Tangle - The Durham news, explained.

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Late last week, something interesting happened: A news story began percolating in many conservative online spaces, but got very little attention in more "mainstream" sources like The New York Times or The Washington Post. It was, seemingly, ignored by many news outlets with more liberal writers on staff.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the John Durham probe and this filing that has the conservative media percolating and some more mainstream media kind of quiet, maybe a little bit on the defensive. We'll talk about that in a little bit.

But as always, before we jump in, we'll start with some quick hits. First up, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked emergency powers in an effort to cut off funding for demonstrators and bring in federal police to quell the protests across the country. Number two, the United States announced it was relocating its embassy from Kiev to western Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia says some troops will return to base, an indication it may engage in further de-escalation negotiations. Number three, a U.S. Navy engineer pleaded guilty to a charge that he tried to sell some of America's most closely guarded submarine secrets to a foreign country. Number four, the Trump Organization's accounting firm, Mazars USA, cut its ties with

the corporation and called into question the reliability of a decade's worth of financial statements. Number five, a federal judge plans to dismiss Sarah Palin's libel lawsuit against the New York Times. We're back with the Fox News Alert. A new report from special counsel John Durham coming out late last night claiming Clinton campaign lawyers paid a tech company to infiltrate Trump servers. You just heard the report on the Durham investigation and what you've heard about that so far. Your thoughts. This is a big deal. I mean, it's shocking to me that this is not receiving more coverage in the press. I don't think any of the Sunday shows mentioned it. But what we're talking about here is not simply the probe that you're using data scientists to make up a story or links

between Trump and Russia, but the White House. So late last week, something interesting happened. A news story began percolating in many conservative online spaces, but was getting very little attention in some of the more mainstream news sources like the New York Times or the Washington Post. It was seemingly ignored by many news outlets with more liberal writers on staff. For conservatives reading conservative news outlets, the story was a certified bombshell. Trump was right. He had been spied on. Hillary Clinton's campaign may have had a role, and the mainstream media was continuing to ignore it. For liberals, especially those who had reached out to me via email and

Twitter DM, there was more of a sense of confusion. What is this story? What happened? Why aren't more news outlets talking about it? I got enough requests about it that I decided to give it the explainer treatment. This story is a bit complicated, and there are a lot of people involved, but I'm going to try to make it as simple as possible. Given the complexity and number of people involved, we won't be able to flesh out every single thread, but if you go check out today's newsletter, there are links throughout that you can follow if you want more information. I'm going to try to focus on what is most important to understanding where things are right now, and what I think really matters the most about this story. So first, we'll start with a brief

refresher. John Durham is the special counsel who was appointed by Bill Barr, the Attorney General under former President Trump. Durham was appointed to investigate the investigations into Trump and to determine if there was any foul play. In September, we covered Durham's indictment alleging that Michael Sussman, a high-profile cybersecurity lawyer, lied to the FBI by telling them he was not representing a client but coming forward as a citizen. According to the indictment, he was representing the Clinton campaign and a technology executive. During the meeting, Sussman presented the FBI with evidence that a server belonging to the Russia-based Alpha Bank appeared to be

communicating with Trump Organization computers. The allegation he made about the ties between Trump and Alpha Bank was eventually proven false and didn't appear in Robert Mueller's report, but the beginning of an FBI investigation into those ties was widely reported in the media and damaging to Trump's image toward the end of the 2016 campaign. Sussman was the second person charged by Durham. The first was Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI attorney who was charged with doctoring an email that was used to apply for a surveillance application of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign advisor. Clinesmith changed the email to say that Page was not a source for the Central Intelligence Agency,

despite Page's cooperation with the CIA, so as to make his actions seem more suspicious and to justify further surveillance. Then, in November, we covered Durham charging Russian-born Igor Danchenko with five counts of making false statements to the FBI about, among other things, the sources of information he fed to Christopher Steele, who was the author of the now infamous Steele dossier. Okay, so that's some of what's happened so far in Durham's investigation. Now, what is happening now? Last week, Durham made a legal filing in the case against Sussman, who is the Democratic lawyer who

