by Margot Cleveland at The Federalist
One week ago today, Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion in the government’s criminal case against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. That motion, in requesting the court obtain Sussmann’s waiver of any conflicts of interest held by his lawyers on the record, provided in excruciating detail the factual basis for the purported conflicts.
In doing so, it revealed that “enemies of Donald Trump surveilled the internet traffic at Trump Tower, at his New York City apartment building, and later at the executive office of the president of the United States, then fed disinformation about that traffic to intelligence agencies hoping to frame Trump as a Russia-connected stooge.”
While earlier filings by Durham had revealed equally explosive facts, this time the special counsel’s motion generated enough attention that #Durham began to trend on Twitter. Not since the special counsel’s office indicted Sussmann in September 2021 for lying to the FBI’s former general counsel, James Baker, has the Durham investigation forced itself into the legacy press’ purview.
Rather than report on the latest developments, the corrupt media spun Friday’s filing as a big nothingburger, while parading several false narratives—just as it did when news of the indictment of the Clinton campaign’s lawyer broke.
Charlie Savage at the New York Times led the way in a Monday article headlined, “Court Filing Started a Furor in Right-Wing Outlets, but Their Narrative Is Off Track.” Amazingly, several of Savage’s talking points coincided with arguments presented by Sussmann’s attorneys in a document filed with the court that same day.
By Tuesday, Vanity Fair had joined in, quoting Savage’s “analysis.” That evening, Jimmy Kimmel turned the talking points into one-liners. Wednesday saw Brian Stelter at CNN further cribbing from the Savage’s initial take at the Times.
While the leftist press continues to fall in line to advance the unofficial defense of the Clinton campaign’s former attorney, the talking points the Durham deniers are pushing remain nothing but gibberish. Here they are and why they are wrong.
1. It’s Just Those Crazy Right-Wingers
In his opening salvo in the Sussmann counter-offensive, Savage began his New York Times column by noting that Durham’s Friday night filing “set off a furor among right-wing outlets about purported spying on former President Donald J. Trump.”
Framing the “furor” as right-wing proves a ready go-to for a corrupt media seeking to discount the substance of the reporting. Stelter likewise hit this talking point repeatedly over at CNN, in his article “Right-wing media said it was exposing a scandal. What it really revealed is how bad information spreads in MAGA world.”
Hillary Clinton likewise pushed the right-wingers angle, tweeting that “Trump & Fox are desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones.”
Of course, while casting coverage of Special Counsel Durham’s investigation as the cries of cray-cray conservatives might resonate with their readers, as a substantive counter to the most recent revelations in the Sussmann case it falls flat.