Special counsel John Durham, who is probing the origins of the counterintelligence investigation against Donald Trump’s campaign, filed late Thursday a response to former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s motion to strike six paragraphs from Durham’s case against him.
Sussmann wrote in his Feb. 14 motion to strike, “Given the Special Counsel’s pattern of including unnecessary prejudicial material in public filings, there can be no doubt that the superfluous ‘Factual Background’ in the Special Counsel’s motion is intended to further politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.”
He said that “[a]pproximately half of this Factual Background provocatively—and misleadingly—describes for the first time Domain Name System (‘DNS’) traffic potentially associated with former President Donald Trump, including data at the Executive Office of the President (‘EOP’), that was allegedly presented to Agency-2 in February 2017.”
He continued: “These allegations were not included in the Indictment; these allegations post-date the single false statement that was charged in the Indictment; and these allegations were not necessary to identify any of the potential conflicts of interest with which the Motion is putatively concerned. Why then include them? The question answers itself.”
Durham said that two paragraphs of “limited additional factual detail” had been included in the motion “for valid and straightforward reasons.”
“First, those paragraphs reflect conduct that is intertwined with, and part of, events that are central to proving the defendant’s alleged criminal conduct,” Durham wrote. “Second, the Government included these paragraphs to apprise the Court of the factual basis for one of the potential conflicts described in the Government’s Motion, namely, that a member of the defense team was working for the Executive Office of the President of the United States (‘EOP’) during relevant events that involved the EOP.”
Durham said that if media outlets or third parties had misinterpreted or misrepresented facts in his motion against Sussmann, “that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information.”
As such, “there is no basis to strike any portion of the Government’s Motion,” Durham wrote, adding that the government intends to file motions “in which it will further discuss these and other pertinent facts to explain why they constitute relevant and admissible evidence at trial.”
