MARGOT CLEVELAND
Last Friday, Special Counsel John Durham filed yet another document with the federal court presiding over the criminal case against former Clinton Campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. Formally labeled a “Motion to Inquire into Potential Conflicts of Interest,” the most recent court filing maintained that Sussmann’s defense attorneys at Latham & Watkins held multiple conflicts of interest because of their previous representation of Sussmann’s law partner, Marc Elias, and their former law firm Perkins Coie. Given those conflicts, Durham’s team argued the court should require Sussmann to waive the conflicts on the record.
In making this argument, however, Durham’s office included extensive details related to the purported conflicts that also exposed, more broadly, several aspects of the underlying Special Counsel investigation. For instance, over the course of some thirteen pages, Durham revealed for the first time that in addition to providing FBI General Counsel James Baker data purporting to show the existence of a secret communication channel between the Trump organization and the Russian Alfa Bank, Sussmann provided the CIA during a February 9, 2017 meeting, “data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by Trump Tower, Trump’s residential apartment building, the EOP, and a healthcare provider, of internet protocol or IP addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provided.”
