It took years for former President Donald Trump to shake off now-discredited claims of collusion with Russia, but that difficulty comes as no surprise given the continuing revelations of just how sophisticated the attempt to connect him to the Kremlin was.
The first attempt to spy on the Trump campaign came from the FBI in the form of the Steele Dossier, a bogus document purporting to show Trump’s connection with Russia that the FBI used as an excuse to justify spying on Trump’s campaign. In the years since, however, Special Counsel John Durham’s probe has uncovered multiple avenues that Hillary Clinton’s campaign used to spy on Trump both before and after he entered office in an attempt to pin him on Russia Collusion. (RELATED: John Brennan Says There Was ‘No Spying’ On Trump’s Campaign)
A Friday filing from Durham alleges that the Clinton campaign hired a tech firm run by one Rodney Joffe to “infiltrate” private servers that were kept at Trump Tower and later at the White House. The goal of the infiltration was to dig up any information that might assist in linking the Trump campaign to the Kremlin, a task a two-year investigation from Special Counsel Robert Mueller would ultimately fail to do.
Durham’s report states that information from the server would be used “to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia.”
U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was appointed Special Counsel to investigate the FBI and Clinton campaign for efforts to spy on former President Donald Trump both before and after entering the White House. (Youtube screen capture/Fox News)
The report adds that Clinton operatives then used the information they garnered and went to the CIA and FBI in an attempt to get the organizations to legitimize phony allegations by opening formal investigations.
Durham’s latest report centered on former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was indicted for lying to federal agents in September. Sussmann worked with tech executive Rodney Joffe on the “infiltration” effort and then subsequently “assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients,” one of which was the Clinton campaign, according to Durham.
The infiltration of Trump’s servers continued once those servers were moved to the White House, an act Trump himself described Saturday as punishable by death in a “stronger period of time” in the U.S.
“Tech Executive [Rodney Joffe], had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP [White House’s Executive Office of the President] as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP,” Durham’s report reads. “[Joffe] and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.”
All told, not only was the Trump campaign facing baseless surveillance from the FBI throughout 2016, but they were also facing hacking efforts directly from his opponent’s campaign, according to Durham.
“‘The latest pleading from Special Counsel Durham proves indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia,” Trump wrote in a statement. “This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution.”
“In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death. In addition, reparations should be paid to those in our country who have been damaged by this,” he added.