allegedly lied to the FBI about his connection to the Clinton campaign. The filing was mainly related to purported conflicts of interest on Sussman's legal team, but it included a rather striking section that accused Sussman of working with Rodney Jaffe, an executive at Newstart, to gather internet data on Trump's communications. Specifically, Durham filed the following. As a note, Tech Executive 1 has been identified as Rodney Jaffe. This is straight from the filing. The government's 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 1. a particular healthcare provider, 2. Trump Tower, 3. Donald Trump's Central Park West apartment building, and 4. the executive office of the President of the United States, EOP. Tech executive 1's 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 one and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP's DNS traffic and other data for the purposes of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump. information about Donald Trump. Essentially, Durham is accusing Sussman and Jaffe of digging through DNS records and then taking those DNS records to government agencies in order to create an inference and narrative that Trump and his team were up to something nefarious. It's important to understand here that according to the indictment, Jaffe's employer was hired by the Trump White

House and campaign to monitor internet traffic related to Trump Tower and Central Park West. There are security reasons to do this, such as keeping an eye out for phishing campaigns or internet ransom attacks. The charge is that Jaffe used his position on this team to mine the data and that Sussman was then presenting that data to federal agencies as evidence Trump was involved in some nefarious business with Russia. Trump responded to the indictment by saying, I was proven right about the spying, and then suggested the action should be punishable by death. Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and many other conservative opinion makers have said the indictment proves Trump was spied on.

Joffe's spokesperson responded to the allegations by saying, contrary to the allegations in this recent filing, Mr. Joffe is an apolitical internet security expert with decades of service to the United States government who's never worked for a political party and who legally provided access to DNS data obtained from a private client that separately was providing DNS services to the executive office of the president. Under the terms of the contract, the data could be accessed to identify and analyze any security breaches or threats, the statement said. As a result of the hacks of EOP and DNC servers in 2015 and 2016, respectively, there were serious and legitimate national security

concerns about Russian attempts to infiltrate the 2016 election. Upon identifying DNS queries from Russian-based Yoda phones in proximity to the Trump campaign and the EOP, respected cybersecurity researchers were deeply concerned about the anomalies they found in the data and prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the CIA. So, to try to briefly tie all of that up, John Durham, the special counsel investigating the investigations into Trump, is alleging that the Trump-Russia narrative was driven in part by a government contractor, Jaffe, who is passing along internet data to a Clinton team lawyer, Sussman, who is then presenting that data to federal agencies in a way that would encourage them to investigate Trump, despite knowing that the allegations he was concocting from the data were unfounded.

All right, so here are some opinions about what has happened and what this filing means. I think it's important to note that this story is definitely suffering from an imbalance of coverage, which I'll get to in my take, but there is still enough commentary out there to share. So, on the right, the indictment has been seen as pure vindication. Trump really was spied on, the Wall Street Journal editorial board said. According to a Friday court filing, the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign effort to compile dirt on Donald Trump reached into protected White House communications. Mr. Durham says Mr. Joffe's goal was to create an inference and a narrative about Mr. Trump that would please certain VIPs, referring to individuals at Perkins Coie and the Clinton campaign.

The new shocker relates to the data Mr. Jaffe and friends were mining. According to Friday's filing, as early as July 2016, Mr. Jaffe was exploiting his access to non-public and or proprietary internet data, including internet traffic pertaining to the executive office of the President of the United States. White House communications are supposed to be secure, and the notion that any contractor, much less one with ties to a presidential campaign, could access them is alarming enough. The implication that the data was exploited for a political purpose is a scandal that requires investigation under oath. Margot Cleveland said the former president was framed. Enemies of Donald Trump surveilled the internet traffic at Trump Tower, at his New York City apartment building,

