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The Visibility of FBI’s Close Hold: John Durham Will Blame Michael Sussmann that FBI Told Alfa Bank They Were Investigating

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According to an exchange at the end of they day yesterday, John Durham’s team plans to introduce “a hundred” exhibits through their paralegal acting as a summary witness today.

My understanding is that the defense objects to the PowerPoint presentation style of the process. But, again, we think it just streamlines it in terms of — the alternative is to have to put literally a hundred exhibits in through Ms. Arsenault one at a time.

Given the exhibits from Monday, I assume Durham will throw a bunch of Fusion documents at the jury in an attempt to insinuate, once again, that Michael Sussmann shared with the press that the FBI was investigating the Alfa Bank anomaly.

The coming onslaught of Fusion documents

I say that because Mark Hosenball wrote the FBI for comment at 1:33PM on October 5, 2016, attaching the Mediafire package, asking for comment and noting that, “it has been suggested to me that this information and scenario is under careful investigation by the FBI.”

Hosenball’s email to the FBI puts it right at the beginning (in red, below) of the known universe of Fusion emails we’ve seen from that day, the timestamps of which Durham has repeatedly tried to obscure. (Maybe while paralegal Kori Arsenault is on the stand, Sussmann’s team can ask her why Durham’s exhibits misleadingly don’t correct for UTC.)

That said, there’s still a Hosenball email unaccounted for in which he shared one of the publicly available links to Tea Leaves packaged data. It’s quite possible that email precedes Seago’s question to Fritsch, which is currently the earliest email in the list, asking whether one of the i2p sites hosting the data was safe. See this post for background.

5:23PM (likely 1:23?): Seago to Fritsch, Is this safe?

1:31PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball email with Alfa Group overview

1:32PM: Fritsch sends Isikoff the September 1, 2016 Alfa Group overview (full report included in unsealed exhibit)

1:33PM: Hosenball to FBI, “careful investigation by the FBI”

1:33PM [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “that memo is OTR — tho all open source”

1:35/1:36PM: Hosenball replies, “yep got it, but is that from you all or from the outside computer experts?”

1:37PM: Fritsch responds,

the DNS stuff? not us at all

outside computer experts

we did put up an alfa memo unrelated to all this

1:38PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

is the alfa attachment you just sent me experts or yours ? also is there additional data posted by the experts ? all I have found is the summary I sent you and a chart… [my emphasis]

1:41PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball:

alfa was something we did unrelated to this. i sent you what we have BUT it gives you a tutanota address to leave questions. 1. Leave questions at: [email protected]

1:41PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

yes I have emailed tuta and they have responded but haven’t sent me any new links yet. but I am pressing. but have you downloaded more data from them ?

1:43PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “no”

1:44PM: Fritsch to Lichtblau:

fyi found this published on web … and downloaded it. super interesting in context of our discussions

[mediafire link] [my emphasis]

2:23PM: [not included] Lichtblau to Fritsch, “thanks. where did this come from?”

2:27PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch:

tuta sent me this guidance

[snip]

Since I am technically hopeless I have asked our techie person to try to get into this. But here is the raw info in case you get there first. Chrs mh

2:32PM: Fritsch to Lichtblau:

no idea. our tech maven says it was first posted via reddit. i see it has a tutanota contact — so someone anonymous and encrypted. so it’s either someone real who has real info or one of donald’s 400 pounders. the de vos stuff looks rank to me … weird

6:33PM (likely 2:33PM): Fwd Alfa Fritsch to Seago

6:57PM (like 2:57PM): Re alfa Seago to Fritsch

7:02PM (likely 3:02): Re alfa Seago to Fritsch

3:27PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball cc Simpson: “All same stuff”

3:58PM: [not included] Hosenball to Fritsch, asking, “so the trumpies just sent me the explanation below; how do I get behind it?”

