The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Special Counsel Durham (Executive Calendar)” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S6639-S6640 on Sept. 23.
The Department is one of the oldest in the US, focused primarily on law enforcement and the federal prison system. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, detailed wasteful expenses such as $16 muffins at conferences and board meetings.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Special Counsel Durham
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, last week, Special Counsel Durham indicted Michael Sussman, an attorney for the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign. He was indicted for lying to the FBI.
The indictment gives example after example of the Democratic Party's bag of dirty tricks.
In September 2016, Sussman met with the FBI's general counsel, James Baker. At that meeting he provided information and data files that allegedly contained evidence of a secret communication between the Trump organization and the Russian bank Alfa Bank.
The evidence, however, was fabricated. The allegations about the Trump organization being linked with a Russian bank--these were false. The email server at issue was neither owned nor operated by the Trump organization.
But the lie in the indictment occurred when Sussmann allegedly told the FBI general counsel that he wasn't providing the information on any client's behalf. He repeated the same to another government agency. Those assertions were apparently false. He was working for the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign.
Now, interestingly, the indictment states that although Baker was allegedly unaware of the political affiliation of the information starting in April 2016, Sussmann represented the Democratic National Committee and regularly met with the FBI. According to the indictment, the FBI failed to connect the dots. What Special Counsel Durham's indictment shows in significant detail, by the way, are the steps that the Clinton campaign and her Democratic allies took to dirty up Trump--
and did so--with known false information.
Time and again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have cast false information against Trump to tie him to a foolish conspiracy that he is an agent of the Russian Government. Time and again, when the evidence is made public, the Democratic Party is shown to be the master of the disinformation universe, and much of the so-called mainstream press fell for and peddled the falsehoods.
What's wrong with our journalists being journalists and investigating everything to the bottom rather than trying to not do their work and letting people get away with this sort of action?
Now I am going to take a few examples from the indictment. Notably, Sussmann was working with an unnamed executive at a technology firm that had been offered a position in the Clinton administration, should she have won that election in 2016.
The information compiled and analyzed the false Alfa Bank information and, according to the indictment, ``exploited access to non-public data at multiple internet companies to conduct opposition research concerning Trump.''
To accomplish those ends, the executive enlisted ``the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.''
Now, amazingly, the indictment later says that the university accessed data of an unnamed executive branch agency through an unnamed internet company. That unnamed internet company possessed that data because it was a subcontract ``in a sensitive relationship between the U.S. government and another company.''
Apparently, taxpayers unwittingly assisted the false-information campaign used against Trump by the Democrats.
I'd like to say that you can't make this stuff up, but that is exactly what they did. A researcher that worked to falsely connect Trump to Alfa Bank said, ``We cannot technically make any claims that would fly public scrutiny.''
They also discussed faking email addresses to try and beef up some bogus false connection between Trump and Alfa Bank. Even the unnamed tech executive essentially said the Alfa Bank data was a ``red herring.''
One email in the indictment even says in part:
The only thing that drives us at this point is that we just do not like [Trump]. This will not fly in the eyes of public scrutiny. Folks, I am afraid that we have tunnel vision.
They recognized that what they were doing lacked any factual support, yet Sussmann, the Democrats, and the Clinton campaign proceeded ahead anyway.
Even more than that, Christopher Steele reportedly got his information about Alfa Bank from Sussmann and included it in the Steele dossier. The indictment clearly shows the depth to which the Clinton campaign went to smear Trump--smear--with false evidence and plant it with the liberal media, who then willingly ran with it--and probably smiled as they ran with it. And here we are, years later, with a country that has been almost torn apart because of the Democratic Party's fake evidence against Trump.
Special Counsel Durham stated on December 9, 2019, in part, relating to the Justice Department inspector general's report on Crossfire Hurricane, ``last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to the predication and how the FBI case was opened.''
Special Counsel Durham has had several years to investigate and bring a case forward. We have seen two instances where folks have been charged with a crime, one already pleading guilty.
One must not forget the Obama-Biden Justice Department's and the FBI's blatant misrepresentations to the FISA court during the Crossfire Hurricane and other serious wrongdoing, much of which was uncovered by Congress and the inspector general.
On June 29 of this year, Senator Johnson and I asked Attorney General Garland if he agrees with then-Attorney General Barr's statement that any Durham report be submitted in the form that will permit public dissemination. On July 13 of this year, Attorney General Garland said that he agrees.
Special Counsel Durham, let's see what you have got, and we will be able to see it when the report comes out.
