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John Durham Used Sketchy Russian Intel in Probe: Report – Rolling Stone
Earlier this month, Kevin McCarthy announced the creation of a new “Weaponization of the Federal Government” select committee aimed at investigating overreach by the Justice Department. One case that House Republicans are likely to ignore is Special Counsel John Durham’s probe into the Russia investigation, despite The New York Times reporting on Thursday that Durham and former Attorney General Bill Barr, who appointed him, may have abused their investigative powers in a litany of ways, including by using sketchy Russian intelligence to gain access to the emails of an aide to Hungarian billionaire George Soros, a frequent target of right-wing conspiracies.
Durham was tasked by Barr in 2019 with overseeing a DOJ investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia Investigation, particularly the credibility of intelligence reports upon which the investigation was based. According to the Times, at one point in the investigation Durham seized on dubious Russian intelligence memos in order to target Leonard Benardo, the executive vice president of Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
The memos, which were provided to the CIAby Dutch intelligence partners, suggested that Benardo had emailed Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) to discuss a promise from former Attorney General Loretta Lynch to obstruct probes into the 2016 hack of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails. Both Benardo and Wasserman Schultz deny such a conversation ever took place.
According to interviews conducted by the Times, despite significant factual inconsistencies in the memos being raised by investigators, the special counsel reportedly went to great lengths to obtain information on the contents of Benardo’s emails. When a Judge struck down a request from his office to access the information, citing a lack of evidence compelling enough to overwrite privacy laws, Durham reportedly attempted to circumvent her decision through a grand jury. While the Times was unable to ascertain if Benardo was subpoenaed by Durham, he did voluntarily provide the special counsel with the requested information.
The matter proved fruitless.
Circumventing judicial rulings in an attempt to establish a connection between the Clinton email investigation and George Soros isn’t the only potential ethical breach uncovered by the Times. Barr and Durham quietly expanded — then dropped — an investigation into potentially criminal “suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump” in 2019. The Times also confirmed that several sudden resignations from members of the investigative teams stemmed from ethics concerns regarding flimsy criminal indictments.
Barr was installed as attorney general shortly after Trump fired his then AG Jeff Sessions, ostensibly for failing to act on his complaints regarding Special Counsel Robert Muller’s investigation into his relationship with Russia.
Durham’s three-and-a-half year probe has shown itself to be primarily a giant waste of time and resources. It’s the exact type of partisan witch hunt one might think a House committee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” might want to investigate, but Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who will run the subcommittee is unlikely to bring it to the table. Jordan, a devout Trump loyalist, repeatedly lauded the Durham investigation, and publicly affirmed his belief that the probe would result in criminal penalties for those under Barr and Durham’s scrutiny.
Jordan told Fox Newsost Sean Hannity on Tuesday that as Judiciary Committee Chair he will continue to probe allegations of corruption in the Justice Department and FBI as related to the Russia probe. “The highest levels of the FBI are now functioning in a political fashion,” he said.
Special Counsel John Durham took his final loss. But did he fail?
Special Counsel John Durham lost in court on Tuesday when a federal jury acquitted Igor Danchenko, a private researcher he had charged with five counts of lying to the FBI. It was Durham’s second loss in the two trials he brought during his three-and-a-half years investigating the origins of the Justice Department’s investigation of former President Donald Trump’s campaign and its ties to Russia. It is also likely to be Durham’s last case, and final loss, as special counsel.
“Trump and his supporters had long insisted the Durham inquiry would prove a ‘deep state’ conspiracy against him,” The New York Times reports. “Trump predicted Durham would uncover ‘the crime of the century’ inside the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies that investigated his campaign’s links to Russia,” The Washington Post adds. Instead, he secured a plea deal and 12 months of probation for an FBI lawyer who admitted to falsifying information to renew a secret surveillance warrant.
Here’s a look back at what Durham was assigned to investigate, what he did investigate, and why he didn’t find more:
What was Durham’s assignment?
William Barr, soon after Trump appointed him attorney general, ordered Durham, then the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to review the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. At that point, in May 2019, Durham’s was the third active investigation of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation, along with inquiries by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and by John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah.
By October 2019, Durham’s administrative review had turned into a criminal investigation, though the Justice Department released no information on who or what crimes were being investigated. A month earlier, Barr and Durham had traveled to Italy to ask for the Italian government’s help in the inquiry, and Barr also solicited assistance from Australia and Britain.