4:28PM: [not included] Fritsch to Hosenball, “not easily, alas”

4:32PM: Fritsch to Hosenball, cc Simpson:

Though first step is to send that explanation to the source who posted this stuff. I understand the trump explanations can be refuted.

So I assume that Durham will argue that Fusion must have passed on the information that the FBI was investigating — and they may have! (though none of the currently public emails reflect that — and suggest that was all part of Michael Sussmann’s devious plan on September 19.

When, under threat of prosecution, an attempt to prevent politicization turns into an attempt to hide political bias

That’s where things will get interesting. One key dispute in this case is why one keeps secrets. Durham wants to argue that keeping secrets can only serve a political purpose.

Sussmann will argue that keeping secrets facilitates national security interests.

Sussmann will show that everyone at the FBI recognized the value, to the FBI, of stalling a newspaper article about a potentially important threat so the FBI could covertly investigate it. All the more so during election season when — investigation after investigation into the Russian investigation has shown — the FBI was, if anything, being too careful in an attempt to avoid impacting Trump’s political fortunes, even while Jim Comey was tanking Hillary’s campaign. According to Sussmann’s own sworn testimony — testimony that Durham didn’t bother testing before charging Sussmann — allowing the FBI the opportunity to do that was the reason Sussmann shared the Alfa Bank anomaly with the FBI. Durham wants to imprison Sussmann for giving the FBI that heads up, arguing that because he hid his purported clients, it led the FBI to open a Full Investigation more quickly than they otherwise would have (even though, as Sussmann’s team has demonstrated, the FBI did nothing that would have required a Full Investigation in the short period during which they investigated).

A key part of that story Durham wants to tell — needs to tell, given all the evidence that the FBI perceived this to be a DNC-related tip — is that some of his key villains were attempting to hide the perceived political nature of the tip, rather than ensuring the integrity of the investigation itself (or possibly, but I’m still working on this, protecting the identity of a CHS).

Central to that narrative is the changing testimony of FBI Agent Ryan Gaynor — his stated reasons for refusing to let the case agents in Chicago interview either Sussmann or Georgia Tech professor David Dagon. In an interview on October 30, 2020 (a week after Durham had been granted Special Counsel status), Gaynor explained that he had intervened to make sure agents couldn’t conduct interviews that would have led to a more robust investigation to ensure the integrity of the investigation.

Q. Okay. So you remember telling the government that you believed that the agents in Chicago would have been biased by Mr. Sussmann’s perception of the issue — the source’s perception of the issue if they had interviewed him before they got all of the data and analyzed it?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. And that’s because, at the time, you believed the DNC was the source of the information itself. Right?

A. That’s because, at the time, I believed that he was a DNC attorney associated with the Democratic party and it would be potentially highly-biasing information.

Q. And you told the government, if you had provided the identity of the DNC as the source of the information, they would have known there was possible political motivation. rignt?

A. I recall that exact statement.

Shortly after he gave this testimony, prosecutors took a break, and told his lawyer they were moving towards treating Gaynor as a subject of, rather than just a witness in, the investigation.

Q. Okay. Well, at or around the time you were talking about passing along the source’s name or not, you took a break in the meeting. Do you remember taking breaks during the meeting?

A. I do.

Q. And do you remember when you broke at that point that the government told your attorney that your own status in the investigation had changed. Do you remember hearing that?

A. So I didn’t hear that, but when my attorney came back in, he advised me that my status was in jeopardy.

After that, Gaynor went back, looked at two sets of scribbled notes (Gaynor, because he remains at FBI, was able to review his notes, unlike a number of other Durham witnesses), and decided that now that he thought about it, Jonathan Moffa had actually instructed him to keep a close hold on Sussmann’s identity. It wasn’t his decision anymore, it was Moffa’s, and the dastardly Peter Strzok was in on it. Once Gaynor testified that way, he became a — to Andew DeFilippis, anyway — credible witness again.

Q. Okay. And when you told the government there was a close hold, were you told that your status changed back to being a witness?

