The researchers were not “spying” on the Trump campaign in 2016 but were instead working at the request of federal officials to investigate Russian malware attacks that had targeted the U.S. government and the White House, said Jody Westby, a lawyer for one of the research scientists involved, David Dagon of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The U.S. was on high alert at the time after the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails by Russian operatives. The data at issue was from the time Obama, not Trump, was in the White House, according to Westby.
“They were simply doing … research of Russian attacks against U.S. entities, including the federal government,” Westby said, adding, “The motion is unfortunate because it offers a lot of confusing information that is not factually accurate.”
In the filing, Durham says Sussman in February 2017 presented officials at a U.S. government agency — the CIA — with information derived from internet traffic that Sussmann said showed 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 Durham probe has so far produced just three criminal cases that have not undone Mueller’s findings but have focused on significant problems related to early aspects of the Russia investigation, including a so-called dossier of Democratic-funded research into Trump’s ties to Russia and flawed warrants to conduct secret surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. Those prongs of the investigation took place well before Mueller’s May 2017 appointment.