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The Tech Executive-1 in John Durhams indictment of a Democratic cybersecurity lawyer testified in a lawsuit that he had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when asked to testify by the special counsel.

Rodney Joffe, former senior vice president at Neustar, coordinated in 2016 with Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was indicted last year for allegedly concealing his clients, including Hillary Clinton's campaign and Joffe, from the FBI in September 2016 when he pushed debunked claims of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia's Alfa Bank.

Alfa Bank filed a John Doe lawsuit and deposed Joffe in February. A common refrain from Joffe was: As a result of the ongoing investigation of the Office of the Special Counsel, on the advice of my counsel, Im going to decline to answer the question on the basis of my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

They did serve me with a grand jury subpoena, and I did invoke my Fifth Amendment rights, Joffe said, saying that the subpoena was for testimony and documents and that the subpoenas came after a request for an interview.

Joffe said Sussmann became an attorney for Neustar around 2010, and it continued until September when the indictment occurred. He pleaded the Fifth on whether Sussmann ever represented him personally. Joffe said he retired in mid-September.

Sussmann pleaded not guilty, with Durham revealing last month he has evidence Joffe exploited DNS internet traffic at Trump Tower, Donald Trumps Central Park West apartment building, and the Executive Office of the President.

CLINTON CONDEMNS 'CONSPIRACY THEORIES' RELATED TO DURHAM INVESTIGATION

Durham said in October that Joffe exploited his own companys access to the sensitive internet data of a high-ranking executive branch office of the U.S. government, both before and after the Presidential election." Joffe pleaded the Fifth when asked to identify the executive office. Joffes attorney said "that should not be interpreted as an admission that the ... allegations, which are just allegations in the indictment, are accurate.

Joffe said he had never heard of the Alfa Bank allegations prior to the summer of 2016.

When asked if it was possible to cause pings from a DNS perspective to make it look like a communication, he said, I have no idea. He denied manipulating the DNS data in the Alfa Bank allegations or creating false pings.

Durhams indictment of Sussmann alleged Joffe tasked researchers with mining internet data to establish a narrative tying then-candidate Trump to Russia. Durham said Joffe indicated he was doing this to please Clinton campaign VIPs."

Joffe said he was not paid by Clinton's campaign. He declined to say whether Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias or Fusion GPS were present when he discussed the Alfa Bank allegations with Sussmann in July 2016 and said he had never heard of Fusion before 2016.

Durham said that, shortly after Clintons loss, Joffe wrote in an email: "I was tentatively offered the top [cybersecurity] job by the Democrats when it looked like they'd win. I definitely would not take the job under Trump."

Joffe testified, Ive never been interested in politics. Ive never been involved in politics. ... I havent donated to any parties or given any kind of benefit to any parties, but I certainly over the last few years have had an interest in the politics of the country I live in. Joffe pleaded the Fifth on his thoughts about Trump.

He appears to have referred to himself as Max in a 2018 article pushing the Alfa Bank claims. Max described himself as a John McCain Republican. Joffe declined to say whether that was him.

Joffe claimed he did not anticipate holding any job in the Clinton administration and was not offered the top cybersecurity job if Democrats won. Joffe said he had no possible interest in joining Clinton's administration.

He denied knowing British ex-spy Christopher Steele and said he "had no firsthand knowledge" when asked if he knew Sussmann met with Steele about Alfa Bank claims.

Joffe also declined to answer which businesses he owns, and whether he knew the identity of a person dubbed "Originator-1," who Durham says collaborated with Joffe on the Alfa Bank claims. It is April Lorenzen of Zetalytics.

Joffe said Neustar has provided DNS data outside the company in the past, including "a set of DNS data that has no terms and conditions around it, and that data is provided to a number of parties including security researchers. He declined to say whether he believed DNS data is nonconfidential.

Joffe also said, I take the Fifth, when asked if he knows Daniel Jones, lead author of the Senate Intelligence Committees report on the CIAs interrogation program who founded the Democracy Integrity Project in January 2017. Tax records show he funded Steele, Fusion, and others.

