A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022
knew they spied. But it was worse
than we thought.” That tweet a
few hours later received this
response from former director of
national intelligence John
Ratcliffe: “And now you’re finding
out why ... ” He linked to an
interview he gave in October
saying he had provided 1,
intelligence community
documents to Durham that
should support additional
charges.
Ratcliffe did not specifically
say this spin was true, but he
seemed to validate it, giving an
important boost to the narrative.
By 2:45 p.m., Red State, an
influential conservative website,
had posted an article
highlighting Techno Fog’s tweets,
titled “John Durham Drops a
‘Shock and Awe’ Filing About
Spying on Donald Trump.”
Then, former White House
chief of staff Mark Meadows
weighed in, also tweeting over
Techno Fog’s 10:25 a.m. tweet:
“They didn’t just spy on Donald
Trump’s campaign. They spied on
Donald Trump as sitting
President of the United States. It
was all even worse than we
thought.”
Finally, Patel issued a lengthy
statement via Twitter that
claimed “the Hillary Clinton
campaign and her lawyers
masterminded the most intricate
and coordinated conspiracy
against Trump when he was both
a candidate and later President of
the United States.” (Durham’s
filing actually did not claim the
Clinton campaign directed this.)
Patel separately told Fox News
“the lawyers worked to ‘infiltrate’
Trump Tower and White House
servers.”
Fox News then used Patel’s
phrase and, in a headline, made it
appear that it came from
Durham’s filing: “Clinton
campaign paid to ‘infiltrate’
Trump Tower, White House
servers to link Trump to Russia,
Durham finds.”
Interestingly, Patel’s statementSussmann’s legal team insisted
that the data, which Sussmann
provided to the CIA at the 2017
meeting, pertained to the time
before Trump became president
— when Barack Obama was still
president.
Indeed, 20 minutes later,
Wheeler sarcastically tweeted
over Mahncke’s tweet:
“BREAKING: Cybersecurity of US
networks covers cybersecurity of
the White House and (as Durham
admits) had while Obama was
there.” But Wheeler’s corrective
tweet made little difference to the
emerging slant on the right.‘Techno Fog’ fans the flames
Mahncke’s tweet did not use a key
word — spied. But soon an
influential Twitter account
tipped the soup.
At 10:25 a.m., the anonymous
Techno Fog Twitter account, with
nearly 350,000 followers,
tweeted: “Special Counsel John
Durman [sic]: DNC/Perkins Coie
allies — Rodney Joffe, et al. —
‘exploited a sensitive US govt
arrangement’ to gather intel on
the ‘Executive Office of the
President of the U.S.’ They spied
on Trump.” This tweet also had a
screenshot of paragraph five.
Before noon, this person had
tweeted a substack analysis that
emphasized, in bold type, “they
essentially spied on President
Trump.”
The 10:25 a.m. tweet also
raised the possibility that the
Russian hack of the Democratic
National Committee was actually
a plot engineered by the Clinton
campaign via Sussmann and
Joffe. Never mind that the
Russian hack has been
extensively documented by a
bipartisan Senate report and that
12 Russians were indicted by
special counsel Robert S. Mueller
III for their roles. For some of the
Durham obsessives, this theory is
the Holy Grail.
At 11:11 a.m., the House
Judiciary GOP account tweeted
over the Techno Fog tweet: “Weexplanation for more than four
years. Moreover, the five-year
statute of limitations for charging
a crime in connection with the
CIA meeting had expired two
days before Durham filed the
document.Trump calls for executions
The drumbeat of spin continued.
Ric Grenell, a former acting
director of national intelligence,
then appeared on Newsmax at
5:25 p.m. and managed to echo
both the “infiltrate” and “spy”
narratives.
“Durham’s filing makes it
clear,” Grenell said, that people
paid by the Clinton campaign
were “infiltrating the White
House, the executive office of the
president. They were spying not
only on the campaign of Donald
Trump but Donald Trump as
president.”
Less than two hours later,
Trump issued a hyperbolic
statement on the filing, saying it
“provides indisputable evidence
that my campaign and
presidency were spied on by
operatives paid by the Hillary
Clinton Campaign.” He said the
“scandal” was far bigger than
Watergate and “in a stronger
period of time in our country, this
crime would have been
punishable by death.”
