(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) Five people who worked for Hillary Clinton and her 2016 presidential campaign have pleaded the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination when called to testify before Special Counsel John Durham, who is investigating the origins of the Trump–Russia collusion hoax, Breitbart reported.
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley said the witnesses “refused to cooperate in fear that they might incriminate themselves in criminal conduct.”
Another witness, called “Researcher-2,” agreed to testify in exchange for immunity.
“[Durham] is now moving to give immunity to a key witness while revealing that the claims made by the Clinton campaign were viewed by the CIA as “not technically plausible” and “user created,” Turley said.
Durham revealed that Clinton’s employees refused to testify in a recent court filing.
The motion challenged the Clinton campaign and former campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s attempts to withhold evidence from Durham on the grounds that providing it would violate attorney–client privilege.
Durham asked the court to admit evidence from communications between “Clinton campaign leadership” and “Campaign Lawyer-1.”
Durham charged Sussmann for lying to the FBI that then-candidate Donald Trump coordinated with the Russian government through Alfa Bank and for failing to tell the FBI that he was working on Clinton’s behalf.
Turley said Durham’s motion “also detailed how the false Russian collusion claims related to Alfa Bank involved Clinton General Counsel Marc Elias and Christopher Steele.”
Clinton’s campaign hired Fusion GPS, which then hired Steele, a former British spy, to collect or manufacture allegations against Trump. Steele concocted the fraudulent “dossier” that launched the collusion hoax and spiked Trump’s presidency.
Elias helped fund Fusion GPS’s work on the dossier. Later, he orchestrated the sue-til-blue legal strategy to change election laws, expand mail-in voting, and curtail signature-verification procedures prior to the 2020 elections.