A. At the conclusion of the interview, once I had gone over all of the material that I brought and walked through what I had reconstructed and what I could recollect after doing so, I was informed that my status had changed, yes.

Q. Changed back to being a witness?

A. To a witness, yes.

Q. So you go into meeting one being told you are a witness, telling them you decided not to share the agents’ names among other things. Then you are told you are a subject facing criminal charges, potentially. You come back. You tell them about a close hold, and you go back to being a witness; is that right?

Politico may have been the only outlet that described this fairly shocking testimony.

These conflicting claims about the purported reasons to keep Sussmann’s identity (as opposed to the investigation itself) a secret are important background to that Hosenball email on October 5, which I suspect Durham will use to claim that the Democrats were leaking about the investigation.

Starting almost immediately after getting the investigation, Chicago case agents started asking to interview the source, variously defined to be either Sussmann or the person who wrote the white paper. Gaynor kept pushing the agents to go review the logs again — though the file memorializing the contents of what it describes as a single thumb drive (Sussmann shared two) was not written up until October 4. But then, by October 5 (the same day that Hosenball asked the FBI for comment, albeit this report comes in four hours later), FBI had learned from one of their confidential human sources that David Dagon had a role in the white paper and he — and the FBI’s own source! — would be going public pushing the credibility of the allegations.

In that email, newbie agent Allison Sands explained that they were going to contact Dagon.

So, among other things, on the same day Hosenball writes in reflecting an awareness that there was an ongoing investigation, the FBI hears from a CHS who says he or she has already been talking with David Dagon and was going public backing the claims (though this source was speaking to the WaPo, not Reuters).

Note that, as of that date, the FBI still hadn’t received logs from Listrak.

By the time Allison Sands wrote that email, it appears from Lync messages that like others probably haven’t been noticed to reflect UTC time zone, had already contacted Rodney Joffe’s handler to contact Dagon.

Fun with missing Bates stamps

Side note. There are actually two versions of the notes that purportedly caused Gaynor to change his mind about there being a close hold and on what source that close hold was on. There’s Defense Exhibit 524, which has a slew of Bates stamps, and 7 redactions.

And then there’s a page from Government Exhibit 279, which appears between a page with Bates stamp SC-6454 and one with Bates stamp SC-6456, which has no Bates stamp at all (and lacks the protective order stamp that appears on the other pages of the exhibit).

That version of the exhibit has just four redactions, one of which is smaller. The unredacted bits on the exhibit reveal discussions of the informant and recognition that the statements of the informant “likely triggered” the press attention.

Incidentally, Durham’s team took an entire day to upload this set of exhibits. I’m wondering if the exhibit that was viewed by Gaynor and entered into evidence actually looked like this one does.

Calling the agent of a foreign agent to ask for comment

There’s one other thing going on. On the stand, Gaynor spent a great deal of time explaining about how important it was to hide an investigation — particularly from anyone who might have a partisan interest — during an election.

Except for all the talk of a close hold, the FBI wasn’t holding this very close. They were stomping around to a bunch of sources asking for data logs, even before they had checked what was on (one of) the thumb drives that Sussmann had dropped off. They fairly demonstrably were stomping around before they understood what they should be looking for.

They also were calling Mandiant, which was working for Alfa Bank, which by October 19 when they were formally interviewed discovered Alfa Bank had no logs, but which knew of the investigation by October 5.

Q. Uh-huh. You testified about the reasons why you’d want to keep it covert, you wouldn’t want to do anything that could affect the election so close to the election. Right?

A. Yes.

Q. The FBI, as part of the Alfa-Bank investigation, talked to a number of different individuals outside of the FBI to acquire information, to get you information so that you could investigate the allegations. Right?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. You spoke to people at Central Dynamics?

A. Yes, and I believe the investigative team documented in the email that I saw that they had done it in a manner to attempt to avoid it outing the allegation.

[snip]

A. I’m sorry?

Q. And how is that that they could conduct an interview with a third party in a way that the third party wouldn’t tell other people about it?