Trump’s statement provided
the perfect runway for days of
outraged reactions by prominent
Republicans, not to mention
commentators, following the
script originally provided by the
mysterious Techno Fog Twitter
account.
House Minority Leader Kevin
McCarthy (R-Calif.), just hours
after Trump: “Democrats got
caught spying, first on candidate
Trump and then when he was
President IN THE WHITE
HOUSE.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), to
Republicans on the House
Judiciary Committee, Feb. 14:
“They spied on a presidential
campaign. That’s as wrong as it
gets. But then we found out from
this filing that they actually spied
on a sitting president, which is
even worse.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Feb. 15:
“The latest with the Durham
report is that the Clinton
campaign, the same group that
fear-mongered this Russian
collusion, actually spied on the
president of the United States.”
It no longer mattered whether
it was true or even whether
Durham’s allegations were
disputed. Within the echo
chamber, it was believed.
(Note: In a filing late Thursday,
Durham distanced himself from
the right-wing media furor in
response to Sussmann’s demand
that the court strike the “factual
background” of the original
Durham filing that made these
allegations: “If third parties or
members of the media have
overstated, understated, or
otherwise misinterpreted facts
contained in the Government’s
Motion, that does not in any way
undermine the valid reasons for
the Government’s inclusion of
this information.” Durham
confirmed that the data
collection in question took place
in 2016, not under Trump. He
indicated that he might make
further filings under seal if, for
instance, “the safety of
individuals” could be threatened
— an apparent reference to
Trump’s statement about
punishment by death.)made an odd distinction. Rather
than refer to the Executive Office
of the President, as was
mentioned in the filing, he
referred to the hacking of “Trump
Tower and the Eisenhower
Executive Office Building.” That
suggested he knew something
more than what was in the filing.Patel’s 2017 inquiry
Indeed, as Wheeler highlighted
in one of the articles she wrote on
the Durham filing, during a
congressional interview with
Sussmann on Dec. 18, 2017, Patel
raised whether Sussmann had
had any meetings besides one
with the FBI — “with any other
government agencies in relation
to the DNC hack, Russian
involvement in the 2016
elections, or anything like that, or
any members of any government
agencies.” After some back-and-
forth, Patel specifically asked
about a possible meeting with the
CIA.
Sussmann said he had a CIA
meeting in February 2017.
“My contact [with CIA] did not
relate to my specific
representation of the DNC, or the
Clinton campaign, or the
Democratic Party,” Sussmann
said, adding “the contact [with
CIA] was about reporting to them
information that was reported to
me about possible contacts,
covert or at least nonpublic,
between Russian entities and
various entities in the United
States associated with the — or
potentially associated with the
Trump Organization.” He noted
that the meeting “was in large
part, in response to President
Obama’s post-election IC
[intelligence community] review
of potential Russian involvement
in the election” but it ended up
being scheduled after Trump
took office.
In other words, the “evidence”
in the Durham filing should not
have been especially newsworthy
to Patel. He’s known about the
meeting and Sussmann’sothers. Sussmann has pleaded
not guilty, and his lawyers have
denied he ever said he had no
clients.
But as part of the document,
Durham listed “factual
background” that included new
but uncharged allegations.
Marcy Wheeler, an
independent national security
reporter who has written
skeptically about the Durham
probe, said she received a copy of
the filing through PACER, an
electronic public access service
for court documents, at 11:33 p.m.
Eastern time on Friday. Within an
hour, an anonymous Twitter
account called “Whispers of
Dementia” had tweeted about the
filing but focused only on the
conflict-of-interest issue.
Early Saturday morning, the
gaggle of Durham followers on
the right sprang into action and
shaped the news coverage that
followed.
Hans Mahncke, an Epoch
Times reporter and host on
Epoch TV, at 9:25 a.m. tweeted:
“Holy moly! New Durham filing.
Rodney Joffe and his buddies at
Georgia Tech monitored Trump’s
Internet traffic *while* he was
President of the United States.”
His tweet included a
screenshot from paragraph five
of the filing that highlighted in
red the phrase “Executive Office
of the President of the United
States.”
In many ways, this framing
formed the core of the
conservative news coverage that
followed — a claim that
Democrats had spied on Trump,
even when he was president. But
Durham’s filing, which is written
in turgid and confusing prose,
did not actually say that Trump’s
Internet traffic had been
monitored during his presidency.