Court records show Jones was asked by the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2017 to look into Alfa Bank allegations, and his 2018 report concluded that "there was a special relationship between the Trump Organization server and servers associated with Alfa Bank.

Cybersecurity expert Robert Graham wrote that "the allegation that this proves a secret connect between Alfa Bank and a Trump server is clearly false.

Joffe said Kirk McConnell is the only person with the Senate committee he could recall.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The special counsel has said Sussmann claimed to another agency, believed to be the CIA, in February 2017 that data he had access to demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House. Durham found "no support for these allegations." Joffe declined to answer whether Neustar provided the Russian phone data to university researchers.

Joffe testified he had gone through chemotherapy and used the drug Prednisone, claiming: I still have, you know, some effect with memory so, you know, my memory during the period when I was ill, which was from 2012 through 2017.

More here:
'Tech Exec-1' says he pleaded the Fifth to John Durham's grand jury - Washington Examiner

Cade Cothren, speaking on phone, attends a meeting with lawmakers and fellow staffers on the balcony ouside the House chamber on April 29, 2019. (Erik Schelzig, Tenenssee Journal)

Cade Cothren, the onetime chief of staff to former House Speaker Glen Casada, intends to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination at a Registry of Election Finance hearing on Wednesday, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports.

Cade Cothren objects to and will not respond to your subpoena, his attorney, Cynthia A. Sherwood, wrote to the Registry last month. This objection is based on the grounds that these subpoenas were made in bad faith and are an abuse of process.

Furthermore, she added, Mr. Cothren invokes his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

The probe involves the role of the Faith Family Freedom Fund in attacking then-Rep. Rick Tillis of Lewisburg during his Republican primary in 2020. The PACs treasurer testified to the Registry by telephone in January that she had registered the group on behalf of Cothren, whom she had been dating at the time. Friedopfer said she had been young and dumb and didnt know she would be liable for the PACs activities. Cothrenadvised her not to respond to a Registry audit of the PAC, she said.

The Registry responded by issuing subpoenas of Cothren, Casada, and the winning candidate in the 2020 race, Rep. Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill).

See the article here:
Cothren to take the Fifth in Registry probe TNJ - TN Journal

CASE PREVIEW ByHoward M. Wasserman on Mar 1, 2022 at 10:24 am

Egbert v. Boule is a lawsuit seeking damages for alleged constitutional violations by a Border Patrol agent. (DCStockPhotography via Shutterstock)

The Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider the continued vitality and expansion of lawsuits for damages against federal officers under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. Egbert v. Boule considers whether to extend the Bivens cause of action to First Amendment retaliation claims and Fourth Amendment claims arising from immigration enforcement near the U.S.-Canada border.

Robert Boule is a U.S. citizen who owns and runs the Smugglers Inn, a bed-and-breakfast abutting the Canadian border in Blaine, Washington. The town is a reputed locus of cross-border criminal activity, and the Smugglers Inn purportedly attracts drug traffickers and people seeking to illegally cross the border.

Blaine, Washington (Arkyan via Wikipedia)

In 2014, Erik Egbert, a Customs and Border Patrol agent, approached Boule in town and asked about guests at his inn. Boule told Egbert of a guest who had flown from Turkey to New York the previous day and was flying to Washington and driving to the inn. Later that day, Egbert followed the vehicle transporting the guest onto the inns driveway and tried to speak with him. Boule sought to intervene and asked Egbert to leave his property. Egbert twice shoved Boule out of his way, pushing him to the ground. After confirming that the guest was lawfully in the country, Egbert and two other agents (who had been called to the scene when Boule confronted Egbert) left. Boule complained to Egberts superiors, after which Egbert allegedly contacted the Internal Revenue Service and state agencies, resulting in a tax audit and investigations of Boules activities.

Boule filed a Bivens lawsuit in federal district court, alleging that Egbert retaliated against him for complaining about Egberts behavior in violation of the First Amendment and used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Egbert. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed, and the Supreme Court granted review.

Subsequent to the events giving rise to this case, Boule pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting violations of Canadian immigration law over human smuggling and was sentenced to time served.

