Media Vapors: How Special Counsel John Durham Has Triggered a Media Meltdown
The latest disclosures by Durham are difficult for many in the media to cover because they directly refute years of prior coverage. Many in the media lampooned Donald Trump for claiming that the FBI and the Clinton campaign spied on Trump Tower and his campaign. Yet, we later learned that the FBI did spy on the campaign. In 2020, the media largely ignored that finding.
That is when the first stage of syncope began: the “prodrome” with signs of media “discomfort, extreme fatigue, weakness, yawning, nausea, dizziness, and vertigo.”
Now, Durham has told a court that he has evidence that Clinton operatives “exploited” access to systems at the Trump Tower, Trump’s apartment building, and “the Executive Office of the President of the United States.” The operation allegedly not only targeted the campaign and the Trump Tower but continued after the election.
We are now in the second syncopal phrase: loss of media consciousness.
There is no way to cover this story without many admitting that it facilitated a false narrative created by the Clinton campaign, including attacking those who suggested that the Clinton campaign would ever engage in such disreputable conduct.
The filings reveal more details on how the Clinton Campaign’s funded and directed the development of the now debunked narrative of a conspiracy between Russian and the Trump campaign. What is also notable in the filing is the extent to which the Clinton campaign used lawyers to carry out this work, including hiding its funding while denying connections to the work of figures like Christopher Steele.
The new information was revealed in a filing raising conflicts of interest in the law firm of Latham Watkins, which is representing indicted former Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann. The firm has represented other Clinton related figures. It was a fitting objection in a case where a circle of Democratic lawyers and law firms have featured prominently as well as the liberal think tank, Brookings Institution. The cross pollination of these law firms is one of the least discussed elements in the scandal.
The Durham filings repeatedly return to the work of Perkins Coie, a firm with a long and deep connection to the Democratic Party. The Clinton campaign used a screen of lawyers to hide that it was behind the Russian conspiracy claims.
The key to many of these operations is someone referred to by Durham as “Campaign Lawyer-1,” who is widely believed to the then Perkins partner and Clinton Campaign General Counsel Marc Elias. Elias was called before the grand jury. It was Elias who made the key funding available to Fusion GPS, which in turn enlisted Steele to produce his now discredited dossier on Trump and his campaign. The firm listed the payouts as “legal fees.”
During the campaign, a few reporters did ask how the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement. It was only weeks after the election that journalists discovered that the Clinton campaign allegedly hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” Elias also reportedly sat next to campaign chair John Podesta when he also reportedly denied the connection.
Sussmann was indicted for allegedly hiding his representation of the Clinton Campaign as he spread a different Russian collusion allegation involving the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. (Elias is also referenced in meetings on that operation). Sussmann filed a response this week and asked the Court to strike the entirety of the factual section of the Durham filing as unsubstantiated and sensational. (That could open the door for Durham in response to substantiate these claims even further).
Durham added details showing how Perkins Coie used its attorney-client relationships to further the Russian conspiracy operation for the campaign. He alleges that Elias and Sussmann hired an Internet executive, Rodney Joffe, to help build the foundation for the claims. Joffe alerted Sussmann about the Alfa Bank claims by July 2016, and “over the ensuing weeks, and as part of their lawyer-client relationship,” Sussmann and Joffe “engaged in efforts with Campaign Lawyer-1 .”
The use of lawyers to shield such work is nothing new in Washington. During the Nixon Administration, lawyers were used extensively to maintain slush funds and enable “dirty trick” operations.
What is striking about the Durham filings is the audacity of the Perkins Coie operation. While the funding was buried away, the lawyers were seemingly unconcerned about approving such efforts or personally reaching out to sympathetic government and media figures. They were, to some degree, justified in their sense of immunity.
Indeed, to this day, many refuse to cover extensive evidence of how the Clinton campaign manufactured this story that largely occupied the entire term of President Donald Trump. Before the Steele dossier was given to the FBI and the press, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Obama on Clinton’s alleged “plan” to tie candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” That operation appears to have been launched through Elias and Perkins Coie.
After the 2020 election, Democratic members and legal experts demanded the disbarring of a host of Republican attorneys for their spreading disinformation of a widespread election fraud. These same figures, however, are entirely silent about the role of Clinton lawyers in secretly funding the debunked Russian collusion claims. There is no interest in whether, as alleged by reporters, figures like Elias lied about the involvement of the Clinton campaign.
Sussmann is now facing a trial on this role in the operation. Elias remains unindicted. With little sense of irony, he has established a law firm to deal with ethics and campaign disclosures.
Durham’s continued investigation may be pushing the media to the final stage called “postsyncope,” which involves “protracted confusion, disorientation, nausea, dizziness, and a general sense of poor health.” That has reflected in the flailing effort by some to deflect from the alarming disclosures. New York Times reporter Mike McIntire seemed to express alarm that the Durham story was “trending.” However, McIntire offered “a periodic reminder that Trump’s campaign chairman secretly met and shared info with a Russian intelligence agent.” The “info” was polling data on the campaign that Paul Manafort gave a person with Russian intelligence ties.
That, of course, has no relevance to the question of whether the Clinton Campaign spied on the Trump Tower, campaign, or the White House itself. The “periodic reminder” seemed to be to other media that they needed to continue to hold their breath and not recognize a major story. Such “protracted confusion” is natural, but it will not dissipate any time soon. Durham apparently is calling more people into the grand jury.