by Margot Cleveland at The Federalist
If cybersecurity experts could trigger an investigation into Trump for political reasons, they can prompt an investigation of anyone, for any reason.
A lawyer for former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann revealed last week that federal agents never asked Sussmann the origin of the data he provided the FBI related to the Alfa Bank hoax. Beyond highlighting the hackery of the Crossfire Hurricane team, this revelation raises broader concerns about the cozy relationship between the government and private cybersecurity experts.
On Thursday, Sussmann’s Latham and Watkins attorney Michael Bosworth pushed for the dismissal of the special counsel’s criminal case. That case charged Sussmann with lying to former FBI General Counsel James Baker when he provided Baker “white papers” and data ostensibly showing a secret communications channel between the Trump organization and the Russia-connected Alfa Bank. According to the indictment, Sussmann falsely claimed during his meeting with Baker that he was not acting on behalf of a client, when in fact he was working for both the Clinton campaign and tech executive Rodney Joffe.
Not once will the evidence show, Bosworth argued, that “anyone at the FBI ever asked Mr. Sussmann, ‘Hey, by the way, where did this information come from?’ No one asked. Not once. Ever.” Sussmann’s attorney continued: “Regardless of who his clients were, if the source of his information was so critical to the government’s investigation, if it mattered so much, you’d think at some point someone would have said, ‘Hey, buddy, you provide this tip to the government. Where did this stuff come from? Who gave it to you? Where did—how did they get it?”
Bosworth’s argument came in response to prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis’s assertion that the special counsel’s office would “put on the stand at trial witnesses who will say that, when you’re analyzing data, you don’t simply close your eyes to where the data came from and compare it to other data or look for corroboration through other sources. The first thing any responsible forensic analysis will ask is ‘Where was the data from?’”
Picking up on Bosworth’s argument, the court interrupted DeFilippis, asking: “If that’s the first thing a responsible investigator would ask, then why would it matter whether Mr. Sussmann was there on behalf of a client or not? Wouldn’t the natural question have been, ‘Where did this stuff come from?’”
DeFilippis responded that because the former FBI general counsel wrongly believed Sussmann had come forward “as a good citizen,” that lulled Baker into accepting the data and white papers without question. Sussmann’s attorney called that argument “nonsensical,” saying that, “if, as the special counsel claims, the first question that investigators would ask is where did the data come from, that’s the question that’s paramount.”
Bosworth then stressed that the FBI knew the data didn’t originate with Sussmann because he’s “a lawyer” and isn’t “sitting on a pool of DNS data,” and because Baker testified repeatedly that “Sussmann told him that the information originated with various cyber experts.” “At no point did the FBI say, “Who are those experts? Can we talk to them? Where did they get it from?” Bosworth continued. “So, the notion that Mr. Sussmann’s statement about a client somehow affected the FBI’s willingness to ask the basic questions they ask in any case just doesn’t hold water,” Sussmann’s attorney concluded.
Bosworth made an excellent point—actually two, as we will soon see—just not the winning point he thought. The failure of the FBI to ask “the basic questions” about the data and white papers Sussmann provided on the purported Trump-Alfa Bank secret communications speaks not of the unimportance of that information, but of the incompetence (or political corruption) of the Crossfire Hurricane team.