by Lee Smith at Just the News
Last week, the special counsel appointed to oversee the probe into the FBI’s investigation of former president Donald Trump indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Republicans and Trump allies are optimistic about the latest development in John Durham’s investigation but are still concerned that Attorney General Merrick Garland might halt the investigation to protect allies and even the president himself.
FBI notes appear to suggest that as vice president, Joe Biden played a role in the Democratic Party project to smear Trump as a Russian asset by raising the obscure, disused, 18th century statute the Logan Act as a possible vehicle for prosecuting Michael Flynn for speaking with the Russian ambassador to Washington — even after FBI case agents had cleared Trump’s incoming national security adviser of wrongdoing.
And now Republicans are raising concerns that the judge appointed to the Sussmann case has too many conflicts of interest to preside over it fairly.
Current and former officials say that federal District Court Judge Christopher Cooper’s professional and personal relationships with top Democrats and figures behind the FBI’s Trump investigation should force his recusal. Cooper’s wife, for instance, represents disgraced FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who oversaw the FBI’s Trump probe.
In September 2016, Sussman met with Page’s boss, then FBI General Counsel James Baker. The former DOJ cybersecurity expert handed Baker documents falsely asserting that the Trump Organization’s computer servers were communicating suspiciously with the computer servers of a Russian financial institution.
The purpose of the documents Sussmann passed to the FBI was to further the Clinton campaign’s false narrative holding that Trump had been compromised by Russian officials. Former CIA director John Brennan reported to President Obama that Clinton herself approved the scheme in order to deflect attention away from her use of a private email server.
Sussmann billed the Clinton campaign for his meeting with Baker but told the FBI’s top lawyer he was not acting on behalf of any client. The indictment handed down last week by Special Counsel John Durham charged Sussman with one count of lying to the FBI.
Last Friday, Sussmann pled not guilty, and on Wednesday he is scheduled to appear before Cooper.
Appointed to the bench by Obama in 2013, Cooper is well-connected in Democratic party legal circles. Garland officiated his 1999 wedding to Amy Jeffress.
Both Cooper and Jeffress worked at DOJ in the Obama administration. He was part of the 2008 presidential transition team, and she was the national security counselor for Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder.
Recently Jeffress wrote approvingly of Attorney General Garland’s focus on “domestic terrorism.” Many Republicans see the phrase as coded language for targeting Trump supporters.
Her most famous client, former FBI lawyer Page, discussed via text message…
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