CIA has known Trump-Russia collusion data not ‘technically plausible’ since 2017, Durham says

An agency believed to be the CIA concluded the data underpinning certain Trump-Russia collusion allegations was not “technically plausible” by early 2017, casting further doubt on claims pushed by the Clinton campaign before the 2016 election.

Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was indicted last September for allegedly concealing his clients — Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and “Tech Executive-1,” known to be former Neustar executive Rodney Joffe — from FBI general counsel James Baker in September 2016 when he pushed since-debunked claims of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank.

The September 2021 indictment alleged Sussmann lied when he said he was not providing the domain name system data allegations to the FBI on behalf of any client when he was, in fact, doing so on behalf of Joffe and the Clinton campaign.

Durham is also scrutinizing claims Sussmann made to the CIA in February 2017 about Russian phones, called YotaPhones, which the Democratic cybersecurity lawyer had claimed linked former President Donald Trump to these phones near the White House.

Durham revealed Friday that while the FBI “did not reach an ultimate conclusion regarding the data’s accuracy or whether it might have been in whole or in part genuine, spoofed, altered, or fabricated” as it was being pushed to government agencies, the CIA “concluded in early 2017 that the Russian Bank-1 data and Russian Phone Provider-1 data” — the Alfa Bank and YotaPhone information — was not “technically plausible,” did not “withstand technical scrutiny,” was “user created and not machine/tool generated," “contained gaps,” and “conflicted with [itself].” The special counsel said his office “has not reached a definitive conclusion in this regard.”

Durham said his prosecutors expect to cite evidence at trial reflecting that “the FBI and Agency-2 concluded that the Russian Bank-1 allegations were untrue and unsupported."

The special counsel said earlier this year that Sussmann told the CIA about the dubious Russian bank connection during the 2017 meeting in which he again allegedly misled about who his client was. Sussmann “provided data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by these entities of internet protocol addresses affiliated with a...

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