# The Durham indictments prosecuting fake Trump 'collusion' **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 23, 2021, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215 "2021-09-23T20:11:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2022, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/342 "2022-06-02T02:38:06Z")
The problem with this narrative is that his boss changed midstream. He had the perfect opportunity to go the the new boss and ask whether it was really worth still trying to pipe shit rossettes, on a shit torte filled with shit creme anglaise or should he just finish up as soon as possible say he found nothing and get back to doing something useful. The fact that he didn’t take that opportunity means he deserves all the derision he’s getting. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2022, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/343 "2022-06-02T11:50:54Z")
Link to a Tweet that contains a video clip of Bill Barr talking about Durham. > Just a complete rewrite of history days later. Barr claims that Durham, even though he didn’t get a conviction, exposed that Hillary was behind Russiagate and that the top levels of the FBI helped. It’s complete and utter bullshit. However, it’s exactly the type of bullshit that @Sam_Stone uncritically ate up and vomited back out to form the OP of this thread. There were very real connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, some of which can be accurately described as collusion. Clinton didn’t invent this shit and if we learned anything about the FBI from this trial it’s that they didn’t investigate this stuff thoroughly enough. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2022, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/344 "2022-06-06T19:27:47Z")
If you thought Durham’s case against Sussmann was weak, wait until you see the case against Danchenko. Danchenko is charged with making five false statements. One of them is a statement Danchenko made about Chuck Dolan. On this count, Durham misstates both the question Danchenko was asked and the answer he gave in the indictment. The other four counts are about a phone call Danchenko may or may not have had with Sergei Millian. Durham doesn’t appear to have any evidence the phone call didn’t take place, didn’t interview Millian before indicting, and cited a Tweet from an account that may not even belong to Millian. We learned from the Sussmann prosecution that Sussmann didn’t commit a crime and really did make a good faith effort to alert the FBI to what he legitimately thought was a national security threat. Maybe we’ll learn from the Danchenko prosecution that the Steele dossier was a good faith effort to gather intelligence on Trump’s ties to Russia. Spoiler alert: it was. ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2022, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/345 "2022-06-08T03:23:23Z")
I see that Sam Stone is currently active around the board, but hasn’t found the time and willingness to add his thoughts to this thread following the not guilty verdict and the complete lack of further action on his imagined conspiracy. So I’ll just bump the thread and hope it grabs his attention enough to post. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/346 "2022-06-10T19:11:23Z")
I’d like to point out that the David Dagon whitepaper that Sussmann passed to the FBI was admitted into evidence in the trial and is now publicly available. ([Document Cloud Link](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22018859-0217)) Reading through it we can see that there was a very real anomaly in the DNS data that remains unexplained to this day. A domain that belonged to the Trump Organization which was set up to only receive messages from whitelisted IP addresses had something like 97% of its DNS lookups (i.e. other computers trying to send messages to it) from just four domains. Two belonged to Alfa bank, one to Spectrum Health, and one to an anonymizing VPN service. This is very weird, and explanations such as ‘marketing emails’ and ‘spam’ are insufficient. Furthermore, the trial revealed that the FBI investigation of this anomaly was not adequate. The first agent to look at it, Scott Hellman, only knew the basics of DNS, reached his conclusion very quickly without taking basic investigative steps (didn’t look up whois info for the domain) or plugging in the flash drives, and made several errors in his report (misstated the paper’s methodology, misstated the length of time the anomaly occurred, etc). Later investigators did not take the issue seriously because they took Hellman’s report at face value. New agent Allison Sands testified twice that she was trying to debunk the whitepaper because that’s what Hellman told her to do. He also told her to not take this task too seriously because, “any chance you get to work something like this that truly has 0 repercussions if you mess it up ….take those opportunities”. Long story short, Durham inadvertently undermined the supposed debunking of the Alfa Bank story. Even if nothing nefarious was going on, there was definitely something weird happening, and Sussmann legitimately thought it might have national security implications so he made sure it got to the FBI before the story went public so that if something untoward was happening the FBI would have time to look into it before the perpetrators could react. He’s the good guy in this story. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/347 "2022-06-10T19:34:28Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > He’s the good guy in this story. Yes, but a good guy is a national security threat to a corrupt administration. