‘That Timing is Huge’: CNN’s New Day Breaks Down Durham, Dem Lawyer Accusing Each Other of Misleading on Phone Data
CNN’s Brianna Keilar and Katelyn Polantz teamed up on New Day to dissect the story of Special Counsel John Durham’s findings against Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign operatives.
On Tuesday, Keilar and Polantz spoke of how Durham has called out Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann for his role in creating the “narrative” of former President Donald Trump being entangled with Russia. Durham’s filing alleges Sussmann worked with a tech company to penetrate servers connected to Trump Tower and the White House, then took the internet data to the FBI and the CIA in order to suggest Trump had alarming connections to Russia.
Sussmann has been charged with lying to the FBI, as he is being accused of failing to disclose his ties to Clinton campaign at the time of his statement.
“Michael Sussmann hit back last night,” Polantz noted. “This is something that really inflamed right wing media is the ‘spying’ of Donald Trump. But Sussmann last night in a court filing called this something that Durham was putting in his filing to politicize the case, to inflame media coverage, and to taint the jury pool. He said even some of the information was wrong.”
One of Durham’s accusations pertains to how Sussmann told the CIA about Russian-made phones being used near the White House. However, since Sussmann reportedly claims the Russian phone data pertained to the Obama years instead of Trump’s term, Keilar said “that timing is huge if Durham is aware that this is actually not during the Trump administration times. Is he aware of that?”
“Well, what really matters here is what Michael Sussmann said to the agencies when he spoke to them,” Polantz answered. She also re-emphasized that the charge against Sussmann isn’t about the data he shared with government agencies, but rather, the fact that he concealed with work with the Clinton campaign.
The Durham rundown comes after Fox News’ Howard Kurtz broadly accused the media of double standards and attempting to ignore the special counsel’s findings. CNN did end up covering the Durham story after Kurtz’s comments, and MSNBC got to it in a Morning Joe segment where the panel bashed Fox News for claiming the story as proof the Clinton campaign spied on Trump.
Watch above, via CNN.
