(PresidentialHill.com)- Ric Grenell, who served as the acting director of national intelligence under former President Donald Trump, said this week that he “is eager” to see former FBI Director Jim Comey be the target of the “Russiagate” investigation.
He said recently:
“I’m eager to get to Comey, and to the others at the FBI, who knew absolutely that they were pushing a phony hoax. I talked to mid-level FBI agents who told me they didn’t classify information; they didn’t redact all of this information. Their bosses did, and so I want to go up the food chain.”
What Grenell was speaking about was Michael Sussman recently being acquitted for lying to the FBI as part of the first court trial related to the investigation conducted by John Durham, the special counsel. Sussman was the former attorney for Hillary Clinton.
Durham’s investigation centered around trying to find the origin of the fake narrative that Russia colluded with Trump during his term in the White House.
Grenell explained:
“We live in a country where no one is above the law, and this political partisanship that’s going on in Washington, D.C., where three Clinton donors and an AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.] donor all get together with the judge who’s married to someone who represented Lisa Page, somehow tries to tell the rest of America that we have a really clean, honest, legal system, and I think that the American people can see it.
“They know that it’s phony, and we got to clean it up, so I’m not going to stop until we prosecute Jim Comey. I think he is guilty. I’ve seen the evidence, and he needs to be prosecuted.”
Sussman was working for the Perkins Coie International Law Firm, which was representing the 2016 presidential campaign for Clinton. During that time, he approached the FBI with a “tip” that computer servers that were run by the Trump campaign had contacted Russian servers that were connected to Alfa Bank, which is backed by the Kremlin.
The New York Times reported back then that Sussman claimed Trump was using this as a “back channel” communication with the government of Russia.
Ultimately, Sussman’s accusations were proven to be completely untrue. Clinton’s campaign is the likely original source of the story, though, and Clinton herself approved releasing it to the media as well as Sussman taking that claim over to the FBI.
The crux of the case against Sussman is that he notified the FBI that he wasn’t acting on behalf of anyone when he brought the tip to them. However, the Times reported that he billed Clinton’s campaign for the taxi ride to take him to the meeting with the FBI, at the very least.
Following the verdict, Sussman said:
“I told the truth to the FBI, and the jury clearly recognized that with their unanimous decision today. Despite being falsely accused, I am relieved that justice ultimately prevailed in this case.”
Despite that verdict, Grenell said the FBI knew the information they were provided wasn’t true. Even so, they proceeded with getting wiretaps on the Trump campaign, which is why he believes it’s Comey’s time to pay.
He said:
“The leaders of the FBI knew that what they were pushing was a hoax. They pushed it anyway. They even gave the information to a FISA court.”