In December 2020, Barr announced he had upgraded Durham to special counsel right before the election, shielding him from political interference in case Trump lost. Barr’s Oct. 19 order, obtained by The Associated Press, authorized Durham “to investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law enforcement activities” directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns or Trump administration officials.
Barr told AP that Durham’s investigation began very broadly but had “narrowed considerably” and “really is focused on the activities of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation within the FBI.”
What has he accomplished as special counsel?
Durham’s investigation has been shrouded in mystery since its inception, but his main public endeavors were the guilty plea for FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith and the unsuccessful prosecutions of Danchenko, a major source of information used by former British spy Christopher Steele in his largely discredited Trump-Russia dossier, and cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann.
That may not seem like much, especially since the Horowitz investigation developed the case against Clinesmith.
But “Durham and his aides used the forum of the recent trials to air evidence of what they suggested was a failure by FBI personnel to pursue leads as they probed the sourcing of the Steele dossier,” Politico‘s Josh Gerstein writes. “Durham’s open criticism of the FBI produced an unusual spectacle at the trial, as he and his team attacked the competence of FBI agents and analysts who were the prosecution’s key witnesses,” but Durham’s “disciples” see those salvos as “a silver lining in the veteran prosecutor’s checkered courtroom record.”
The Sussmann and Danchenko cases may have accomplished something else, too, the Times reports, citing Durham’s crisis: “In pursuing charges, they damaged national security.” In the latter case, especially, Durham’s FBI witnesses said Danchenko had become a valuable paid informant whom FBI agents can no longer use because Barr effectively revealed his identity and Durham indicted him.
What’s next in Durham’s investigation?
“If Danchenko is indeed Durham’s final criminal case, then his report will come next,” The Washington Examiner reports. “The special counsel is reportedly working on finishing a lengthy set of findings laying out his investigation’s conclusions, which will be handed over to Attorney General Merrick Garland,” and Garland has testified he intends to release as much as possible to the public.
Durham has used his trials to portray his investigation as a kind of antidote to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian election meddlers — though he misrepresented Mueller’s findings in some cases. Barr released a redacted version of Mueller’s final report; subsequent documents suggest Barr put his thumb on the scale in Trump’s favor from the jump.
How does Durham’s investigation compare to Mueller’s?
Mueller accomplished much more than Durham in less time, but he had greater resources at his disposal and, presumably, better material to work with. Mueller turned in his final report 23 months after his appointment as special counsel, while Durham is now on the 42nd month of his investigation, according to a chart compiled by Marcy Wheeler.
While Durham charged three minor characters in the Trump-Russia saga and got one plea deal, Mueller charged 34 people — including top Trump aides Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and Michael Flynn — and three Russian companies. He obtained nine convictions or guilty pleas, and passed off to other prosecutors a handful of fruitful investigations that did not fit within his purview. Trump subsequently pardoned Manafort, Stone, Flynn, and Mueller prey George Papadopoulos, and Alex van der Zwaan.
Durham’s investigation has cost taxpayers more than $5.8 million between October 2020 — when he was named special counsel, 18 months after his initial appointment to the case — and March 2022, the Justice Department reports.
Mueller’s total investigation cost nearly $32 million, including Justice Department components that supported his office. He effectively returned much of that to the federal government through Manafort, who agreed to forfeit property in New York, funds in three bank accounts, and his life insurance policy, all valued at between $22 million and $42 million.
Did Durham fail?
That’s a little subjective, and Durham still has his final report to make his case. But “simply put, federal prosecutors are not used to losing,” Politico‘s Gerstein writes. “So, Durham’s defeat at the Danchenko trial — which came less than five months after a similar acquittal in another case brought by the special prosecutor — represents an unmistakable defeat.”
You can compare Durham’s track record as special counsel against what had previously “been the highest-profile act of his career, when he led a special investigation of the CIA’s Bush-era torture of terrorism detainees and destruction of videos of interrogation sessions,” the Times reports. At that time, “Durham had set a high bar for charges and for releasing information related to the investigation. Throughout his 2008-2012 investigation, he found no one he deemed worthy of indictment even though two detainees had died in the CIA’s custody, and he fought a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to avoid disclosing to the public his findings and witness interview records.”
Many people, having learned of Danchenko’s acquittal, probably expressed “surprise that Durham was still going at all,” while others were likely to shake their heads “and declare the probe a waste of time and money,” David A. Graham writes at The Atlantic. These reactions “are correct, but they miss the point. Even if Durham approached the probe with earnest sincerity, the real reason he was appointed is that Donald Trump’s political con requires the promise of total vindication right around the corner,” and his investigation has already served that purpose.
