>While Durham said Sussmann told Baker he was not working for any specific client, the special counsel contends he was secretly doing the bidding of Clinton’s campaign, and billing his work to her, as well as working on behalf of a technology company executive named Rodney Joffe.
>Sussmann pleaded not guilty. Steele was hired by Fusion, and Fusion was hired by Marc Elias, who was also a Perkins Coie lawyer and general counsel for Clinton’s presidential campaign.
>Steele testified in a British court that Sussmann provided him with other claims about Alfa Bank’s purported ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a late July 2016 meeting. These allegations made their way into a September 2016 memo that became part of Steele’s dossier, although Steele repeatedly misspells “Alfa” as “Alpha.”
>DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in his December 2019 report on the Russia investigation the FBI “concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links” between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
>Horowitz concluded the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation was deeply flawed. The DOJ watchdog criticized the DOJ and the FBI for 17 “significant errors and omissions ” related to its spy court surveillance of Trump campaign associate Carter Page.
>Horowitz’s report criticized Steele directly, noting FBI meetings with Steele’s sources “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting,” and bureau officials said Steele “may have some judgment problems.”