A. They described it in a manner that they had obfuscated what their direct interest was.

Q. So from the Central Dynamics’ perspective, they didn’t know what you were looking at?

A. That is what I had in the email chain, yes. n

Q. But you testified that the FBI interviewed Mandiant as part of the investigation. Correct?

A. Yes. My understanding there is that was a private liaison relationship that occurred.

Q. Mandiant — just to be clear — Alfa-Bank itself hired Mandiant to analyze whether there was a secret communications channel. Correct?

A. Yes.

Q. So Alfa-Bank paid Mandiant to look into whether there was a secret communications channel. Right?

A. Yes.

Q. And Alfa-Bank obviously had a relationship with Mandiant that was put at issue by hiring Mandiant. Right?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. So the FBI went to Alfa-Bank’s paid consultant and asked them for their view on the allegation. Correct?

A. I believe the FBI had a prior relationship with one of the employees, and they utilized that in the field. Plus, I don’t think the Bureau would violate policy on a sensitive investigative matter when the Chief Division Counsel of the office is involved. So I would assume that they did that in a manner that they did not feel would be alerting or go to the media.

Q. Mr. Gaynor, the FBI in this investigation went to Alfa-Bank’s paid consultant and asked them for their views of the allegations. correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And Alfa-Bank’s paid consultant could have told Alfa-Bank. Correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And could have told the press for all you know. Correct?

A. Yes. And I don’t know how Chicago mitigated that.

Q. And is it your testimony that going to Alfa-Bank, the Russian bank that is the focus of this investigation, and asking their paid consultant for their views on the matter wasn’t going to overt?

A. Again, I don’t know how Chicago mitigated that issue.

[snip]

Q. Did you ever have a conversation with anybody at headquarters about whether to provide the names of the source to the Chicago agents?

A. Yes. There was a conversation about the close hold, as I mentioned, although it wasn’t correctly, I guess, documented between Pete Strzok, myself and Mr. Moffa at some point during that time period.

[snip]

Q. And the reason that you say no one talked to him is because, as of that point, October 6th, you had already concluded that there was nothing to these allegations. Right?

A. As of October 5th, evening of October 5th, we had come to a pretty solid conclusion that these allegations did not have merit and there wasn’t a national security threat.

Q. Are you aware that the agents first interviewed Alfa-Bank’s paid consultant, Mandiant, merely two weeks later on October 19th?

A. So I’m aware that we had information from Mandiant as of October 5th that they had looked at this allegation and found that it didn’t have merit. And then I’m also aware that there was an interview that was conducted later, October 19th or so, when I was made aware of it, yes.

A text between Allison Sands and Scott Hellman reflects the FBI had contact with Alfa Bank by October 4.

It appears that contact occurred in London — a place where Mark Hosenball has strong source ties since the time in 1976 when he got expelled for reporting on Northern Ireland.

In other words, Gaynor’s currently operative stance is that case agents couldn’t contact David Dagon — much less Rodney Joffe, who had business ties with the FBI — to find out what was going on, because that would present a conflict.

But it was okay for the FBI to contact the agent of the subject of the investigation overtly.

Agent Gaynor belatedly rediscovers the Mediafire package

Incidentally, when that original request for comment from Hosenball came in, it got transferred to people in the cyber division, then shared with the investigative team. In response, the senior-most person on that team sent it to Peter Strzok. Strzok forwarded it, at 3:02 on October 5, to Ryan Gaynor.

On October 13, just over a week after he had originally received it, Gaynor sent the Mediafire package to the case team, noting that the observations in it reflected actions taken in response to their investigation, but asking for their technical opinion.

He included Moffa and Joe Pientka on that email.

But not Strzok, who knew he had received it 8 days earlier.

