Thread by @RealSLokhova

#SpecialCounselDurham

Hillary campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann's criminal trial is reaching its conclusion.

On Day 10, Friday, the Jury will be read closing statements by the prosecution and defence,

Next, it's time for deliberation. /1

In the last 8 days, we heard from 20 witnesses.
17 were for the prosecution.
Sussmann declined to testify in his own defence.
A witness for the defence, former NYT reporter, pulled out. /2

#SpecialCounselDurham
#SussmannTrial
Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann," the defendant, is charged with one count of making false statements to the FBI; that is, for willfully and knowingly making a materially false statement to the General Counsel of the FBI." /3

#SpecialCounselDurham
#SussmannTrial
"During the meeting, SUSSMANN lied about the capacity in which he was providing the allegations to the FBI. Specifically, SUSSMANN stated falsely that he was not doing his work on the aforementioned allegations “for any client,” which led /4

...the FBI General Counsel to understand that SUSSMANN was acting as a good citizen merely passing along information, not as a paid advocate or political operative. In fact, and as alleged in further detail below, this statement was intentionally false and misleading because, /5

..in assembling and conveying these allegations, SUSSMANN acted on behalf of specific clients, namely, (i) a U.S. technology industry executive [Rodney Joffe] at a U.S. Internet company, and (ii) the Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign. /6
#SpecialCounselDurham
#SussmannTrial

"SUSSMANN’s lie was material because, among other reasons, SUSSMANN’s false statement misled the FBI General Counsel and other FBI personnel concerning the political nature of his work and deprived the FBI of information that might have permitted it more fully to assess and /7

..uncover the origins of the relevant data and technical analysis, including the identities and motivations of SUSSMANN’s clients." /8
#SpecialCounselDurham
#SussmannTrial

#SpecialCounselDurham
Day 1 of the #SussmannTrial started with opening statements.
You can read the powerful statement by the prosecution here. /9
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#SussmannTrial
The first witness for the prosecution was FBI supervisory special agent David Martin, cyber crime specialist.
Martin is an expert witness who explained the technological background to the case.
The case involves complex internet terminology such as DNS, TOR etc /10

SSA Martin's testimony took an unexpected turn when the defense introduced Rodney Joffe and revealed that he was a Confidential Human Source for the FBI.
This opened the door for the prosecution to say that Joffe was terminated by the FBI for cause. /11

#SussmannTrial
Next up was FBI Special Agent Scott Hellman.
He was part of the team that examined the materials that Sussmann gave Baker.
These included two thumb drives and three white papers- alleged evidence of the secret communication channel between Trump and Alfabank.
/12.

#SussmannTrial
Hellman testified that the materials purporting to support Sussmann's allegations consisted of:
- technical data such as website and domain names/numbers;
-a narrative summarising the data and explaining authors' conclusions based on their analysis of the data /13

Hellman testified that his team analysed the data and rejected the allegations of “secret communications channel” between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank within a day.

"Whoever had written that paper had jumped to some conclusions that were not supported by the data” /14

FBI Special Agent Hellman testified:
"Whoever had written that paper had jumped to some conclusions that were not supported by the data. Conclusion that they had found a secret communication between Trump, the Trump organization, and Russia- that just didn't make sense to us"
/15

Hellman testified:
"Why would a presidential candidate put their own name in the supposedly secret domain name, in a domain name that was easily connectible to the organization; and then why would it be -that computer be connecting directly to another computer in Russia... /16

...if this was all supposed to be a secret communication. So that piece of it just didn't ring true at all"
Hellman testified: "Russia would have a much more technical capability to hide communications; and if
they were to be secret, that Russia would have the ability to hide /17

...those communications. They wouldn't be so overt and direct between this Trump domain and this Russian domain," FBI Supervisory Special Agent Hellmann testified.
#SussmannTrial
/18

Government entered into evidence “White Paper #1,” one of the documents that Sussmann gave to Baker on September 19, 2016: “The Trump Organization is using a very unusually configured "secret" email server…for current and ongoing email communications with Alfa Bank (Moscow)” /19

The conclusion of the White Paper #1: “The only plausible explanation for this server configuration is that it shows the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank to be using multiple sophisticated layers of protection in order to obfuscate their considerable recent email traffic.” /20

On September 20, 2016, Special Agent Hellman read the documents provided by Sussmann to Baker. He immediately thought that "the person who had drafted this document was suffering from some mental disability."
He wrote: "it feels a little 5150ish" referring to legal code. /21

