we bring in former federal prosecutor
and fox news contributor andy mccarthy
andy um a lot of questions for you so
i'm gonna i'm gonna fire right away here
so mark elias it just as david spunt
just so um clearly reported he said he
hired fusion gps
as we know they hired christopher steele
and that's where the dossier was created
but he says he didn't want people to
know that he had hired them um and he
basically said according to the
paraphrase that we just heard from david
spun you know when you're in my line of
work you know and you're working for
hillary clinton essentially uh you don't
want to share who you have hired to do
oppo research you want to basically give
them plausible deniability what do you
think about all this
well i think what's happening martha is
basically they got caught
concocting a narrative a political
narrative they thought would be
dangerous or would be damaging to
uh donald trump during the campaign that
he was in cahoots with russia so now
they're sort of covering their tracks
and explaining that you know the secrecy
is not anything to that that we should
see as sinister it's just the sort of
thing that you would do if you
represented the kind of people i
represented and that's the the pitch
he's giving
in court is that it was basically
trump's fault that he even had to do
this because uh trump is so likeagious
and brings so many uh libel actions that
he had to evaluate his litigation risks
so he needed fusion gps so we could
figure out you know how much how much
can we say
and stay on the safe side of the libel
line so there's a lot of backtracking
going on and you know it's a little
complicated because it's a big framework
for what's a very sort of narrow simple
crime which is did this guy sussman
lie to the fbi when he claimed he wasn't
representing anyone including obviously
the clinton campaign when he brought
them this information yeah that's a
great point because what we're what
we're hearing around all of this is
obviously fascinating because mark elias
is on the stand he's talking about what
they were all doing and what they
thought was a problem and how they
approached it uh as part of this
campaign
but here's the actual text that sussman
wrote to jim baker who you know seemed
to they seem to be on uh you know pretty
friendly terms or open communication
terms right um and and baker's the top
attorney at the fbi he says jim it's
michael sussman i have something time
sensitive and sensitive in parentheses i
need to discuss do you have a
availability for a short meeting
tomorrow i'm coming on my own not on
behalf of a client or company want to
help the bureau thanks
right so
andy you know that the suggestion here
is that he's going to say well everyone
knew you know that i worked for the
clinton administration but in this case
i was just very unsettled by these
things that i was learning and i just
wanted to make sure that the fbi knew
about it is that how's that going to go
over in this dc courtroom with a dc jury
well i don't i well you know look the dc
jury martha i think is the biggest
problem that that durham has because
they're going to be sort of
presumptively uh trump hostile but that
having been said you know he went into
the fbi
billing the clinton campaign after
spending a lot of time consulting with
the clinton campaign which he was also
representing
um about the package of information that
was being brought to the fbi
and
what he did to get in the door
was capitalize on the fact that he's a
former justice department official who
had a prior relationship with jim baker
then the general counsel to the fbi they
both worked together
in the justice department for years so
if a mere mortal wanted to get a meeting
with the fbi to report some information
you know you'd have to call up and get
whatever agent happened to be on duty
that day
most of us are not able to like pull out
our cell phone and say oh let me call
the general counsel or the fbi and get a
meeting the next morning yeah
it's very interesting and as you say um
they're going to have to prove to this
jury
that
he that he was able to separate the hats
completely that even though he was
working on this campaign which was just
a couple months away and this
information would clearly be detrimental
if it got out and went into the press
which we all know was you know part of
the engine that appears to have rolled
over uh ruled out from this whole thing
um and that this was that this was
separate so we'll see um how they do
andy great piece on this today uh as
always i think you've written about
three of them in the past few days that
i recommend everybody take a look at uh
good to see you sir thanks martha thank
you hey sean hannity here hey click here
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