(Headline USA) Special counsel John Durham, who is investigating the origins of the Russia-Gate hoax, claimed in a court filing this week that Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who also led an investigation into Russia-Gate on behalf of the Justice Department, sat on information about debunked Russian collusion claims for months.
In the Tuesday court filing, Durham said he learned for the first time last week that former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was indicted for allegedly lying to the FBI about his ties to Clinton’s campaign while pushing allegations of Russian collusion, met with Horowitz in March 2017.
“The Office of the Inspector General had not previously informed the Special Counsel’s office of this meeting with the defendant,” Durham’s team said, according to the Washington Examiner.
Even when Durham’s team met directly with Horowitz in October and asked for any information he had gathered that would be relevant to their own investigation, Horowitz did not reveal to them that he had met with Sussmann, the court filing said. Horowitz did, however, give them a report about “cyber-related matter” Sussmann had talked about, but did not disclose that he had met personally with Sussmann to discuss this report.
Durham also said his team only learned this month that Horowitz still had possession of two FBI cellphones that belonged to former FBI general counsel James Baker, the FBI official whom Sussmann allegedly lied to, along with forensic analysis of the phones.
The court filing also revealed that Marc Elias, another former Clinton campaign lawyer, was called on to provide grand jury testimony about his role in the Russia-Gate hoax. Baker and several current CIA officials are scheduled to provide grand jury testimony as well.
Horowtiz’s investigation into the Russia-Gate hoax revealed that the FBI knew in early 2017 that there were no links tying former president Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign to Russia’s Alfa Bank.
