News analysis
The Russiagate saga began in early 2016 as a scheme by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign to vilify her rival, Donald Trump, as an agent of the Kremlin. Clinton’s scheme comprised two prongs: former British spy Christopher Steele’s fictitious dossier and Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s false Alfa Bank data.
While special counsel John Durham’s Russiagate investigation, having focused on those two prongs, is now in serious jeopardy with the acquittal of Sussmann, very little attention has been paid to how the FBI weaponized Clinton’s scheme to turn up the heat on Trump.
Documents made public at Sussmann’s trial add to a growing body of evidence that Clinton’s scheme gradually converged with FBI leadership’s own scheme. What started out as a political smear campaign carried out by a political candidate was co-opted by the nation’s top law enforcement agency to not only damage a sitting president but to try to remove him from office….