Contemporaneous messages show that the FBI cyber experts believed the Sussmann documents contained "absurd quantity of data intended to overwhelm and confuse the reader"
Methodology also suspect: "Investigator just HAPPENED TO start locking up EVERY domain belonging to trump" /22

Within a day of receiving the Sussmann data from Baker, the FBI report concluded that “the research conducted in the report reveals some questionable investigative steps taken and conclusions drawn.” /23

The FBI assessed that "authors searched, via publically available information, for every internet domain that had the word "Trump" in it”
Hellman testified: “I did not feel like that was the most expeditious way. They were just looking for key terms. It didn’t make sense to me/24

The FBI September 2016 assessment said: “It appears suspicious that the presumed suspicious activity began approximately three weeks prior to the stated start of the investigation conducted by the researcher.”
Hellman testified that he found it "conveniently coincidental." /25

#SussmannTrial FBI SSA Hellman testified regarding the authors of the Trump-Alfa paper: “I did not feel that they were objective in the conclusions that they came to. The assumption that you would have to make was so far-reaching that it just didn’t make any sense.” /26

Agent Hellman testified that his assessment of the Trump-Alfa documents was sent to FBI Chicago who were "performing special investigation and they were going to be doing some further analysis, and we were to provide our analysis" /27

#SussmannTrial
Hellman stated that he believes the FBI Chicago then opened an investigation. He had “no involvement in the investigation” but had brief communications with agents in Chicago.
“Chicago had looked at the data further and they agreed with our assessment…/28

"...that there was no secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and Russia.”
SSA Hellman testified that “the motivation of whoever is giving me the information is very important."/29
#SussmanTrial

Hellman testified that "knowing where the data comes from gives me context regarding how much I believe in the data, how authentic it is, do I believe it's real, and do I trust it."
Political affiliation of the source would matter when deciding whether to open an investigation/30

SSA Hellmann testified that knowledge that the source of the data had a business interest or relationship with the U.S. government is important to an FBI agent "to help me understand how truthful the data might be." /31
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Hellmann testified that it's important to know "if someone is providing the data on someone else's behalf, I'm going to want to know who that someone else is so I can understand what their motivations might be for providing the data." /32

Next witness on was Steve DeJong of Neustar Security Services. He was a colleague of Rodney Joffe. Joffe asked him in August 2016 "to run a query over our DNS data logs to see if we saw any queries for several names related to political campaigns and political organizations." /33

DeJong testified that "at that time the 2016 presidential election was gearing up", Rodney Joffe asked him to research "around the Trump campaign".
DeJong testified that it was uncommon, "not very likely at all" for him to get requests on political subjects.
/34

DeJong testified that Manos Antonakakis, a Georgia Tech researcher, worked with Neustar. Neustar shared data with Manos. In late 2016, Neustar gave Manos 2-3 terabytes a day that might come from a contract Neustar had with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency /35

On August 20, 2016, Manos emailed Steve DeJong copying Rodney Joffe: "Hey Steve, you know that if you are getting an encrypted email with Rodney CCed, in the middle of the night, something is up." /36

"I will need you to pull all data you have, Ultra DNS, TLDs, ccTLDs and especially the data from 'Secondary' dataset we talked about in May for the following zones and IP addresses". The first domain on the list was trump-email.com /37

#SussmannTrial On day 2 of the witness evidence, Deborah Fine testified.
She is currently general counsel for Open Society Institute.
Fine was deputy general counsel for Hillary Clinton for President Campaign, hired in May 2016.
Her boss was Marc Elias, general counsel. /38

Marc Elias, general counsel for Hillary for America (HFA), was a partner at Perkins Coie at the same time. Fine stated she communicated with him daily.
When campaign engaged Fusion GPS, Fine communicated with them "several times weekly" and reported back to Elias. /39

#SussmannTrial
On June 6, 2016, Deborah Fine, deputy general counsel for Hillary for America for started her "Daily Check Ins" with Fusion GPS, according to calendar entries presented by the government. /40

#SussmannTrial
On Aug 12, 2016, Deborah Fine, deputy general counsel, Hillary for America organised a call with Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch (Fusion GPS co-founders) and Elias, general counsel for Hillary for America, Perkins Coie partner. Followed by another call on Aug 17.
/41

