During an interview on Fox News‘ “Sunday Morning Futures” With host Maria Bartiromo, Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said that he provided special counsel John Durham about a thousand documents that support additional charges pertaining to Durham’s criminal investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion hoax investigation.
Ratcliffe told Bartiromo that the recent indictment of cybersecurity attorney Michael Sussmann, who is charged with lying to the FBI, is only the beginning concerning the overall criminality that has been alleged based on the documents he gave to Durham a year ago.
“Michael Sussmann’s [indictment] is the first of what I would hope would be a number, based on the fact I provided not just those declassified documents, but I provided 1,000 intelligence community documents that I think support additional charges that I would expect John Durham to bring,” he said.
Back in October 2020, Ratcliffe released a statement announcing he handed over the materials to Durham, who was named a special counsel by then Attorney General Bill Barr, to investigate the origins of the Russia, Russia, Russia! hoax that was started under the Obama administration.
“At my direction, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has now provided almost 1,000 pages of materials to the Department of Justice in response to Mr. Durham’s document requests,” Ratcliffe said.
“I will continue to ensure the Intelligence Community’s responsiveness to the DOJ’s requests. We also look forward to supporting the DOJ in further declassifications consistent with their investigation. As the President has made clear, we must be appropriately transparent with the American people and give them the confidence that the extraordinary work of Intelligence professionals is never misused or politicized,” he continued.
From the Washington Examiner:
Ratcliffe, who has served as Trump’s spy chief overseeing the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies since May, first shared the statement with Axios in a report that cited “a source with direct knowledge of the materials” who claimed that Ratcliffe “has approved the release” to DOJ investigators “a large binder full of documents” to assist Durham’s investigation into the conduct of law enforcement and intelligence officials involved in examining ties between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. The report also said Ratcliffe “has been working on this batch of documents for a number of weeks.” The move by Ratcliffe follows repeated calls by Trump for more information to be declassified and made public.
The Examiner reported in another piece:
“Ratcliffe also declassified two heavily redacted Russia-related documents, including handwritten notes from former CIA Director John Brennan showing he briefed then-President Barack Obama in 2016 on an unverified Russian intelligence report.
“The report claimed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planned in July 2016 on tying then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee to distract from her improper use of a private email server.”
Durham already has a guilty plea under his belt. Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to lying to the FISA court when he altered a document to remove the part that said former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was an asset for the CIA. The FISA warrant they obtained was what let the Obama administration spy on the Trump campaign and then, later, President-Elect, then President Donald Trump.
Why Carter Page? Because the FBI has a two-hop rule which allows agents to spy on anyone who had any kind of communication with the subject of the FISA warrant. Page being a campaign adviser, had contact with many other people who worked for the campaign.
Sussmann, who is a former lawyer for the law firm Perkins Coie, represented the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. He was charged of “falsely telling the top FBI lawyer he was not representing any clients when acting on behalf of a technology executive and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign during a September 2016 meeting on possible links between Trump and Russia.” This was the lie he relayed to the FBI that the Trump Tower computers were doing shady communications with the Russians through the Russian Alfa Bank.
“Clinesmith was indicted on lying to the FISA court to spy on the Trump campaign. And then, on your show, we talked about this very fact, that the Hillary Clinton campaign created the Trump-Russia collusion. And the intelligence community and the FBI knew that,” Ratcliffe said.
Ratcliffe added, “And they briefed not just President Obama, but Vice President Biden and the entire national security team. I expected and said there would be indictments forthcoming.”
Rich is a conservative, syndicated opinion writer and owner of MAGA-Chat.com. He writes about politics, culture, liberty, and faith.
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