and later at the executive office of the President of the United States, then fed disinformation about that traffic to intelligence agencies hoping to frame Trump as a Russia-connected stooge. According to the motion, Jaffe did more than have his associates mine internet traffic at Trump Tower, Trump's residential apartment building, and the executive office of the President of the United States. He gave that data to Sussman, who provided it to the CIA during a February 9, 2017 meeting. During that meeting, Sussman gave the CIA data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by Trump Tower, Trump's residential apartment building, the EOP, and a healthcare provider of internet protocol or IP addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provided. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning

book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The National Review editors called it jaw-dropping. The information, Durham says, was taken out of context and distorted to suggest that Trump might be a clandestine agent of Vladimir Putin's regime.

Alarmingly, some of the traffic mined in early 2017 was generated by the executive office of the president, the White House. In other words, Jaffe was spying on the president of the United States with the aim of harming his ability to govern the country. Jaffe was a Clinton supporter who was hoping to land a big national security post if Hillary Clinton were elected the president in 2016, they added. Jaffe and the Clinton campaign got their lawyer, Michael Sussman, to communicate this intelligence about a corrupt Trump-Russia relationship to government intelligence agencies

in the hopes that they would take action against Trump. Sussman, a former Justice Department cybersecurity prosecutor, was then a partner at Perkins Coie, the politically connected law firm that represented the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign. Okay, so that is some of what the right's saying. Now, I want to share some of the skepticism. Again, there hasn't been much commentary about this from the left. Frankly, I think a lot of prominent left-of-center opinion writers have mostly ignored Durham's probe, but there has been some response. One of the most prominent came from the Washington Post's Philip Bump, who wrote a thorough breakdown of what just happened.

Bump starts by conceding that the initial Alpha Bank Trump story brought forward by Sussman was bogus. Then he gives a timeline and explainer that we have covered above. This is what Bump says after that. It's useful to note that Durham's claim about data being exploited emerged early, Bump wrote. data being exploited emerged early, Bump wrote. Both journalists like Marcy Wheeler and Rob Graham elevated questions about the ethics of digging through collected DNS records to investigate something that was probably outside of any agreement governing what the data was being collected for. But that doesn't mean, one, that any laws were violated, or two, that this constitutes hacking. If I give you a key to my house and you use it to come in and read my diary, I will Yet, that is how the filing has at times been conveyed.

On Fox News, for example, a story about the Durham filing ran with the headline, Clinton campaign paid to quote, There are a few problems with this, including that the connection between Clinton's team and the Perkins Coie Alpha Bank investigation is not direct, nor did Durham use the word infiltrate, a word that suggests illicit access to data. Instead, both of those claims come not from Durham, but, as the article makes clear, from former Trump staffer Kash Patel. It's a statement from Patel that makes the Clinton claim and uses the word infiltrate. It's Patel, whose recent career has

often centered on backstopping Trump's claims of being unfairly investigated, who drew the line that Fox is attributing to the special counsel. Bump goes on to say that there are, quote, legitimate questions about the effort to link Trump back to Russia using this data that was not only sketchy at the outset, but had also been debunked by the time the election was over. But, he says, there is no question that this is not proof that Trump Tower was wiretapped. If it's evidence of Trump being spied on, as the former president has also claimed in recent days, it's a very broad sort of spying, collecting all of the domain name lookups from a physical location or a network, being conducted not by the Obama administration or by Hillary Clinton,

but by an anti-Trump lawyer. The independent writer Marcy Wheeler said, John Durham has raised a potential conflict as a way to air his conspiracy theories so he can jack up the frothy right. In this case, he describes an uncharged meeting at which Michael Sussman, who no longer had anything to do with the DNC, shared an updated version of the Alpha Bank allegations with the CIA on February 9th, 2017. Wheeler also points out that thus far, Durham has made no claims about any orders coming from the Hillary Clinton campaign. The filing in question even suggests Perkins Coy, who employed Sussman, may be upset about what Sussman is alleged to have done. In fact, in one of the first of a