The judicially created Bivens cause of action functions as the counterpart to 42 U.S.C. 1983, allowing suits for damages against federal officers for past constitutional violations. The Supreme Court has allowed three Bivens claims to proceed a Fourth Amendment claim against law enforcement, a Fifth Amendment due-process employment-discrimination claim, and an Eighth Amendment claim involving medical care in prison. But the court has described Bivens actions as disfavored judicial activity, rejecting recent claims in Ziglar v. Abbassi against high-level executive officials enacting post-9/11 national-security policy and in Hernandez v. Mesa against a Border Patrol agent over a cross-border shooting of a Mexican national.

Recent cases establish a two-step inquiry. First, the court asks whether the case involves an extension of Bivens into a new context that is different in a meaningful way from previous Bivens cases decided by this Court, even if that extension is modest. If the case extends Bivens into a new context, the court considers special factors that counsel hesitation about granting the extension. Central to this analysis is the presumption that Congress, not the courts, should decide whether a cause of action should be available against federal officers or on a set of facts.

Egbert begins by urging the court to categorically reject future extensions of Bivens. While the court has not closed the door to extensions, he argues that judicially created causes of action are relics of a discredited view of federal courts authority, reflected in the Supreme Courts refusal to recognize a new Bivens claim in 10 cases over 40 years. Egbert argues that courts should hesitate before granting a Bivens extension because every extension threatens the separation of powers by usurping congressional power to create private causes of action, to evaluate the far-reaching policy involved in allowing people to sue for money damages, and to make policy judgments about how best to hold federal officers accountable for constitutional misconduct. He argues that extending Bivens in this or any new context breathe[s] new life into doctrines this Court has extinguished.

If Bivens extensions remain permissible, Egbert argues that both claims in this case entail extensions into new contexts, and special factors counsel hesitation, compelling the court to reject both.

As for the First Amendment retaliation claim, the context is new because the court has never recognized a First Amendment Bivens claim, particularly not in the context of retaliation by Border Patrol agents along an international border. A host of special factors counsel hesitation. Egbert argues that retaliation claims (in which lawful action becomes unlawful if done for the wrong reason) are nebulous and amorphous, producing difficult and complex litigation. Claims against Border Patrol agents working near the border raise national-security and immigration-enforcement concerns, different from claims against other federal agents. And a plaintiff in Boules position has alternative remedies, including claims under the Privacy Act, proceedings through the IRS and federal tax code, state tort law, and federal administrative investigations. These remedies reflect congressional consideration of the best way to deter constitutional violations by federal officers, and none involves a claim for damages based on retaliation for speech.

Fourth Amendment claims are available, as Bivens itself involved a Fourth Amendment violation for unlawful search and excessive force. But Egbert argues that the context of this case involves a new class of defendants (Border Patrol agents), a new location (an area along the border), and a new enforcement scheme (the application of immigration laws to foreign nationals). Similar special factors counsel hesitation, particularly the national-security concerns arising from claims challenging enforcement of immigration laws. And Congress provided for alternative remedies, including a claim against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (which Boule began but did not pursue) and complaints to the Department of Homeland Security triggering employment sanctions for the misconduct.

The United States appears as amicus and has been given argument time. Unlike Egbert, the government does not argue that courts cannot extend Bivens. But it insists that extensions are unwarranted in this case.

Like Egbert, the government emphasizes that the Court has never recognized a First Amendment Bivens claim and that this Fourth Amendment claim is meaningfully different in several respects from the claim recognized in Bivens. Egbert is a Border Patrol agent and was investigating a foreign national who might have been involved in cross-border smuggling or immigration violations. It occurred steps away from an international border in an area known for illegal smuggling of persons, drugs, and money. The government insists these facts implicate an element of national security absent in Bivens.

The government identifies a similar list of special factors counseling hesitation and compelling the court to leave to Congress the choice to create a cause of action. It highlights past failure to extend Bivens to First Amendment claims, then emphasizes the special concerns for extending to retaliation claims against law enforcement. And it identifies a series of available alternative remedies for Egberts alleged misconduct: complaints through the IRS for false reporting of tax issues, a claim under the Privacy Act for disclosure of private information, state tort claims, administrative claims through the Customs and Border Patrol, and departmental disciplinary proceedings.