“The hope for Trump supporters was that someone was going to crack open the case and show that the investigation was cooked up by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton,” maybe with help from George Soros and antifa, Graham elaborates. But Trump himself “recognized that the fact of an investigation was far more important than the results.” It worked with Benghazi and Clinton’s emails, and even earlier Trump-Russia counter-investigations, he adds. “By the time Trump was extorting Volodymyr Zelensky by withholding defense supplies in 2019, all Trump wanted was for Ukraine to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden. He didn’t even care whether it actually happened, because the talking point is what he needed.”
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Steele dossier source heads to trial, in likely last stand for Durham
Igor Danchenko — a researcher who fed information to former British spy Christopher Steele, and whose contributions ended up in the now-infamous “Steele dossier” of allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016 — goes on trial Tuesday. The trial is expected to last one week.
Danchenko was indicted on charges of lying to FBI agents who interviewed him in 2017 about the sources behind his claims to Steele. Defense attorneys argue that Danchenko made a series of “equivocal” statements to the FBI and should not be penalized for giving wishy-washy answers to vaguely worded questions.
Whatever the outcome, the Danchenko trial is shaping up to be Durham’s last stand in court.
A grand jury Durham had been using in Alexandria is now inactive, according to two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the pending legal proceedings. It is not clear whether Durham is still using a grand jury in D.C.
Durham was tasked with writing a report summarizing his investigation, as former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III did at the close of his earlier probe into Trump and Russia. But it would be up to Attorney General Merrick Garland how much, if any, of Durham’s report to make public.
“The public is waiting ‘with bated breath’ for the Durham Report, which should reveal corruption at a level never seen before in our country,” Trump wrote in August on his social media platform, Truth Social, after FBI agents raided his Mar-a-Lago complex.
Durham, a longtime federal prosecutor who served as the U.S. attorney in Connecticut in the Trump administration, was asked by then-Attorney General William P. Barr in 2019 to dig into the origins of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into possible coordination between Trump and Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign. A report by the Justice Department’s inspector general in 2019 criticized the FBI for failing to note doubts about the veracity of the information it used to seek court approval of secret surveillance on a former Trump campaign adviser, though the inspector general said he found no evidence of political bias in the agency’s decision-making. Barr, a Trump appointee, had complained that the 2016 probe was initiated on the “thinnest” of evidence.
Barr later appointed Durham as a special counsel and directed him to write a final report “in a form that will permit public dissemination.”
The special counsel trained his sights in large part on the FBI’s use of reports Steele produced, which are now commonly referred to as the “Steele dossier.” Steele had been hired to produce the reports by research firm Fusion GPS, which had been retained by a law firm that represented Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee. Fusion GPS initially had been hired to dig into Trump’s background by a website funded by a deep-pocketed GOP donor.
Years after they began digging, Durham and his team have found only mixed success. The Danchenko case marks the second time that the prosecutor who was supposed to root out dishonesty and misconduct within the ranks of the FBI and intelligence agencies will instead try to portray the FBI as victims, not perpetrators, of lies and deception.
“This case is likely the last real test for Durham’s office to justify its years-long investigation into possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 election,” said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, adding that it “will only add fodder to critics of Durham’s office who believe that his prosecutions have failed to get to the core of his mandate to investigate the genesis of the Russian collusion allegations, but instead have only charged individuals with more technical violations.”
A former FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty in 2020 to altering a government email to justify secret surveillance of the former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. Clinesmith was sentenced to a year of probation. In May, a jury in D.C. federal court acquitted the only other defendant who went to trial as part of Durham’s investigation, cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, who also was accused of lying to the FBI.
The Danchenko indictment has gotten a skeptical reception from the federal judge presiding over the matter, and much of the case Durham wanted to present won’t be weighed by the jury.
At a hearing last month, U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga allowed the case to proceed to trial but said it was “an extremely close call” whether Danchenko’s statements to the FBI could even be prosecuted.
This month, Trenga ruled that Durham’s team cannot raise the most salacious allegations in the Steele dossier — concerning Trump, the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and unproven claims about a “pee tape” featuring prostitutes — that investigators say they traced back to Danchenko and his purported sources.
Trenga, a senior judge who was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush, and who sits on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, also barred other pieces of evidence Durham had hoped to show jurors.