OTHER SUSSMANN TRIAL COVERAGE

Scene-Setter for the Sussmann Trial, Part One: The Elements of the Offense

Scene-Setter for the Sussmann Trial, Part Two: The Witnesses

The Founding Fantasy of Durham’s Prosecution of Michael Sussmann: Hillary’s Successful October Surprise

With a Much-Anticipated Fusion GPS Witness, Andrew DeFilippis Bangs the Table

John Durham’s Lies with Metadata

emptywheel’s Continuing Obsession with Sticky Notes, Michael Sussmann Trial Edition

Brittain Shaw’s Privileged Attempt to Misrepresent Eric Lichtblau’s Privilege

The Methodology of Andrew DeFilippis’ Elaborate Plot to Break Judge Cooper’s Rules

Jim Baker’s Tweet and the Recidivist Foreign Influence Cheater

That Clinton Tweet Could Lead To a Mistrial (or Reversal on Appeal)

John Durham Is Prosecuting Michael Sussmann for Sharing a Tip on Now-Sanctioned Alfa Bank

Apprehension and Dread with Bates Stamps: The Case of Jim Baker’s Missing Jencks Production

Technical Exhibits, Michael Sussmann Trial

Jim Baker’s “Doctored” Memory Forgot the Meeting He Had Immediately After His Michael Sussmann Meeting

The FBI Believed Michael Sussmann Was Working for the DNC … Until Andrew DeFilippis Coached Them to Believe Otherwise

May 24, 2022/75 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

There’s accumulating evidence that at least some people — including some key decision-makers — believed the FBI believed that the Alfa Bank tip came from the DNC — and that Andrew DeFilippis has engaged in a lot of coaching to try to make that evidence go away.

The first time FBI Agent Ryan Gaynor testified to John Durham about the investigation into the Alfa Bank anomaly in October 2020, he told prosecutors that the DNC was the source of the allegation.

Q. Okay. So in your first meeting with the government, you — this is October of 2020, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. You told them multiple times that you believed that the Democratic National Committee was the source of the allegations of connections between Alfa-Bank and Russia, correct?

A. Correct, which was wrong.

Q. Okay. But you said that you thought the Democratic party itself was who provided the information, correct?

A. I did say that in the meeting.

That’s even what he has written down in a briefing document he kept in Fall 2016.

At the end of that October 2020 interview, prosecutors threatened Gaynor with prosecution.

His more recent testimony, starting for the first time on May 13, was that Sussmann was representing himself. The reason he now remembers that to be true goes to the heart of Durham’s materiality: it would have mattered if Sussmann was representing the DNC, so he must have been representing himself.

Q. Okay. I want to ask you, first, about testimony that you gave today where you said that when Mr. Moffa told you that Mr. Sussmann was a DNC attorney, you said, “I understood that to mean that he had been affiliated with the Democratic party but that he had come representing himself on the Alfa-Bank allegations.” Do you remember giving that testimony?

A. That was my take-away.

Q. And you gave that testimony that I just read?

A. Yes; that he was a DNC attorney, but that my take-away from that discussion was that he wasn’t there representing the DNC.

Q. When you were asked, “When Mr. Moffa said Mr. Sussmann was an attorney for the DNC, what impression did you come away with?” what did you understand that to mean? And your answer was: “I understood that to mean that he had been affiliated with the Democratic party, but that he had come representing himself,” right?

A. So he’s affiliated with the Democratic party because he was a DNC attorney.

Q. And your impression was he had come representing himself?

A. My take-away from that meeting, what I recall, is that I did not believe that he was there representing the DNC specifically because, had he been, that would have been information that would have impacted it.

This is a tautology: If Sussmann had been representing the DNC it would have mattered so it must be the case that Gaynor believed he was not representing the DNC. It also happens to be the central argument of DeFilippis’ materiality claim.

Meanwhile, Scott Hellman — Durham’s star cyber witness — received a text from his boss, Nate Batty (with whom he compared notes before his first interview with Durham), referring to the white paper as a “DNC report” on September 21, 2016, two days after Jim Baker received the materials.