Boule filed his brief under seal with the courts permission, leaving a redacted brief publicly available.

Boule emphasizes that Bivens is not dead or long-buried, extinguished, or demolished, contrary to Egberts arguments. Egberts cert petition asked the court to reconsider Bivens, but the court declined to review that issue. And Boule argues that Abbasi did not reject Bivens as a relic or retreat from all applications of Bivens. Rather, Abbasi left room for cases that are the same or trivially different from the courts prior cases.

Boule argues that is this case. The Fourth Amendment claim involves an unlawful search and seizure by a federal officer on private property, materially indistinguishable from Bivens. And this lawsuit challenges conduct by a ground-level official on U.S. soil against a U.S. citizen at his dwelling. Boule argues that this case does not involve national-security policy or the actions of an officer stationed on the border trying to prevent unlawful entry into the United States. Boule also argues that he has no alternative remedies, as the Federal Tort Claims Act does not replace Bivens and administrative procedures do not provide substantive remedies.

Without holding so, Boule argues, several cases have assumed that First Amendment claims, including First Amendment retaliation claims, are cognizable under Bivens. And the court has established that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from retaliating against persons for speaking out about government misconduct. As with the Fourth Amendment claim, this claim does not implicate separation of powers; it involves ground-level, non-policymaking conduct by an individual officer. Moreover, Egberts alleged retaliation has no nexus to the conduct of agents at the border. Rather, Boules claim involves conduct away from the border, following completion of the initial encounter, when Egbert contacted numerous agencies to investigate Boule. Boule argues that this is not the typical complicated retaliation claim in which a search, arrest, or prosecution may have been retaliatory or may have been independently justified, requiring a court to parse the officers state of mind and the line between lawful and unlawful conduct. Instead, his is a straightforward retaliation claim, in which the causal connection between Egberts animus and Boules injury is obvious and not bound in complex inquiries into causation or probable cause.

See the original post here:
Border agents, the First Amendment, and the continued vitality of Bivens - SCOTUSblog

The United States Court of Federal Claims has ruled that landowners along a planned railroad conversion project in Southern Indiana should receive compensation from the federal government.

The City of New Albany and the Indiana Trails Fund are in negotiations with railroad company CSX to turn out-of-service tracks into a recreational trail as part of the Rails to Trails initiative. The project would include more than 60 miles of railroad between New Albany and Bedford.

About 50 people who own property along the line filed lawsuits claiming the federal government owes them money, citing statutes regarding railroad conversions. A federal judge ruled in their favor in one of those cases on Feb. 18.

[The court] held the government is liable for taking these landowners property and has to move forward with paying them their just compensation, said attorney Lindsay Brinton, who represents the landowners. We now are in the stages where were hiring a local appraiser, and were getting out and valuing the amount of the governments taking. So its a big step in this case.

CSX discontinued use of the line in 2010 and entered discussions to transfer the tracks to trail developers in early 2018. The landowners filed suit shortly after the federal government allowed those negotiations to proceed.

CSXs effort to sell or lease the property is part of a process called railbanking, which was implemented by the federal government in 1983 to help preserve rail lines across the country. It allows railroad companies to transfer responsibility of lines to third parties for recreational purposes on an interim basis, leaving open the possibility that they could be reactivated as railroads.

Brinton said when the line started in the 19th century, the railroad company was granted an easement that allowed them to use the property, not own it. She said state law dictates it be returned to surrounding landowners when railroad use is discontinued.

Federal railroad conversion laws supersede that state statute, though, and the Fifth Amendment requires the federal government to provide just compensation to landowners if their property is seized under certain circumstances. Though the deal to sell or lease the railroad tracks for the project isnt finalized, the federal governments go-ahead means landowners are entitled to compensation.