“Danchenko’s allegedly false statements regarding his sourcing of the Ritz-Carlton allegations do not qualify as direct evidence,” Trenga wrote in an order Oct. 4. He added: “Why Steele characterized the sources for the Ritz-Carlton allegations as he did in the Report or, indeed, whether the listed sources, in fact, came from Danchenko are subject to a significant degree of speculation.”
Steele himself might be able to shed light on Danchenko’s claims, but he is not expected to testify. Neither is Sergei Millian, the former president of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce, who prosecutors say Danchenko lied about during his FBI interviews.
That poses another challenge for Durham: narrating a complex story to the jury about claims Danchenko made to the FBI, about previous claims he made to Steele, about information he supposedly received from Millian and others — all of it without Millian or Steele providing their own versions of events.
Durham and his team did not respond to a request for comment.
The indictment and filings submitted in the case are dense and technical, with some focusing on the proper grammatical way to parse FBI questions and Danchenko’s responses. For example, Danchenko’s attorneys argue that some of his statements to the FBI in 2017 — that he “believed” it was Millian who reached out to him anonymously in a phone call and shared information about Trump and Russia — were “literally true” and thus not a crime.
Stuart A. Sears, an attorney for Danchenko, argued at a hearing last month: “If Rudy Giuliani says he believes the 2020 election was fraudulent, that doesn’t make it a false statement. He believes it.”
Mintz said: “This will be a difficult case for prosecutors because there is ambiguity in the facts, and prosecutors will have to prove Danchenko intended to mislead the FBI during his questioning as part of its investigation. While lying to federal agents is a crime, without more serious underlying charges it may be difficult to convince jurors that this case matters.”
Judge declines to toss John Durham case against Steele dossier source
U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga ruled Thursday that Danchenko’s case must be weighed by a jury, clearing the way for his trial next month. But it was “an extremely close call,” Trenga said from the bench.
The ruling is a victory, if only a temporary one, for Durham — who was asked by former attorney general William P. Barr in 2019, during the Trump administration, to investigate the FBI’s 2016 Russia investigation. Durham’s investigation came to focus in large part on the FBI’s use of the so-called “Steele dossier,” a collection of claims about Trump compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele.
But the judge’s remark that the decision was difficult could be an ominous sign, as Durham still must convince jurors Danchenko is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The special counsel’s investigation suffered a setback in May when another person charged with lying to the FBI, cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, was acquitted by a jury in D.C. federal court. Danchenko’s trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 11 in federal court in Alexandria, Va. Durham argued the case personally at the hearing Thursday.
The jury will be asked to weigh statements Danchenko, who has pleaded not guilty, made during FBI interviews in 2017 about a longtime Washington PR executive aligned with Democrats, Charles Dolan Jr., and a former president of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce, Sergei Millian.
Key to the case is whether those statements from Danchenko to the FBI were willful deceptions that had a material effect on the government’s efforts to verify the claims in the dossier, a series of reports by Steele, based on information from Danchenko and others. Steele had been hired to produce the reports by research firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired by a law firm that represented Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee.
Danchenko’s defense team asked the judge to dismiss the five-count indictment in a legal brief filed Sept. 2, arguing that Danchenko made “equivocal and speculative statements” to the FBI about “subjective” beliefs.
Danchenko’s prosecution, they said, was “a case of extraordinary government overreach.”
“The law criminalizes only unambiguously false statements that are material to a specific decision of the government,” Danchenko attorneys Stuart A. Sears and Danny Onorato wrote, adding that the FBI’s questions at issue “were fundamentally ambiguous, Mr. Danchenko’s answers were literally true, non-responsive, or ambiguous, and the statements were not material to a specific government decision.”
“If Rudy Giuliani says he believes the 2020 election was fraudulent, that doesn’t make it a false statement,” Sears argued in court Thursday. “He believes it.”
Durham’s team countered that the FBI’s questions were clear and that, in any event, settling disputes over contested facts is a job reserved for a jury.
An FBI agent asked Danchenko a “decidedly straightforward” question about Dolan during a June 15, 2017, interview, Durham’s team asserted in a brief filed Sept. 16.
“But you had never talked to Chuck Dolan about anything that showed up in the dossier, right?” the agent asked, according to court filings.
“No,” Danchenko replied.
“You don’t think so?” the agent asked.
“No. We talked about, you know, related issues perhaps but no, no, no, nothing specific,” Danchenko said.
