Russiagate Prober Durham Neglected DNC Hack Claim, Despite Evidence It Too Was A Democrat Sham

 In failing to address this episode, Durham missed an opportunity to press Sussmann and Henry on why they denied the FBI access to the DNC servers - and whether their false statements to Congress amounted to a criminal offense.

The Durham materials also reveal that the FBI's failure to examine the DNC servers was not its only rebuffed request.

Emails obtained by Durham show that CrowdStrike and the Clinton campaign ignored what the FBI listed as its number one "Priority Requests": "Un-redacted copies of CrowdStrike reports" on both the DNC and DCCC "Incidents." That request, also made to Sussmann, came in a September 30, 2016, email from FBI Special Agent E. Adrian Hawkins.

Other emails released by Durham in Sussmann's case show that the Clinton lawyer personally reviewed and edited an FBI public statement on the alleged hack of the DNC. On July 29, 2016 - just one week after WikiLeaks released a trove of embarrassing Democratic Party emails - the FBI drafted a press release on what it called "a possible cyber intrusion involving the DCCC." Trainor contacted Sussmann for input.

The FBI's failure to obtain both direct access to the DNC servers and unredacted copies of the CrowdStrike reports further calls into question U.S. intelligence officials' claim that Russia hacked the DNC. On October 7, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement claiming, for the first time, that the "U.S. Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails" from the Democratic Party.

Read in retrospect, these qualifiers - "Likely" and "Appear" signaled that U.S. intelligence lacked concrete evidence for their Russian hacking claims, given that CrowdStrike and the Clinton campaign had denied the FBI full access to the digital crime scene.

The FBI, the Durham report notes, relied on a "Significant quantity of materials ... that originated with and/or were funded by the Clinton campaign or affiliated persons." Accordingly, Durham concluded, the FBI should have considered whether the Clinton camp was feeding it false claims as "Part of a political effort to smear a political opponent" and exploit "The federal government's law enforcement and intelligence agencies in support" of that goal.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/06/06/what_durham_skipped_903673.html