series of embarrassing confessions in this prosecution, Durham had to admit that Sussman wasn't coordinating directly with the campaign, and then some skepticism about what the right is saying from the left, which brings us to my take. So I've been both disappointed and unsurprised by the over-the-top weeps from conservative media and the relative silence from the mainstream media. This is not Watergate, but it's a big enough story that it should be addressed in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. that it should be addressed in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. It took both of them days to report anything, and now that they each have one story up that is focused on the Wright's reaction to the court filing, rather than the filing itself,

the Washington Post added a second story of fact-check this morning. There's a lot of writing above to make the case for why this story is such a bombshell, so I'm going to start by throwing a little cold water on that version of events, then I'll tell you why this matters or why it could depending on where things go. Many conservative media outlets have conflated the comments of former Trump staffer Kash Patel with those of John Durham, the special counsel. Durham has not charged anyone with conspiring to defraud the government or a court. He has not accused anyone of infiltrating anything. Jaffe is so far not facing any criminal charges, and Sussman and Danchenko have only been charged with lying to the FBI about who their sources were or who they were representing. This seems important when the former president is suggesting someone be put to death.

The newly revealed meeting between Sussman and the FBI, which Durham referenced in the latest filing, is also now past the statute of limitations. He filed it two days after those statute of limitations kicked in. That means no new charges are coming related to that meeting Sussman had with the CIA. It's still unclear whether Sussman believed that he was passing along government agencies' valuable intelligence or if it was just campaign work, but Durham clearly thinks he can prove in court that Sussman was intentionally misleading the FBI agents. It's also important to note that everything Durham has done has had this implication to it, namely that the FBI fell for the allegations presented by Sussman and Jaffe. So far, nothing Sussman or Jaffe

alleged to the FBI or CIA that we know about ended up turning into any real charges against Trump or his campaign. In other words, the FBI wasn't working to take down Trump, as Trump and his allies have claimed, but they were apparently predisposed to believe the negative intel on Trump that they were presented, and they were not sufficiently skeptical of it when it was brought to their attention. That distinction matters, and it should be clear that Durham is not charging otherwise. I think the idea that this filing is a smoking gun is still quite a bit of a reach. It raises far more questions than it answers. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board asked many of those same questions I'm curious about. How long did this snooping last,

and who had access to what was found? Who approved the access to the White House data, and who at the FBI and White House knew about it? Were Mrs. Clinton and senior campaign aides personally aware of this data trolling operation? But again, these are questions. Even if we are to take the indictments at face value, Danchenko and Sussman have both pleaded not guilty, and Durham is going to have to prove his case in court. It's not even certain, though I do think it is likely, that Sussman was working for the Clinton campaign at the time. Sussman worked for Perkins Coie,

which was employed by the Clinton presidential campaign. The indictment claims Sussman billed his time to the Clinton campaign, but Sussman's lawyers are arguing in court that those records are misleading because the Clinton campaign had a flat retainer with Perkins Coy. Durham himself has filed court paperwork acknowledging that he doesn't know with certainty that Sussman ever spoke to the Clinton campaign about the allegations he brought to the FBI and CIA, only that another lawyer at Perkins Coy, who was general counsel for the campaign, once emailed them about the Alpha Bank allegations.

Again, there are lots of questions here. With all that out of the way, I do think this still looks ugly. If I had to bet, I'd put my money on the version of the story where DC is full of dirty political players going to the ends of the earth to destroy each other. Trump was not wiretapped or spied on by the Obama administration, and tracking DNS lookups is not hacking. But Durham clearly believes he has the goods to suggest people like Joffe were around Trump and actively trying to damage his campaign and the presidency. I wrote in our last two posts about Durham that this has been a slow drip. I've covered this story three times because I believe it is

