New details on 2016 Russia probe prompt flawed allegations of espionage

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• Judy Woodruff:

  A filing last week from the special counsel investigating the origins of the Russia probe has ignited a misleading media firestorm on the right.

  William Brangham breaks down the new information, and how it's been distorted.

• William Brangham:

  To listen to conservative media over the past five days, you would think there was now smoking gun evidence that Hillary Clinton's campaign was guilty of illegally spying on Donald Trump.

• Sean Hannity, FOX News:

  That the Clinton campaign paid a tech firm to infiltrate the servers at Trump Tower and then later infiltrate the servers at the Trump White House.

• Tucker Carlson, FOX News:

  Has anything like this ever happened in American history? Not that we know of.

• William Brangham:

  This all stems from a court filing from special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by former Attorney General William Barr to investigate any potential wrongdoing during the 2016 Russia probe.

  The filing relates to a low-level case that Durham has brought against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer who'd represented the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign. Durham alleges Sussmann lied to the FBI about who his client was during a meeting where Sussmann shared information about possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

  But in a few extra sentences, Durham's filing mentions a second instance where Sussmann tried to raise concerns of a Trump-Russia connection, this time apparently to the CIA. That information came from one of Sussmann's clients, technology executive Rodney Joffe.

  Durham's filing noted that Joffe's company, Neustar, had an arrangement to provide security-related work on computer servers, including the White House's. But, according to the filing, Joffe used that access to mine Internet data to establish an inference and narrative tying then-candidate Trump to Russia.

  Joffe has not been charged with any crime.

  All of this has now been spun by conservative media and former President Trump himself to say Sussmann and Joffe were Clinton operatives who were paid to illegally hack into and spy on the Trump campaign and Trump White House.

  Former President Trump wrote: "In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death."

  In a column this week, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage of The New York Times wrote that the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news, and its conclusions "based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation."

  Charlie Savage joins me now.

  I wonder if you could help us understand just initially how we got to this point, how Durham's investigation has morphed into this sort of explosive story in conservative media.

• Charlie Savage, The New York Times:

  So, back in the Trump administration, right after Robert Mueller, the Russian special counsel, finished his report, Donald Trump shifted — tried to shift the narrative to or escalated his attempt to shift the narrative to the idea that he was actually a victim of a deep state conspiracy.

  And his attorney general, Bill Barr, as you mentioned, appointed John Durham, then a U.S. attorney, to be what became another special counsel, a special counsel to investigate the investigation.

  And the whole idea and expectation then was he was going to prove Trump's narrative that there were high-level officials who — in the FBI and the CIA who had essentially framed him for collusion.

  But we're almost three years in now, and he has yet to bring any charges against the high-level officials. He has developed two cases against outsiders, and one of them is this Sussmann case. Both of these are merely false statement cases. They're not charging a conspiracy.

  But Mr. Durham has used court filings and indictments and so forth, related to these cases to put out large amounts of information that are not directly related to the charges. And this information is imbued with insinuations that there is some kind of vast anti-Trump conspiracy.

  He just hasn't been able to prove it yet or charge it. It all goes back to Hillary Clinton, is the implication.

• Jesse Waters, FOX News:

  Hillary Clinton hired people who hacked into Trump's home and office computers.

• William Brangham:

  Despite right-wing media claiming an illegal infiltration of computer servers, remember, Durham's filing notes that Joffe's firm, Neustar, had an arrangement with the government to help maintain and monitor servers.

  In 2015, after a Russian malware attack and the 2016 Russian hack of the DNC, Joffe and other researchers used Neustar's data and other data to monitor cyber threats. It was that monitoring, looking for suspicious Russian activity, that included the White House, the Clinton campaign, and the Trump campaign.

• Fmr. Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI):

  She was spying on Donald Trump, the president, and I think the only conclusion can be this was an effort to overthrow the president of the United States of America.

• Charlie Savage:

  The most important and easiest-to-understand fact of all of this is that the whole narrative is that they were spying on the Trump White House, they were spying on the Trump White House.

  And this data all came from 2016. This was Obama White House data. That fact alone makes the whole thing ridiculous. But there is no accusation in the filing that the Clinton campaign paid this technology company that was — had a role in helping to run the White House server. In fact, the money flow, if anywhere, went the other direction.

• William Brangham:

  The way that this is being portrayed in conservative media, that this is blockbuster brand-new information that Durham has finally, after years of investigation, revealed, is that true? Is this new information?

• Charlie Savage:

  Well, this was one of the problems that we at The New York Times, for example, had on Friday night, when this filing came out, is that we had reported the essence of this back in October.

  But it was being presented as new in the right-wing media ecosystem. And then combined with that was their leaping to the conclusion, which Mr. Durham did not say, but maybe insinuated, that this was Trump White House data.

• William Brangham:

  Given the way that this thing has sort of morphed into a completely sort of mutant story, do you think that mainstream press ought to be covering this?

  I mean, do you feel like that we are doing something beneficial here by trying to explain this, or are we only adding fuel to the fire?

• Charlie Savage:

  There's been this repeated cycle of huge alarmism stoked within right-wing pro-Trump outlets that I don't really consider doing the same kind of journalism that I'm doing sending out the message with the blaring outrage, grievance-stroking headlines that now it's been proven they were spying on President Trump.

  And every time you look at it, it — there's less there than meets the eye. But if you don't cover it, then that allows the sort of Trump world and his allies to say, aha, you know, the media, they're in on it. They're covering it up. It's a conspiracy. They just won't tell the truth.

• William Brangham:

  All right, Charlie Savage of The New York Times, thank you so much for helping us try to wade through all of this. I appreciate your time.

• Charlie Savage:

  My pleasure.