The special counsel said the context in which the interview was taking place should have made clear that Danchenko was being asked about the sources behind the claims in the Steele dossier. The indictment alleges that at least one allegation in the Steele dossier “reflected information that Danchenko collected directly” from Dolan — despite Danchenko’s denial that they had discussed anything “specific” in it.
Danchenko asked Dolan via email about Paul Manafort’s resignation as Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, and Dolan replied with information that closely matched what was in an Aug. 22 report from Steele, the indictment says.
But Danchenko’s attorneys argued: “The most reasonable reading of this question is whether Mr. Danchenko and [Dolan] talked about the Company Reports themselves after they were published.”
“Mr. Danchenko’s answer to this question was literally true because he never talked to [Dolan] about the specific allegations contained in the Company Reports themselves, but they did talk about issues ‘related’ to the allegations later published in those reports,” Danchenko’s attorneys wrote.
They added that the FBI agent’s question was imprecisely worded because an email exchange between Danchenko and Dolan was not the same as “talking,” which is the word the FBI agent used during the interview.
“Talking refers to communication through spoken words, not in writing,” the attorneys argued.
At the hearing Thursday, Durham argued that “in the current-day lexicon, ‘talking’ has different meanings.”
“He knew exactly what the FBI was looking for; he knew the context of what was being asked of him,” Durham said, adding that Danchenko did not produce the email exchange about Manafort to investigators as he was turning over other materials. Danchenko’s attorneys said in a court filing that the information in the Steele dossier at issue actually came “from public news sources,” not Dolan.
Danchenko’s attorneys also argued that his statements to the FBI in 2017 — that he “believed” Millian had reached out to him anonymously in a phone call and shared information about Trump and Russia — were “literally true” and could not be deemed a criminal lie.
Durham said an email showed that Danchenko had never spoken to Millian as of Aug. 8, 2016. Danchenko had claimed the anonymous caller reached out to him weeks before that date, prosecutors allege.
“He knows that that didn’t happen, that it was not Millian who called him,” Durham said.
The special counsel’s team previously disclosed that Millian has not been located. Danchenko’s attorneys argued separately on Thursday that several emails from Millian to a Russian journalist that pertain to Danchenko should not be admitted as evidence in the trial “without allowing Mr. Danchenko the opportunity to cross-examine Millian.”
Judith Durham, Australia’s folk music icon, dies at 79
MELBOURNE, Australia — Judith Durham, Australia’s folk music icon who achieved global fame as the lead singer of The Seekers, has died. She was 79.
Durham died in Alfred Hospital in Melbourne on Friday night after suffering complications from a long-standing lung disease, Universal Music Australia and Musicoast said in a statement on Saturday.
She made her first recording at 19 and rose to fame after joining The Seekers in 1963. The group of four became the first Australian band to achieve major chart and sales success in the U.K. and the United States, eventually selling 50 million records.
International hits included “The Carnival is Over,” “I’ll Never Find Another You,” “A World of Our Own” and “Georgy Girl.”
Durham embarked on a solo career in 1968 but recorded with The Seekers again in the 1990s.
“This is a sad day for Judith’s family, her fellow Seekers, the staff of Musicoast, the music industry and fans worldwide, and all of us who have been part of Judith’s life for so long,” said The Seekers’ management team member Graham Simpson.
Her bandmates in The Seekers — Keith Potger, Bruce Woodley and Athol Guy — said their lives had been changed forever by losing “our treasured lifelong friend and shining star”.
“Her struggle was intense and heroic, never complaining of her destiny and fully accepting its conclusion. Her magnificent musical legacy Keith, Bruce and I are so blessed to share,” they said.
Tributes flowed for the beloved singer, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describing Durham as “a national treasure and an Australian icon.”
“Judith Durham gave voice to a new strand of our identity and helped blaze a trail for a new generation of Aussie artists,” Albanese wrote on Twitter. “Her kindness will be missed by many, the anthems she gave to our nation will never be forgotten.”
In her home state Victoria, Premier Dan Andrews said Durham had conquered the music world both in Australia and overseas.
“With her unique voice and stage presence leading The Seekers, the band became one of Australia’s biggest chart toppers,” he said.
Judith Durham, lead singer of Australia’s The Seekers, has died
“After a brief stay in the Alfred Hospital, Judith was admitted to Palliative Care on Friday 5 August, where she passed away peacefully that evening. Her death was a result of complications from a long-standing chronic lung disease,” Musicoast and Universal Music Australia said in a statement shared on the verified Facebook page for The Seekers.
