‘The corrupted FBI owes Americans total transparency on this scandal…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As it continues its independent investigation into the collusion between the Hillary Clinton campaign and Obama-era intelligence agencies, Judicial Watch is suing for records between the lawyers of the two concerned parties over the notorious Steele Dossier.
Previous testimony from chief FBI counsel James Baker revealed that he had met with Michael Sussmann, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The two lawyers, who maintained a personal connection outside their professional capacities, offered one of several inroads that blurred the line between politics and law-enforcement using deep-state, partisan bureaucrats within the DOJ and other agencies.
Reeling from multiple scandals of its own, the Clinton campaign sought to persuade the FBI and others to legitimize its narrative of collusion between opponent Donald Trump and Russia by launching an investigation and then leaking to the media.
The recently submitted Mueller Report determined that there was no such collusion, but it nonetheless created a significant hindrance for Trump as he sought to pursue his presidential agenda.
“This lawsuit aims to fully expose the scandalous collusion between the Obama FBI and the Clinton–DNC political operation to target Hillary Clinton’s political opponent, Donald J. Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
“The corrupted FBI owes Americans total transparency on this scandal.”
Baker and Sussmann met in September 2016, a month before the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court approved a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.
Baker testified that, during their meeting, Sussmann—a former Justice Department attorney—gave him “documents and a thumb drive related to Russian interference in the election, hacking and possible Trump connections,” according to a Judicial Watch release.
Perkins Coie had contracted with the left-leaning opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, which had on its payroll British ex-MI6 operative Christopher Steele.
The FBI previously had Steele under contract as an intelligence asset, but it was forced to cut its ties after he was revealed to have leaked directly to the media.
In addition to having Clinton’s lawyers capitalize on the collegial link between Sussman and Baker, Fusion hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, to conduct research into Russia.
Together, the Ohrs provided another backdoor channel through which the Clinton team supplied the FBI with the now-debunked claims about Russian collusion.
Bruce Ohr’s position with the DOJ ensured that the salacious, unvetted information Steele provided made it into the top ranks of the FBI, including then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Attorney General William Barr last week pledged to investigate the circumstances surrounding the Russia fakery and domestic espionage, while Sen. Lindsey Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is also launching his own probe.
The current Judicial Watch lawsuit is in response to an unanswered Freedom of Information request submitted last October seeking essentially all of the electronic records of correspondence between Baker and Sussman from 2016.
The lawsuit was announced as part of a flurry of recent Judicial Watch activity, which has been pressing for transparency not only in the FBI spying scandal, but also in Clinton’s attempt to cover up her private e-mail server and the intelligence agencies’ leaking of information to left-friendly media outlets.
The government accountability watchdog also announced on Tuesday that it was seeking the records related to the FBI’s payment of Steele during the 2016 campaign.