Joffe, who has not been
charged, is an Internet
entrepreneur who founded the
world’s first commercial Internet
hosting company. Statements by
a Joffe spokesperson andOn Feb. 7, former
Trump
administration
aide Kash Patel
aired an interview
with his former
boss on Epoch
Times TV. Former
president Donald
Trump predicted
that there would
be “a lot coming”
from special counsel John
Durham and that Durham would
“fully expose” Democratic efforts
to tie his campaign to Russia.
“All of the things they said
about me and Russia — it was
them and Russia,” Trump said. “It
was them and Russia; they
worked with Russia.”
Four days later, in a filing that
appeared in electronic federal
court records shortly before
midnight, Durham made new
claims about the case that
exploded across right-leaning
media during the weekend.
Coincidentally or not, the filing
highlighted something that Patel
knew in great detail — a February
2017 meeting between the CIA
and former prosecutor Michael
Sussmann, who is in Durham’s
crosshairs. Patel in 2017 was a
Republican aide on Capitol Hill
charged with investigating
Russian interference in the 2016
election. During a 2017 interview
with Sussman, Patel indicated
that he knew about Sussmann’s
meeting with the CIA and
questioned him closely about it.
Patel did not respond to a
request for comment. The deep-
in-the-weeds connection between
his 2017 inquiries and the
Durham probe reflects the
unusual web of Durham-focused
influencers that helped drive the
narrative that the latest Durham
filing was a monumental
bombshell.
The group includes
anonymous Twitter accounts,
such as one called “Techno Fog,”
conservative journalists, such as
reporters for the Epoch Times
and Red State, and former
administration officials such as
Patel. Fox News and Newsmax
then led the charge on
conservative television, often in
misleading ways.
Because the Durham filing was
made late on Feb. 11, a Friday, the
narrative pushed by this group
was largely unchallenged over
the weekend. Not until Monday
did mainstream journalists begin
to look into the filing, adding
context and reporting, including
responses from Sussmann and
other players supposedly
implicated. The Sussmann legal
team accused Durham of making
“prejudicial — and false —
allegations that are irrelevant to
his Motion and to the charged
offense, and are plainly intended
to politicize this case, inflame
media coverage, and taint the
jury pool.”
But by then the horse was out
of the barn.
A court filing near midnight
Durham’s 13-page document
ostensibly was about a conflict-
of-interest issue regarding
Sussmann’s counsel, Latham &
Watkins. Durham in September
charged Sussmann with lying to
the FBI during a meeting in 2016.
The indictment alleged that he
told the FBI he was not acting on
behalf of clients when, in fact, the
indictment said, he was secretly
acting on behalf of Hillary
Clinton’s political team and
How the right bought f alse claim Hillary Clinton ‘spied’ on Trump White House
The Fact
Checker
GLENN
KESSLER
ANNA MONEYMAKER/GETTY IMAGES
Kash Patel, a former Trump administration aide, departs a Dec. 9, 2021, meeting on Capitol Hill. Patel this month accused Hillary
Clinton’s 2016 campaign of taking part in a conspiracy against Donald Trump when he was both a candidate and president.BY TIMOTHY BELLA
AND KELSEY ABLESJean-Luc Brunel, the former
head of a French model agency
who was accused of rape in the
1990s and later of supplying
young girls to disgraced finan-
cier Jeffrey Epstein, was found
hanged in his Paris prison cell
early Saturday. The French Peni-
tentiary Administration con-
firmed his death in La Santé
prison to The Washington Post.
The 75-year-old was found
dead in his cell at around 1 a.m.
Saturday during an overnight
check by guards at the Paris
prison, prosecutors told Le
Monde. Brunel was being held as
part of an ongoing investigation
into the alleged rape of minors
and trafficking of minors for
sexual exploitation. Several mod-
els had accused him of sexual
assault and rape, and French
police had interviewed many
potential witnesses in the case.
Brunel had denied the allega-
tions.
He was a close associate of
Epstein’s — and the two men’s
deaths were similar in nature.
Epstein, 66, died by suicide in his
prison cell in August 2019 while
awaiting his own trial on federal
sex trafficking charges.
Brunel’s attorneys did not im-
mediately respond to requests
for comment. They told Le
Monde that the apparent suicide
of their client “was not driven by
guilt, but by a deep sense of
injustice.”
“Jean-Luc Brunel [had] con-
tinued to proclaim his inno-
cence,” the attorneys said.