“Our lives are changed forever losing our treasured lifelong friend and shining star. Her struggle was intense and heroic — never complaining of her destiny and fully accepting its conclusion. Her magnificent musical legacy Keith, Bruce and I are so blessed to share,” her former bandmates Keith Potger, Bruce Woodley and Athol Guy added in the post.
Durham helped open the door for Australian artists to achieve international fame. The Seekers, formed in 1962, were considered the first Australian pop band to achieve mainstream success in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The group’s hits included “Georgy Girl” and “A World of Our Own.”
Durham left The Seekers to pursue a solo career in 1968 and released several solo albums but continued to reunite and tour with the band in the decades after.
Several prominent Australians posted tributes Saturday.
“A national treasure and an Australian icon, Judith Durham gave voice to a new strand of our identity and helped blaze a trail for a new generation of Aussie artists,” wrote Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Twitter.
“Her kindness will be missed by many, the anthems she gave to our nation will never be forgotten.”
Australian comedian and actress Magda Szubanski shared her “deepest condolences to her loved ones” on Twitter.
“Her beautiful, crystalline voice was the naive but knowing siren song of my childhood,” wrote Szubanski.
Tanya Plibersek, Australian Minister for the Environment and Water, called Durham “a trailblazer and an icon in Australian music” on Twitter. “Her songs will live on forever.”
Durham patient questions North Carolina’s readiness for monkeypox outbreak :: WRAL.com
A 29-year-old Durham man who struggled for nearly two weeks to find a monkeypox test is questioning the readiness of medical providers, state and county public health officials and the federal government in combating the growing outbreak.
The man was notified of his positive monkeypox test on Monday. He spoke to WRAL News on the condition of anonymity.
“It’s been terrible,” he said.
The man said he started making phone calls on June 28 after he had developed mouth sores five days before.
“[I] said, ‘Hey, I think maybe I have monkeypox,’” he said. “’What do I do?’”
The man’s primary care doctor at Duke Family Medicine Center in Durham and the Durham County Health Department told him they weren’t offering monkeypox testing. During the next week, he developed a 103-degree fever.
“The fever is the worst fever I have had in my life,” he said. “The chills, the night sweats.
“I could not eat because opening my mouth to put a fork full of food in my mouth was impossible. It was so painful.”
During two urgent care visits and a trip to the emergency room, he said doctors only tested him for more common sexually transmitted infections.
“We are emerging from two years of a global pandemic, and I don’t feel like we are prepared for the next one,” the man said.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has identified 11 cases of monkeypox in the last three weeks within the state. The state does not publicly provide a county-by-county breakdown of where the cases are to protect the identity of the people with monkeypox.
When a monkeypox case is identified in a North Carolina resident, the NCDHHS works closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, local health departments and health care providers to identify and notify individuals who may have been in contact with an infectious person and to assess each individual contact’s level of risk.
“This is a big deal, and we are already behind,” said UNC Health Dr. David Wohl. “It’s true. We didn’t learn our lesson well enough from COVID-19 and how hard it was, and a struggle to get things up and running, including testing.”
Wohl said there’s not enough testing, and not nearly enough vaccine for gay and bisexual men at the highest risk.
WRAL News asked Wohl why the man was not tested for monkeypox despite getting tested for STIs.
“Good question. I think it’s the availability of the tests,” Wohl said. “I think it’s also sensitivity of people that monkeypox is around.
“It’s still not getting out as much as we need it to, to a lot of providers that this has to be on your radar.”
As of Tuesday, doctors are required to make a phone call before every monkeypox test. A state epidemiologist must give permission. Then, doctors collect a sample by swabbing a patient’s lesions. The process can take hours, and the results can take up to two days.
However, a new monkeypox test from LabCorp could expedite the process.
“The beauty of LabCorp is you don’t need to call the state for permission to test, and you can use the criteria you feel is best as a provider,” Wohl said.
On July 8, the Durham man traveled to UNC Health in Pittsboro, which is about 40 minutes from his home and is outside his insurance network. There, medical professionals were willing to test him. On Monday, the test came positive for monkeypox, more than two weeks after he first developed symptoms. The man had to isolate for two more weeks, which will mark one month since his exposure.
“I think my frustration is at every possible level,” the man told WRAL News. “At every step of the process, I have had to fight to get a test for monkeypox.”
There is a vaccine for monkeypox that should be given within 14 days of exposure to the virus. On Tuesday afternoon, the Durham County Health Department vaccinated its first four people.
On Tuesday, Duke Health said all primary care, urgent care and infectious disease clinics are able to collect specimens for monkeypox.
