One top Republican is warning that while more damning information continues to surface, Hillary Clinton appears to be off the hook in terms of Special Counsel John Durham’s criminal inquiry.
During an interview with journalist Sharyl Attkisson, California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa argued that Durham’s investigation into the origins and conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation has taken too long.
“Justice delayed is justice denied is not some sort of a trite statement. It’s very true,” Issa told Attkisson.
“Anything that comes out of the Durham report,” Issa said before stopping to scoff and shake his head. “It could lynch Hillary Clinton, and it wouldn’t change a thing.”
“The fact is, the time has passed. It is pretty irrelevant, except it’s a lesson to Congress that putting real-time limits and putting real meat in activities, including inspector general’s reports and so on, is more important than ever. The time it takes to complete an investigation, or the time it takes for Congress to get to the truth, impacts whether or not you’re going to get the truth and compliance in a timely fashion. If you can hold an administration accountable in real-time, they will cooperate. If they know they can run out the clock, as they often do, they won’t,” Issa said.
Last week, a federal judge rejected a bid by Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann to “strike” a “factual background” section of Special Counsel John Durham’s early February court filing.
Last month, Sussmann’s legal team filed a motion demanding that the court remove portions of the Feb. 11 filing that included the “Factual Background” section by claiming that it would “taint” a jury.
“I’m not going to strike anything from the record,” noted U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Christopher Cooper during a status hearing. “Whatever effect the filing has had has already passed.”
The Epoch Times reported in February:
…Sussmann was representing the Clinton campaign when in 2016 he passed along information to an FBI counsel. His lawyers say the documents “raised national security concerns” while prosecutors describe them as purportedly detailing a covert channel between a Russian bank and the business of Donald Trump, Clinton’s rival at the time.
Sussmann was charged with lying to the FBI because he falsely told the counsel he was not providing the allegations to the FBI on behalf of any client despite presenting the information on behalf of the Clinton campaign, prosecutors say.
In a filing in February, Sussmann’s lawyers moved to dismiss the charge, claiming their client “did not make any false statement to the FBI” but even if he had, “the false statement alleged in the indictment is immaterial as a matter of law.”
“Allowing this case to go forward would risk criminalizing ordinary conduct, raise First Amendment concerns, dissuade honest citizens from coming forward with tips, and chill the advocacy of lawyers who interact with the government,” the filing stated.
Durham’s team responded by calling his claims “absurd” and asked the federal court in the District of Columbia to proceed.
“And far from being immaterial, they went on to say that ‘the defendant’s false statement was capable of influencing both the FBI’s decision to initiate an investigation and its subsequent conduct of that investigation,” the filing continued.
In its response to the Sussmann filing, Durham’s team noted: “The defendant’s false statement to the FBI General Counsel was plainly material because it misled the General Counsel about, among other things, the critical fact that the defendant was disseminating highly explosive allegations about a then-Presidential candidate on behalf of two specific clients, one of which was the opposing Presidential campaign.”
“The defendant’s efforts to mislead the FBI in this manner during the height of a Presidential election season plainly could have influenced the FBI’s decision-making in any number of ways,” Durham’s team continued.
Also in his filing, Durham suggested that were it not for Sussmann’s allegedly false statement to the FBI, the Russiagate probe of then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign would never have happened.