Among his alleged victims was
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who
previously said in court docu-
ments that Epstein pressured
her to submit to sex with Brunel
when she was a teenager.
“The suicide of Jean-Luc
Brunel, who abused me and
countless girls and young wom-
en, ends another chapter,” she
tweeted. “I’m disappointed that I
wasn’t able to face him in a final
trial to hold him accountable,
but gratified that I was able to
testify in person last year to keep
him in prison.”
Former model Thysia Huis-
man, 48, who accused Brunel of
spiking her drink and raping her
when she was 18 in 1991, also
expressed her dismay. “This is a
completely different ending
without any real justice for his
victims,” she tweeted.
“I’m really disappointed,
shocked and frustrated,” she lat-
er told The Post on Saturday. “Iwanted to see him in front of a
judge, that would’ve been the
best closure.”
One of several women who
accused Brunel of sexual abuse
in 2019, Huisman says she wants
to show other victims of sexual
violence that it is “rewarding and
empowering to come forward
about your abuser, that it is not
for nothing and that in the end
justice will be served.” She added
that she takes some comfort in
the consequences Brunel faced,
even if they weren’t what she
expected.
“He died in jail. It’s depress-
ing, if you think about it,” she
said. “So it’s also a kind of
sentence.”
Brunel’s death comes days af-
ter Britain’s Prince Andrew set-tled the sexual abuse lawsuit
brought by Giuffre who says she
was trafficked to him by Epstein,
a multimillionaire investor
whose well-known associates
also included Bill Clinton and
Donald Trump, among others.
The amount and details of the
settlement between Andrew and
Giuffre — who said she was
recruited as a teenager by Ep-
stein and his longtime paramour,
Ghislaine Maxwell, in Palm
Beach, Fla. — were not disclosed
in a court filing this week.
Maxwell faces as much as 65
years in prison after being con-
victed in December of sex-traf-
ficking charges for assisting Ep-
stein in abusing young girls.
Attorney Brad Edwards, who
represents Giuffre and other Ep-stein accusers, told The Post that
he was struck by the timing of
Brunel’s apparent suicide just
days after his client’s settlement
with Andrew this week.
“Rather than be held account-
able, he just checked out,” he said
of Brunel. “They’re both very
selfish people, so if the world
isn’t going to be what they want
it to be, then there’s no sense in
living.”
Brunel was a model talent
scout for the Karin Models agen-
cy, which he went on to lead.
When he was banned from the
agency after a BBC report high-
lighting his alleged abuse, he
moved to the United States.
Through Maxwell, he was intro-
duced to Epstein, who gave him
funding to found Brunel’s U.S.
agency, MC2 Model Manage-
ment, according to the Guardian.
Brunel, who is credited with
discovering supermodels such as
Christy Turlington and Milla Jo-
vovich, became a frequent com-
panion of Epstein’s whenever the
financier traveled to France.
For years, several American
models in Paris had accused
Brunel of sexual misconduct —
groping and other sexual ad-
vances, drugging women’s
drinks, rape — in the hope that
he would be stopped. But justicewas considered elusive for
Brunel’s alleged victims, much as
it was for the women who ac-
cused Epstein of abuse only to
see him serve just 13 months in
jail more than a decade ago.
In December 2020, Brunel was
arrested at Charles de Gaulle
Airport in Paris shortly before
boarding a plane for Dakar.
French authorities said Brunel
was a central figure in the probe
into alleged sexual exploitation
of women and girls by Epstein
and his inner circle. Brunel, who
was charged with raping minors
over the age of 15 and sexual
harassment, was released on bail
last November but was ordered
to return to prison while await-
ing trial.
Edwards, who said he yet to
speak with his clients about
Brunel’s death, recalled the
pained reactions from those he
represented after Epstein’s death
in 2019. He told The Post that
Epstein’s accusers “all felt like
something had been stolen from
them” — and anticipated a simi-
lar reaction following Brunel’s
death.
“Everybody was looking for-
ward to accountability,” he said.
“Anytime that they’re deprived in
this way, it feels like a form of
re-victimization.”Epstein associate Jean-Luc Brunel is found hanged in French prison
“Everybody was looking forward to accountability.Anytime that they’re deprived in this way, it feelslike a form of re-victimization.”
Brad Edwards, attorney representing Virginia Roberts Giuffre and other Epstein
accusers