit to see the certificate in August 2008.

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