Michael Sussmann lawyer Sean Berkowitz asked Hellman about that the other day. At first, Hellman expressed surprise about that text.

Q. All right. And then, with respect to Stranahan, he asks you and Nate to write a report about the — write a summary of the DNC report. Correct? That’s what it says?

A. That’s what it says in this chat, yes.

Q. And did you understand, sir, that the information had come from a DNC, meaning Democratic National Committee, source?

A. I did not understand that, no.

Q. Did you know what Nate Batty knew about it?

A. I don’t think he knew anything about it.

Q. Did you call up Tim and say, what a second. This is a DNC report? That’s political motivation.

A. No.

Q. Didn’t do anything or it didn’t occur to you?

A. The first time I saw this was two years ago when I was being interviewed by Mr. DeFilippis, and I don’t recall ever seeing it. I never had any recollection of this information coming from the DNC. I don’t remember DNC being a part of anything that we read or discussed.

Q. Okay. When you say, the first time you saw it was two years ago when you met with Mr. DeFilippis, that’s not accurate. Right? You saw it on September 21st, 2016. Correct?

A. It’s in there. I don’t have any memory of seeing it.

Later in Berkowitz’ cross-examination he returned to the text. He asked how it could be that a white paper from a DNC lawyer could be referred to as a DNC report.

Q. And although you were surprised to see it today, it appears that at least somebody, such as Mr. Batty was aware and you were aware that somebody was calling this white paper a DNC report. Correct?

A. I was not aware that anybody was calling it a DNC report, and I don’t believe Mr. Batty knew that either.

Q. But you saw the link message. Right?

A. I did see the link message, yes.

Berkowitz asked Hellman how it could be that he would see a reference to a DNC report and not take from that it was a DNC report. Hellman describes “the only explanation that … was discussed” — which is that it was a typo.

Q. What’s your explanation for it?

A. I have no recollection of seeing that link message. And there is — have absolutely no belief that either me or Agent Batty knew where that data was coming from, let alone that it was coming from DNC. The only explanation that popped or was discussed was that it could have been a typo and somebody was trying to refer to DNS instead of DNC.

Q. So you think it was a typo?

A. I don’t know.

Q. When you said the only one suggesting it — isn’t it true that it was Mr. DeFilippis that suggested to you that it might have been a typo recently?

A. That’s correct.

Q. Okay. You didn’t think that at the time. Right?

A. I did not. I had never seen it or had any memory of seeing it ever before it was put in front of me.

With some prodding, Hellman admitted that when he referred to “discussing explanations,” he meant doing so with Andrew DeFilippis. This exchange was, quite literally, Berkowitz eliciting Hellman to provide an answer that DeFilippis thought up — one necessary to sustain DeFilippis’ narrative — without, at first, admitting it was DeFilippis’ opinion of what the truth must be.

So after DeFilippis threatened Gaynor with prosecution, he came to remember something other than what the note, tying the white paper to DNC lawyer Michael Sussmann, that he used to “refresh his memory” said.

And when faced with the possibility, two years or maybe six after the fact, that Scott Hellman’s epically shitty analysis of the white paper could have been influenced by being told that it was a DNC white paper, Hellman offered up the explanation that DeFilippis offered him.

At least twice, then, under coaching from Durham’s lead prosecutor, key witnesses have come to believe something other than what the documentary evidence suggests.

The fact that DeFilippis has twice coached witnesses to deny any understanding at FBI that this was a DNC tip — whether it was a DNC tip or not — is really telling. That’s because DeFilippis has to try to pitch a nearly unsustainable position: how his single witness to Sussmann’s alleged crime, Jim Baker, can in 2016 have told Bill Priestap the following:

Q. I think you testified yesterday that by this time you were at least generally aware that Mr. Sussmann represented the DNC in connection with hacks; is that right?