“In recent days, we have taken steps to ensure that staff and providers are more fully aware of the symptoms of monkeypox, the associated risk factors for exposure and the processes for specimen collection and testing,” Duke officials said in a statement.
I-40 East near US 15-501 reopens in Durham after three-hour closure :: WRAL.com
Durham, N.C. — I-40 East reopened Friday night after being shut down for hours when a car tumbled over the overpass and onto the interstate.
The accident caused major delays, and has some city leaders once again pointing to Durham’s police officer shortage.
On 15-501 Friday, a trail of destruction, ending in tragedy.
A car, plummeting onto I-40, first responders surrounding the crumpled wreck.
Todd Morris saw it happen. The grey car slamming into a black Toyota, before careening into the guardrail, and over the side.
“It was a bad scene,” said Morris. “It tore it up.”
The car landed in the eastbound lanes.
Christina Deschaine drove by not long after.
The mother tried to shield her kids from the scene.
“I was like ‘don’t look! don’t look!’ because you never want your kids to see that,” said Deschaine. “It’s traumatizing.”
Friday’s crash comes after a string of incidents on 15-501, including a road rage shooting just a week ago.
Durham Councilman Leonard Williams saying while there’s no indication that this crash is related, it once again highlights the need for more staffing and support for Durham’s police.
“They’re happening in my area. I’m extremely concerned, just like our residents are,” said Williams. “We need all hands on deck and we need them now because we have a now problem.”
Clinton 2016 campaign, lawyer, tech exec in ‘joint venture’ to smear Trump, Durham alleges
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, its lawyer and a tech executive took part in a “joint venture” to gather and spread dirt about Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, Special Counsel John Durham charges in a new filing.
The bombshell claim was made in a 48-page motion filed late Monday arguing for the admission of additional evidence ahead of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s pending trial for allegedly lying to the FBI.
At the heart of the case is a Sept. 18, 2016 text message Sussmann sent to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker, which was reproduced in Monday’s filing.
“Jim – it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss,” the lawyer wrote. “Do you have availability for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own – not on behalf of a client or company – want to help the Bureau. Thanks.”
In fact, prosecutors say, Sussmann — then a cybersecurity lawyer at powerhouse Democratic law firm Perkins Coie — had deceived Baker and was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign when the two met the following day.
During that sitdown, Sussmann allegedly gave Baker information suggesting that servers at the Trump Organization were communicating with servers at Moscow-based Alfa-Bank. That claim was amplified by the Clinton campaign to suggest that Trump was colluding with the Kremlin.
According to Monday’s filing, preparation for Sussmann’s meeting with Baker began in “late July and early August,” when “Tech Executive-1,” who has since been identified as Rodney Joffe, began telling employees at Virginia-based Neustar — where he was a senior vice president — to “mine and assemble Internet data that would support an ‘inference’ or ‘narrative’ tying Trump to Russia.”
Joffe, who is not named in the filing, allegedly said the point of the effort “was to please these ‘VIPs,’” which Durham says refers to Sussmann, his Perkins Coie colleague Marc Elias — the Clinton campaign’s general counsel — and the campaign itself.
Prosecutors also allege that Joffe ordered an executive at two other companies he owned to do a data deep-dive into Trump, saying “he was working with a person at a firm in Washington, D.C. with close ties to Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.”
The document adds that Joffe even emailed the executive the home addresses, email addresses, IP addresses and other personal information of “various Trump associates,” including spouses and other family members.
According to Durham, the CEO was “highly uncomfortable” with Joffe’s ask, but complied because he “was a powerful figure.”
The dive into Trump was given the code name “Crimson Rhino.”
Eventually, prosecutors say, Joffe and his associates “exploited” Internet traffic relating to a healthcare provider to assemble information from Trump Tower and Trump’s Central Park West apartment building. Among the allegations made by Sussmann were that Trump and his associates were using a type of Russian-made cell phone near the White House and other locations.
At the same time, Sussman and Perkins Coie allegedly connected Joffe to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele to compile his now-infamous dossier of explosive, debunked allegations about Trump’s supposed links to Russia.
The most notorious of those claims was that Moscow security services possessed a tape of Trump in a Moscow hotel room with prostitutes who were supposedly urinating on a bed where the Obamas had previously stayed.
The Clinton campaign kept quiet about its engagement with Fusion GPS — so quiet that last week, the Federal Election Commission fined the campaign and the Democratic National Committee $8,000 and $105,000, respectively, for mislabeling payments to the firm that were routed through Perkins Coie as “legal advice and services” rather than opposition research.