#SussmannTrial
On October 31st, 2016, Deborah Fine received an email from Marc Elias "Can you print this."
The document was Slate article about Trump - Alfa Bank secret communications channel that was published on October 31, 2016. /42

#SussmannTrial
Next witness was Laura Seago, Fusion's "in-house cyber ninja".
She reported to Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch.
She was given immunity to testify. /43

Prosecution: "We have identified Ms. Seago as a core
witness that can talk to the relationships between Fusion, between Mr. Joffe, HFA [Hillary for America], and Mr. Sussmann.
We've seen through public records testimony from... /44

...Ms Seago about meetings with those individuals in late August, and that she is the technical expert of Fusion GPS who is the most immersed of all of them regarding Alfa-Bank allegations. So that is why we were focused on the Laura Seago testimony." /45

"In addition, one of the three white papers that goes into the FBI is being created in and around the same time that Ms. Seago is participating in meetings with Mr. Sussmann and Mr. Joffe, and that white paper is being created by Fusion GPS." /46

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified that she started working for Fusion in July 2015.
She currently works for Open Source Research, which was founded by Fusion's Peter Fritsch and Glenn Simpson. /47

Seago: "first we were working for anti-Trump Republicans in the fall of 2015 and early 2016, then at some point we changed to Democratic clients"
Fusion were researching "Trump, his businesses and his associates, gathering documents and data related to his business association/48

#SussmannTrial

Seago testified that Marc Elias of Perkins Coie was the primary client contact for Fusion GPS in 2016.

Seago met Sussmann at a meeting at Perkins Coie in the summer of 2016, also attended by Elias, Fritsch, Simpson and Rodney Joffe.
/49

Seago testified that the purpose of Elias-Fusion-Joffe meeting in July or August'16 was to "discuss allegations of communications between the Trump organization and Alfa-Bank". "It was another connection between the Trump organization and Russia" that Fusion were researching.
/50

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified she first heard about allegations of a purported communications channel between the Trump organization and Alfa-Bank at the Elias-Sussmann-Fusion-Joffe meeting in summer 2016 and "exchanged a few emails with Mr. Joffe" after the meeting. /51

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified that her boss, Peter Fritsch, organised a meeting with the journalist Franklin Foer in fall 2016 to discuss the allegations of communication between the Trump organization and Alfa-Bank.
The meeting took place at Foer's home.
/52

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified that at the meeting with Foer "We talked about highly credible computer scientists who seemed to think that the [Trump-Alfa] allegations were credible."
/53

#SussmannTrial
Asked if Joffe was one of the "highly credible computer scientists", Seago testified: "There were others that ended up being cited in Mr. Foer's article. He cited L. Jean Camp and Paul Vixie". /54

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified that she provided information to Foer and that the purpose of this meeting to try and encourage Mr. Foer to publish an article: "We certainly hoped that he would publish an article."
/55

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified that Fusion GPS didn't attempt to validate the Alfa-Trump server allegations to see if "data was credible, authentic, supported" and that they didn't try to find out where the DNS came from. /56

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified that on August 29, 2016 and August 30, after the Elias-Sussmann-Joffe-Fusion meeting, she exchanged emails with Joffe that appear to be about Trump-Alfa allegations /57

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified that on October 17, 2016 she received an email from Fusion GPS co-founder Peter Fritsch titled "Memos," with attachments titled "Server Findings.doc.x" and "Alpha Group Overview 9.1.16.doc.x." /58

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified that on November 1, 2016 she sent an email to Fritsch titled "What the other side is saying."
which was discussing "opinions of the folks who were skeptical of the story." /59

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified that on November 3, 2016, she emailed Fusion partner, subject "Foer folio". This followed
Foer publishing Trump-Alfa bank article on October 31, 2016. /60

#Sussmann
Seago testified that on Oct 5, 2016 she sent an email to Fritsch with a gdd.zip file that "was posted to the Internet by an anonymous person containing documents related to the allegations that the Trump organization was communicating with Alfa-Bank. /61

#SussmannTrial
Seago testified that the information she received on Trump-Russia matter from Joffe was non-open source information.
/62

#SussmannTrial
Seago "understood that this Alfa-Bank work was related to the broader project for Perkins Coie and the Democratic entity"
/63

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Tomorrow I will go through Marc Elias' and Jim Baker's testimony.
In the meantime, @threadreaderapp please unroll 63 tweets