A. That’s correct.

Q. And what, if anything, did you say to Mr. Priestap about that?

A. I think I told him like, okay, this is who Michael is. He’s represented the Democratic party in the Russian hack that we were also investigating and/or the Hillary Clinton Campaign. So just, again, to orient Bill to who Michael was. I mean, that’s a serious credential in terms of being a cyber security expert. And then to explain: But in this case he said he’s not appearing on behalf of them. In this case he’s coming in as a good citizen.

And then, in 2018, have told Jim Jordan the following:

Q. Mr. Jordan then says: “And he was representing a client when he brought this information to you or just out of the goodness of his heart? Someone gave it to him and he brought it to you?”

A. In that first interaction, I don’t remember him specifically saying that he was acting on behalf of a particular client.

Q. Did you know at the time that he was representing the DNC in the Clinton campaign?

A. I can’t remember. I had learned that at some point. I don’t, as I said — as I think I n said last time, I don’t specifically remember when I learned that — excuse me — so I don’t know that I had that in my head when he showed up in my office. I just can’t remember.

Q. Did you learn that shortly thereafter if you didn’t know it at the time?

And then testify last week this way.

Q. Okay. Number two, did you know on the September 19th, 2016 meeting that Mr. Sussmann had been representing Hillary For America’s campaign and the DNC in connection with the hack investigation. Did you know that on September 19th when he met with you?

A. Sitting here today, I think the answer is, yes, I did know that by that point in time.

Q. I’ve written down, “yes, DNC and HFA and hack”. I want to be really clear. You’re not saying that he said that in the meeting. correct?

A. Correct.

Q. And you’re not saying he said he was there on behalf of them? You’re just saying that in your mind you knew that he had been acting as a lawyer for those two entities in connection with the hack. Correct?

It’s not just a question of whether Baker will be a credible witness, though his wildly changing claims about the DNC are among the reasons why his testimony is not credible.

It’s also that Durham wants to point to Sussmann’s failure, a year earlier in a Congressional hearing, to offer up his ties with the Democrats as proof he was lying. But Durham is treating Baker’s failure to do so in the same situation as an innocent mistake. For his single witness to be credible, DeFilippis has to find a way to excuse Baker’s failure to offer that up in a far more direct question while pointing to Sussmann’s failure to offer it up as proof of guilt.

He has to do so to defend his prosecutorial decisions, too. Given how much stake DeFilippis has placed on Baker sharing with Priestap that he knew Sussmann represented the Democrats, it makes it far less credible that Baker didn’t knowingly lie to Jordan. Especially given the way Baker responded to a Berkowitz question, suggesting that perhaps he hadn’t been truthful with Jordan, but instead was “careful.”

Q. And when you gave voluntary information to Congress, you understood that you were under oath?

A. I don’t think I was under oath, but I understood that it’s a crime to make false statements to Congress.

Q. So you tried to be as careful as you could. Correct?

A. I tried to be as careful as I could in that environment, yes, sir.

Q. You tried to be as truthful as you could?

A. (No response)

Q. Tried to be as truthful as you could?

A. Yes, sir.

Sussmann’s team is going to argue that there are a long list of people against whom there is far better evidence for false statements or perjury charges than him, with the single difference being that the other people were willing to tell the storytale DeFilippis is using prosecutorial resources to tell. And the first person on that list — it makes me sick to my stomach to say — is Jim Baker.

Finally, it’s a matter of materiality. DeFilippis has to find a way for it to be the case that his single witness knew when he met with Sussmann that Sussmann was a DNC lawyer (because Bill Priestap’s notes reflect that), but didn’t view that to be material to everything that happened next.

And the only way to sustain that rickety narrative is to ensure that no one else — not even the people using documentary proof reflecting a belief that this was a DNC report to refresh faded memories — understood that the white paper came from the DNC.

Thus far, Sussmann’s cross-examination has elicited evidence that at least three witnesses changed their testimony after interviews with DeFilippis, adopting a “memory” that conflicts with the documentary record with regards to whether the FBI believed the white paper to be associated with the DNC.