According to the filing, Sussmann even met with Steele himself (identified as “U.K. Person-1”) and Fusion GPS employees at Perkins Coie’s offices in the summer of 2016.
Prosecutors say that while Sussmann told Congress in 2017 that he only meant to “vet” Steele, the onetime British spy testified under oath in a UK legal proceeding that Sussmann shared the Alfa-Bank allegation with him and Fusion GPS ordered Steele to “research and produce intelligence reports” about Alfa-Bank.
Allegations about the Trump Organization and Alfa-Bank server ties also allegedly were shared by Steele with State Department officials, while Fusion GPS passed them on to at least one Department of Justice official.
After these introductions were made, Durham alleges, Sussmann and Fusion GPS employees shopped the Alfa-Bank allegations to the mainstream media. The claims about the server traffic between Trump Tower and Alfa-Bank were the subject of several contemporary reports ahead of Election Day 2016. The most notable story, by Franklin Foer, was published by Slate that October and bore the headline: “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?”
Finally, the Alfa-Bank claims were allegedly compiled by Joffe and Sussmann into a “white paper” that Sussmann turned over to Baker when the two met. According to the indictment of Sussmann, the lawyer billed the Clinton for the time drafting the document.
On the same day the Slate story about the Trump Organization and Alfa-Bank came out, the New York Times reported that the FBI had looked into Sussmann’s allegations and concluded that “there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.”
According to the indictment, Sussmann pursued the Alfa-Bank angle even after Clinton’s defeat by Trump in the 2016 election. In February 2017, he allegedly provided an “updated set of allegations” about the Russian bank and its relation to the Trump campaign to another US government agency that has since been identified as the CIA.
Sussmann was indicted in September 2021 and has pleaded not guilty to the charge of making false statements.
Durham’s motion seeks the admission of documents including notes of conversations two other FBI officials had with Baker about his Sept. 19, 2016 meeting with Sussmann; emails involving Sussmann, Joffe, Elias, Clinton campaign officials and Fusion GPS employees; and a deposition by Sussmann before the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017.
In that testimony, Sussmann was asked if he was acting on his “own volition” when he contacted Baker and the CIA about the Alfa-Bank allegations. He answered: “No.”
“So did your client direct you to have those conversations?” he was asked.
“Yes,” he replied, before attempting to backtrack moments later.
“[W]hen you say my client directed me, we had a conversation, as lawyers do with their clients, about client needs and objectives and the best course to take for a client,” he said. “And so it may have been a decision that we came to together. I mean, I don’t want to imply that I was sort of directed to do something against my better judgment, or that we were in any sort of conflict.”
In a flurry of filings Monday, Sussmann’s legal team argued that much of the evidence sought by Durham was either inadmissible as hearsay or irrelevant to the charge against their client.
“The Special Counsel has not charged a substantive scheme to defraud the government, nor has he charged a conspiracy to defraud the government,” one motion read. “The manner in which the [internet] data was gathered, the objective strength and reliability of that data and/or conclusions drawn from the data, and the information that Christopher Steele separately provided to the FBI all have no bearing on the only crime the Special Counsel chose to charge: whether Mr. Sussmann falsely stated that he was not acting on behalf of a client when he met with Mr. Baker.”
Sussmann’s attorneys further accused Durham of trying to “promote a baseless narrative that the Clinton Campaign conspired with others to trick the federal government into investigating ties between President Trump and Russia.
“But there was no such conspiracy; the Special Counsel hasn’t charged such a crime; and the Special Counsel should not be permitted to turn Mr. Sussmann’s trial on a narrow false statement charge into a circus full of sideshows that will only fuel partisan fervor.”
In a separate filing, Sussmann’s attorneys argued that the judge in the case should force Durham to offer Joffe immunity from prosecution or dismiss the case.
“While Mr. Joffe is prepared to testify in Mr. Sussmann’s defense—and to offer critical exculpatory testimony on behalf of Mr. Sussmann, including that Mr. Joffe’s work was not connected to the Clinton Campaign—the Special Counsel is making it impossible for Mr. Sussmann to call Mr. Joffe as an exculpatory witness at trial,” the document read. “It is simply inconceivable that Mr. Joffe faces any real continuing criminal exposure in connection with the Special Counsel’s investigation. The Special Counsel is yet again overreaching, and doing so in violation of Mr. Sussmann’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.”