What we have is a situation where its called inverse condemnation, where the taking occurs first, Brinton said. And then if the landowner wants to be compensated for that taking, the landowner has to file an affirmative claim for compensation. So they actually have to pursue litigation in order to be paid for the taking of their property.

Brinton said the Rails to Trails project is legal and following established precedent, but landowners are entitled to money. She said hundreds of other landowners in Southern Indiana could also have a claim to compensation.

I would say landowners should err on the side of it being worth looking into.

Brinton said landowners in Indiana own everything up to the middle of the railroad tracks unless the deed states otherwise, under a rule called the centerline presumption.

Neither New Albany nor the Indiana Trails Fund are directly involved in the litigation.

See original here:
Southern Indiana landowners entitled to government money for Rails to Trails project - 89.3 WFPL News Louisville

In a DC hearing on February 9 regarding Alfa Banks attempt to obtain documents from Michael Sussmann before his trial, DC Superior Judge Shana Frost Matini observed that the Alfa Bank allegations and the John Durham indictment seemed like they could be written by the same people.

[R]ight now, given the if the closeness of Alphas allegations, I mean, quite frankly, its reading Alphas submissions and what the and that compared to the indictment, theres its almost like they were written by the same people in some way. [Alpha misspelling original]

Judge Matini, a Trump appointee, scolded Alfa which over this past weekend was included in sanctions against Russian banks in retaliation for the invasion for claiming that their lawsuit and Durhams indictment of Sussmann were not closely related after having raised the indictment in the first place.

As to the claims that the criminal and civil proceedings are not closely related, this is a surprising representation for Alpha to make, given that Alpha was the one to bring the criminal charges to the Courts attention by filing what was styled as a notice of supplemental authority in support of its Motion to Compel.

Of course, there is no Supplemental Authority here. A criminal indictment is not an opinion of the Court. Its just a charge that the prosecuting authority is bringing against an individual with facts that are alleged to support the charge.

In dual lawsuits in FL and PA, Alfa Bank purports to be trying to figure out who allegedly faked DNS records to make it look like Alfa was in contact with Trump back in 2016 so it can sue those people. Rather than finding anyone to sue, however, it has instead spent its time subpoenaing experts to learn as much as it can about how the US tracks DNS records to prevent cyberattacks by among other hostile countries Russia.

Matini ruled that Alfas effort to get more information from Sussmann will have to wait until June, after his trial. (Its unclear whether the sanctioned bank will still have legal means to pay Skadden lawyers to pursue this lawsuit at that point.)

But since then, the timelines of the Alfa Bank and Durham investigations have closely paralleled.

Of particular interest, on the morning of February 11, Rodney Joffe referred to as Tech Executive-1 in the Durham filings sat for an almost 5-hour deposition with Alfa Banks lawyers. He revealed that Durham had first approached him for an interview at least a year earlier. He revealed he had been asked to testify before the grand jury, but he declined to interview, presumably meaning he told Durham hed invoke the Fifth (just as Don Jr and probably his daddy are understood to have done with Mueller).

Joffes refusal to voluntarily feed this witch hunt continued in his Alfa deposition. Citing the ongoing Durham investigation, he invoked the Fifth Amendment a slew of times (though not as many times as your average Trump man in a financial fraud deposition or even Alex Jones in an interview about an insurrection). Those questions to which he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and those he answered mapped out an interesting territory, marking who he does know and those Alfa thought he did but that he does not.

For example, he said he had never heard of Alfa Bank before investigating the anomaly related to it. He said he had never met Jean Camp or several of the other researchers that frothers are certain he conspired with. Joffe twice said he had never met Christopher Steele and also said he had no idea that Sussmann met with Steele about the server allegations. He denied knowing what the contract between Georgia Tech and DARPA looked like.

Alfa made a number of mistakes confusing a domain name with a business. Claiming he authored a paper that David Dagon had. Asking him about several emails he hadnt been sent.

There were several claims Alfa made that Joffes lawyer, Steven Tyrrell, established a record were unproven assumptions on Alfas part, such as that Joffe got one of the white papers described in the indictment. Importantly, that includes a question about the EOP server.

Q: I was just going to ask Mr. Joffe whether or not he knows who the executive branch office of the U.S. government is?