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/348 "2022-06-10T22:49:15Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > This is very weird, and explanations such as ‘marketing emails’ and ‘spam’ are insufficient. Yeah, I’ve administered a lot of DNS and email servers, and that doc sure raises my eyebrows. Almost all of those lookups were for A (IP address) records and not MX (mail exchanger) records. In the case of a mail server, you’d expect it to be about 50/50 of the two, with some lookups for other TXT records possible. Sadly, that doc doesn’t list where the MX records for [trump-email.com](http://trump-email.com) actually did point at the time. They don’t resolve to [mail.trump-email.com](http://mail.trump-email.com) now, if it ever did. Nothing about that setup seems like it has any purpose other than an attempt to have a closed communication channel over email. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/349 "2022-06-10T22:55:07Z")
> [@scabpicker](#): > > Nothing about that setup seems like it has any purpose other than an attempt to have a closed communication channel over email. Thank John Durham for inadvertently destroying the debunking of the Alfa Bank story. Now we know with 100% certainty that something suspicious was going on and Sussmann was right to bring it to the FBI. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2022, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/350 "2022-07-02T22:58:30Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > This week the Durham investigation into the roots of the Russia/Trump collusion story laid down a second indictment, this time against a lawyer for Perkins-Coie, the law firm that represented Hillary Clinton. Hey, @Sam_Stone, have there been any developments here? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2022, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/351 "2022-07-03T00:54:36Z")
Not that I know of. At least, I haven’t heard anything. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2022, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/352 "2022-07-03T01:10:06Z")
Any comment on the Sussmann verdict, Sam? ---
**Author:** ![Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kolak_of_twilo/32/73_2.png) [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2022, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/353 "2022-07-03T01:24:07Z")
You’re funny. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2022, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/354 "2022-07-03T02:03:07Z")
Yeah, he was acquitted. We’ll see what happens from here. > [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](#): > > You’re funny. And it’s shit like this that makes this board SO much fun for some of us - the ones who are still left, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2022, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/355 "2022-07-03T02:29:34Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > We’ll see what happens from here. Classic. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2022, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/356 "2022-07-03T03:37:50Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And it’s shit like this that makes this board SO much fun for some of us - the ones who are still left, anyway. Oh c’mon Sam, other posters who tend to be slow in admitting that they were wrong get dinged for it too. It’s not specifically picking on you as a conservative. (Granted, conservative wrongness is often more readily spotted because of the whole coordinated-propaganda-machine phenomenon. The right-wing outlets swing into action to push a particular narrative and let it fall by the wayside when it’s rebutted.) ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2022, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/357 "2022-07-03T05:27:54Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > … The right-wing outlets swing into action to push a particular narrative and let it fall by the wayside when it’s rebutted. Or they double/triple/quadruple down on it, dismissing any information (however factual) to the contrary as “fake news.” ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2022, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/358 "2022-07-03T06:22:01Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Yeah, he was acquitted. We’ll see what happens from here. You’re hoping the Supreme Court overturns the laws against double jeopardy? ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2022, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/359 "2022-07-03T11:30:57Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > and let it fall by the wayside when it’s rebutted.) If they let a particular story drop off for awhile is it a “fake news snooze”? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2022, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/360 "2022-07-03T13:10:36Z")
Has the Sussman verdict caused you to reevaluate your opinion on the Durham investigations? To me, it validates my earlier opinion that it was most likely baseless bullshit and only motivated by Trump and Barr’s political hopes. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2022, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/361 "2022-07-04T09:51:44Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And it’s shit like this that makes this board SO much fun for some of us - the ones who are still left, anyway. And the grapes on offer - so sour! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215.md?page=17) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215.md?page=19)