Prepared Floor Remarks by U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
On Special Counsel Durham and the Democratic Party’s Impact on Crossfire Hurricane
Thursday, September 23, 2021
Last week, Special Counsel Durham indicted Michael Sussmann, an attorney for the Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign, for lying to the FBI.
The indictment gives example after example of the Democratic Party’s bag of dirty tricks.
In September 2016, Sussmann met with the FBI’s General Counsel, James Baker, and provided information and data files that allegedly contained evidence of a secret communication channel between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank – Alfa Bank.
The evidence was fabricated. The allegations about the Trump Organization being linked with a Russian bank 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.
Interestingly, the indictment states that although Baker was allegedly unaware of the political affiliation of the information, starting in April of 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 Durham’s indictment shows in significant detail 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’s 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 it, and peddled the falsehoods.
I’d like to talk about 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.
This individual 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.”
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 sub-contract “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 you can’t make this stuff up but that’s 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 eventually 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 we have tunnel vision.”
They recognized that what they were doing lacked any factual support, yet Sussmann, the Democrats and the Clinton Campaign proceeded 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 depths to which the Clinton campaign went to smear Trump with false evidence and plant it with the liberal media who willingly ran with it.

And here we are, years later with a country that’s 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 predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

Special Counsel Durham has had several years to investigate and bring the case forward. We’ve seen two instances where folks have been charged with a crime, with one pleading guilty.

One must not forget the Obama-Biden Justice Department’s and FBI’s blatant misrepresentations to the FISA court during Crossfire Hurricane and other serious wrongdoing, much of which was uncovered by Congress and the Inspector General.

On June 29, 2021, 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 a form that will permit public dissemination.

On July 13, 2021, Attorney General Garland said that he agrees.

Special Counsel Durham, let’s see what you’ve got.

Johnson smacks down the Democrats as well:

GRASSLEY HAS BEEN TAKING AIM AT HILLARY FOR YEARS

Consider a 2019 press release from Grassley’s office:

08.14.2019
Grassley, Johnson Release Investigative Findings On Alleged Hack Of Clinton’s Server By China

In joint bipartisan interview, ICIG staff recount probe into alleged hack & attempts by State officials to downgrade classified email

WASHINGTON – Staff from the Intelligence Community Inspector General’s office (ICIG) witnessed efforts by senior Obama State Department officials to downplay the volume of classified emails that transited former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized server, according to a summary of a bipartisan interview with Senate investigators. The revelations corroborate concerns raised early in the email classification review that State Department officials sought to use lower-level FOIA exemptions to prevent the release of emails that other experts deemed to be classified.

The classified interview was conducted jointly by staff for then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in December. Staff for the committees’ ranking Democrats, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), also participated in the interview, which stemmed from news reports last August that China may have been able to hack the server. To investigate the allegations, committee staff interviewed Frank Rucker and Jeanette McMillian of the ICIG. Rucker was tasked in 2015 with protecting classified intelligence community equities during the State Department’s FOIA review of the server’s contents. He alerted the FBI to suspicious activity on the server that may have been evidence of an intrusion.

Neither the committees nor the FBI were able to confirm whether an intrusion into the server occurred. Notably, Paul Combetta, who administered the server and used software designed to prevent forensic recovery while deleting Clinton’s emails, refused to speak with the Justice Department Inspector General (DOJ IG) and Congress. Nonetheless, the committees’ interview with Rucker and McMillian revealed new information about the classification review process conducted and tightly controlled by senior State Department officials.

The interview summary and additional exhibits are being made public today as a part of a joint staff memo to Grassley and Johnson for the investigative record. The documents include a summary of probes by DOJ IG and ICIG into the alleged China hack, as well as additional documentary evidence.

The staff memo, interview summary and additional exhibits are available HERE.

Related:
DOJ IG: FBI Failed to Review Classified Info’ Potentially Relevant’ to Email Investigation before Exonerating Clinton

In other words, everyone knows that Clinton committed crimes and the FBI and her political allies covered everything up for her.