Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said Monday that he expects to see “quite a few more indictments” come out of special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI probe of claims that former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.
Ratcliffe made his prediction on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” after Durham filed a motion late Friday alleging that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign paid an internet company to extract data from servers at Trump Tower and the White House to try to tie the 45th president to a Russian bank.
When pressed, Ratcliffe declined to name names of potential defendants, but recounted a discussion he had with Durham around the time Ratcliffe ordered the declassification of documents related to the probe in the fall of 2020.
“We talked about [then-CIA Director] John Brennan’s notes, talked about, you know, Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisers,” he said. “Obviously the pleadings talk about Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyers, now you’re talking about consultants.”
On Friday, Durham filed a motion alleging that a Clinton campaign lawyer, Michael Sussmann, “had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including … the Clinton campaign.”
“Based on the allegations, a tech executive [Rodney Joffe] and tech company used what was originally lawful access into government servers, but to gain information and to use it for an unlawful purpose,” Ratcliffe explained. “So what John Durham’s pleading talks about is that Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, Michael Sussmann, took this information from the tech executives and pitched it to the FBI as evidence of Trump-Russia connections that simply weren’t true, and that the lawyer, Michael Sussmann, and the tech executive knew not to be true.”
Sussmann has also been charged with lying to a federal agent, and pleaded not guilty in September. He allegedly falsely told the FBI he was not working on behalf of the Clinton campaign when he presented the agency with documents that supposedly linked the Trump Organization to a Kremlin-tied bank two months before the election.
However, Durham claims “records reflect” that Sussmann “repeatedly billed the Clinton Campaign for his work on the … allegations.”