Durham Chronicles: Fusion GPS and the Moby Dick method of litigation support

If you want a fresh perspective on John Durham’s grand jury subpoena for materials related to the Alfa Bank hoax and Michael Sussmann’s activities, you could do worse than have a visit with Glenn Simpson’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee (the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, or HPSCI) from 14 November 2017.

Those who have been following Durham’s false statement case against Sussmann, which alleges that Sussmann lied to the FBI in 2016 when he told FBI general Counsel James Baker that he wasn’t representing a client in a meeting in September of that year, are familiar with where the case stands at the moment.  Sussmann’s trial is scheduled to begin on 16 May 2022, and both sides, prosecution and defense, are busy filing motions and related items.

The unclubbable Mr. Trump: China, Ukraine, and a surprise banking oversight action

On 20 March, we checked in with a story from the period 2014-2016, when the French bank BNP Paribas was, initially, greenlighted by the Obama administration to do business with Iran, as sanctions were relaxed, and then months later was hit by U.S. government authorities with the biggest settlement forfeiture in banking history for a prior record of sanctions violations (including sanctions on Iran).

In the interim between the first development (January 2014) and the second (June 2014), BNP Paribas flagged – to UK officials – a suspicious transaction by the owner of Burisma, Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky.  The date of the notification, March 2014, fell in the period when Vice President Joe Biden was holding frequent phone conversations with top Ukrainian officials as the “Maidan Revolution” crisis expanded.  About a month after BNP Paribas alerted the UK to Zlochevsky – who had fled Ukraine in February 2014 – Hunter Biden and Devon Archer joined Burisma’s board, and payments from the company began flowing to them.

Big bank, big bust: Another dot-path connected with Ukraine and the suddenly legitimate laptop

The New York Times’s admission this past week that the Hunter Biden laptop was not Russian disinformation has come at an opportune time.  It’s an obscurely opportune time, to be sure.  But it’s opportune nonetheless.

What makes it so is a reminder that the seed money used to start a cybersecurity non-profit called Global Cyber Alliance (GCA), whose interests and personalities rather remarkably replicated those of Russiagate and Alfa-gate in 2015 and 2016, came from an asset forfeiture settlement with the French banking giant BNP Paribas.

Those dots connect.  Some readers already know how. For others, here’s the BNP angle.

Russian claim of U.S. sub in territorial waters: A little more than meets the eye

Russia claimed on Saturday 12 February that one of their Pacific Fleet ships, Udaloy-class destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov (BPK-543), recently drove a U.S. attack submarine out of Russian territorial waters.

The claim appears to refer to actions allegedly undertaken during M. Shaposhnikov’s current underway period for fleet exercises.

According to RIA Novosti, the Russian navy “discovered an American submarine of the ‘Virginia’ type near the island of Urup.”

“The crew of the submarine,” says RIA Novosti, “was given a message in Russian and English via underwater communication: ‘You are in the territorial waters of Russia. Surface immediately!’”

New Durham filing in Sussmann case hits paydirt at home plate (although not the way you may think)

The intent of this update is not to be an in-depth treatment with new research, but to address basic questions flying around social media, with the hope of sparing analysts time in their research efforts.  That said, it turns out, based on the implications of the new court filing, that a lot of my old analysis has been borne out.  There will be plenty of links to that.  The original analysis, which has held up, provides background for verifying the explanations outlined below.

The topic is the latest filing by John Durham in the Michael Sussmann case.  The purpose of the filing is to advise the federal court of a potential conflict of interest for Sussmann’s legal counsel at the firm Latham & Watkins LLP.