critical to understanding what happened during the 2016 campaign, a year when the DNC actually did have its servers' data and emails hacked and leaked, and now the other campaign is claiming it was spied on by its opponents. This was a wild election. Durham has now been investigating this longer than Robert Mueller's investigation lasted, and so far I'd classify what he's uncovered as some deeply shady politics and an inept or at least gullible intelligence apparatus, but Durham has yet to make any charges beyond that. That's not to say he won't, but I want to be careful about getting out over my skis, and I'm certainly not ready to yell vindication on allegations that this was a well-coordinated Hillary-Obama-FBI attempted

takedown of Trump. Durham hasn't even alleged that yet, let alone proven it. But he is pulling back the veil on how deeply connected the Clinton campaign was and how close it was to much of the obsessive coverage around purported Trump-Russia collusion. This is a big story, and it's getting more interesting every day. If it ended here, I don't think it's quite the political scandal many are making it out to be, but if the investigation draws new charges, as some suggest it will, or it unveils more damning evidence, we'll certainly be here and ready to cover it. All right, that is it for today's main story. Next up, I want to give a brief plug for a new podcast we released over the weekend. You may have seen it, you may have not, you may have heard us plug it before, but two weeks ago, I wrote a lot about Spotify and Joe Rogan, Whoopi Goldberg,

and some of the free speech and censorship issues of the day. Shortly after, I saw a post from Grace Lavery, a trans writer, about her decision to leave Substack because it was not properly enforcing its platform rules, namely that it was allowing the harassment of trans people on the platform. I sat down with Grace, and we had a fascinating conversation about free speech, censorship, and how to foster open debate and a commitment to free speech while also making platforms healthy environments for everyone. If you care about these issues, I think you'll find it educational and thought-provoking as I did. You can listen to it with the link in today's podcast, or you can just scroll back a few days on our podcast.

All right, next up is our story that matters. Drying soils, dried up bodies of water, and wildfires have plagued the West over the last two decades. Now, in a new study, researchers claim that the last 22 years in the American West now rank as the driest period of the last 1,200 years. Scientists say they've examined major droughts in North America dating back to the year 800, and that this latest spate has now surpassed the severity of a mega drought in the 1500s, and concluded that the conditions are likely to continue throughout the next year. They estimated that 42% of the drought severity is attributable to higher temperatures caused by greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. The Los Angeles

Times has the story. There is a link to it in today's newsletter. The Los Angeles Times has the story. There is a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, that brings us to our numbers section. 674 days is the length of Robert Mueller's investigation into Donald Trump's campaign and its ties to Russia. 1,009 is the length of John Durham's investigation into Robert Mueller's investigation so far. $32 million is the estimated cost of Robert Mueller's investigation, according to the Justice Department. $3.8 million is the estimated cost of one 14-month span of Durham's investigation, according to a 2021 report.

34 people is the number of people Mueller's prosecutors charged in his investigation, and three is the number of people Durham has indicted so far. All right, last but not least, our have a nice day story. I love this one. This is about an Instacart driver in Georgia who became a hero after following her instincts on a recent delivery. Jessica Higgs was dropping off food for a woman's elderly father when she decided to come inside rather than simply leave the bags on the porch. Something was telling me, no, you've got to help this man out, Higgs said, explaining that the man at the door looked sick. When she came inside, she noticed a propane tank indoors and then began to feel dizzy after a few minutes inside herself. She messaged the

man's daughter to say that she thought there might be a gas leak, and the next day Higgins received an update from the woman that her son had found a gas leak and that Higgs' message saved my dad and my younger son's life. The Independent has the story. There's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, there is a link to do that in our episode description. And we hope to see you right back here same time tomorrow. Peace. Our newsletter is written by isaac saul edited by bailey saul sean brady ari weitzman and produced in conjunction with tangle's social media manager magdalena bakova who also helped create our logo the podcast is edited by trevor eichhorn and music for the podcast was produced

by diet 75 for more from tangle subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. We'll see you next time. Town. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.