A: I have to invoke my Fifth Amendment rights.

Mr. Tyrrell: And Margaret, if I may, just I apologize. Just for the record, I want to be clear that that in invoking his rights and my allowing my client to invoke his rights, that should not be interpreted as an admission that the I mean, youll argue whatever it is, if you do, that the allegations, which are just allegations in the indictment, are accurate.

In addition to those curious objections, there were several things alleged in the indictment that Joffe outright denied. In several questions, Joffe challenged the meaning of an email Durham has used to suggest he anticipated, and wanted, a top cybersecurity job within a hypothetical Hillary Administration. After objecting to the form of the way the Alfa Banks Skadden lawyer tried to corner Joffe into answering the question, Tyrrell answered,

You know, again, our position on this is Mr. Joffe is happy to answer the question that was posed about whether he was ever offered the top cybersecurity job by the Democrats when it looked like theyd win. I think hes answered that question.

Hes not going to answer questions about communications that he may or may not have had with other people about the topic. And as to those, he would invoke his rights under the Fifth Amendment.

Joffe answered no to three questions about whether the Clinton campaign paid him for his work on the server allegations, a false claim that Kash Patel spread. Joffe also distinguished his concern about Donald Trump from a political desire to see him lose.

Ive never been interested in politics. Ive never been involved in politics. I havent voted for many, many years. I havent donated to any parties or any or given any kind of benefit to any parties, but I certainly over the last few years have had an interest in the politics of the country that I live in.

That explanation premised two invocations of his Fifth Amendment in response to questions about Trump specifically.

In other words, Joffes Alfa Bank deposition on February 11 undermined several of the premises of the Durham investigation, while it identified several areas where his lawyer suggested Alfas assumptions were wrong (in the hearing on Laura Seagos deposition, there was a central Alfa Bank assumption I know to be badly wrong).

Joffes deposition ended at 2:07PM ET on February 11.

Nine hours later, at 11:32PM, Durham submitted the belated conflicts motion which would have been filed in September if Durham really had concerns about any conflict and floated a number of claims about Joffe, claims that went beyond those in the indictment. Joffe is mentioned twenty times, including the following:

The defendants billing records reflect that the defendant repeatedly billed the Clinton Campaign for his work on the Russian Bank-1 allegations. In compiling and disseminating these allegations, the defendant and Tech Executive-1 also had met and communicated with another law partner at Law Firm-1 who was then serving as General Counsel to the Clinton Campaign (Campaign Lawyer-1).

The Indictment also alleges that, beginning in approximately July 2016, Tech Executive-1 had worked with the defendant, a U.S. investigative firm retained by Law Firm-1 on behalf of the Clinton Campaign, numerous cyber researchers, and employees at multiple Internet companies to assemble the purported data and white papers. In connection with these efforts, Tech Executive-1 exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data. Tech Executive-1 also enlisted the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of Internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract. Tech Executive-1 tasked these researchers to mine Internet data to establish an inference and narrative tying then-candidate Trump to Russia. In doing so, Tech Executive-1 indicated that he was seeking to please certain VIPs, referring to individuals at Law Firm-1 and the Clinton Campaign.

The Governments evidence at trial will also establish that among the Internet data Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited was domain name system (DNS) Internet traffic pertaining to (i) a particular healthcare provider, (ii) Trump Tower, (iii) Donald Trumps Central Park West apartment building, and (iv) the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP). (Tech Executive-1s employer, Internet Company-1, had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP. Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOPs DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.)

The Indictment further details that on February 9, 2017, the defendant provided an updated set of allegations including the Russian Bank-1 data and additional allegations relating to Trump to a second agency of the U.S. government (Agency-2). The Governments evidence at trial will establish that these additional allegations relied, in part, on the purported DNS traffic that Tech Executive-1 and others had assembled pertaining to Trump Tower, Donald Trumps New York City apartment building, the EOP, and the aforementioned healthcare provider. In his meeting with Agency-2, the defendant provided data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by these entities of internet protocol (IP) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider (Russian Phone Provider-1). The defendant further claimed that these lookups demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations. The Special Counsels Office has identified no support for these allegations. Indeed, more complete DNS data that the Special Counsels Office obtained from a company that assisted Tech Executive-1 in assembling these allegations reflects that such DNS lookups were far from rare in the United States. For example, the more complete data that Tech Executive-1 and his associates gathered but did not provide to Agency-2 reflected that between approximately 2014 and 2017, there were a total of more than 3 million lookups of Russian Phone-Provider-1 IP addresses that originated with U.S.-based IP addresses. Fewer than 1,000 of these lookups originated with IP addresses affiliated with Trump Tower. In addition, the more complete data assembled by Tech Executive-1 and his associates reflected that DNS lookups involving the EOP and Russian Phone Provider-1 began at least as early 2014 (i.e., during the Obama administration and years before Trump took office) another fact which the allegations omitted.

As I noted, less than a day after Durham filed that motion, the former President suggested that Joffe had been spying and should be killed. In response to the furor, Joffes spox later issued a statement clarifying what went on precisely the information he had tried to plead the Fifth over.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Mr. Joffe said that contrary to the allegations in this recent filing, he was apolitical, did not work for any political party, and had lawful access under a contract to work with others to analyze DNS data including from the White House for the purpose of hunting for security breaches or threats.

After Russians hacked networks for the White House and Democrats in 2015 and 2016, it went on, the cybersecurity researchers were deeply concerned to find data suggesting Russian-made YotaPhones were in proximity to the Trump campaign and the White House, so prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the C.I.A.

And some of the other researchers had to provide more details to push back on the frenzy (including that the data from EOP preceded Trumps inauguration). Few outlets, though, have presented the basic innumeracy in Durhams filing about the rarity of YotaPhones as anything but a contested issue.

And after Durham incited claims that Joffe should be killed, one week later Alfa Bank then affirmed the tie between Joffe and Tech Executive 1 by posting his deposition in their motion to get another four months to conduct their fishing expedition. That has had the effect of further inflaming the frothy right, and providing Durham sworn testimony from Joffe that he was otherwise not entitled to (including several warnings about how his case against Sussmann may be vulnerable).

In the wake of the release of the Florida filing, Joffes lawyers intervened in the Sussmann case and then filed a separate sealed motion to strike the (misleading) references to Joffe in the filing.

A Trump appointed judge in DC believes these efforts look like theyre being written by the same people. Whether Durhams sources and a sanctioned Russian Banks sources are colluding, these parallel developments had the effect of depriving Joffe of his ability to fully invoke the Fifth Amendment. And with the help of a sanctioned Russian bank, it gave Durham a substantial benefit in a criminal investigation.

January 25: Durham asks to extend discovery deadline

January 28: Durham admits that Durham was informed about the James Baker phone he claimed to forget knowing about

February 9: Michael Sussmann succeeds in staying Alfa Banks effort to get documents from him

February 10: Fusion GPS Laura Seago attempts to quash a subpoena

February 11, 9:30AM: Rodney Joffe deposition

February 11, 11:32PM: Durham files a motion purporting to be a conflicts motion that misrepresents the evidence

February 14: Sussmann asks to strike unsupported allegations in conflicts motion

February 14: Peter Fritsch deposition

February 17: Sussmann moves to dismiss the case, arguing his alleged lie would not be material

February 17: Durham claims that the close associates of the investigation that lied about what the conflicts motion said have nothing to do with the Durham team

February 18: Alfa Bank requests another extension to keep looking for John Does in FL

February 24: Rodney Joffes lawyers file notices of appearance in the Sussmann docket

February 25: Judge Christopher Cooper schedules a hearing on the conflicts motion for March 7

February 28: Joffe files a sealed motion to expunge the references to Tech Executive-1

March 1: Judge Cooper sets a Friday deadline for the government to respond to Joffes motion

March 7: Hearing scheduled to address conflicts memo

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John Durham and Newly-Sanctioned Alfa Bank's Filings: "Almost like they were written by the same people" - emptywheel - Emptywheel