With final preparations underway for one of the most politically explosive federal prosecutions in years, U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel John H. Durham’s record reveals legal error that undercuts his image as straight-shooting seeker of justice.
In a 2008 ruling that has never been reported by a major news outlet, a New York federal appeals court vacated bribery, wire fraud and racketeering convictions 
because a team led by Durham, left, then the Deputy U.S. Attorney in Connecticut (and Acting U.S. attorney for supervising the prosecution), illegally withheld evidence that could have helped federal defendant Charles Spadoni defend himself in a corruption case.
In another case, a Connecticut federal judge overturned a conviction in 2003 because of what she ruled in a 57-page decision was Durham's repeated prosecutorial misconduct at trial, a sanction that authorities stated is extremely rare in the federal system.
Past performance is relevant now because Durham's three-year probe of alleged illegality pertaining to the 2016 U.S. presidential election is reaching a pivotal and controversial juncture with the trial this month of the prominent cyberlaw attorney Michael Sussmann, right, on a claim that Sussmann falsely denied that 
he was representing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton when he sought to alert FBI general counsel James Baker in the fall of 2016 to suspicions of Russian interference.
Sussmann, his attorneys and some independent commentators have denied wrongdoing and claimed that the prosecution is exceptionally weak and also tainted by political partisanship by Durham, a career prosecutor who was also nominated by President Trump for the political post of U.S. attorney for Connecticut.
Several important pretrial motions were heard on April 27 by U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper in Washington’s federal court. (See appendix below for analysis: Sussmann Prosecutors Seek Legally Dubious "Tactical Advantage" At Trial, Defense Claims.) The judge largely resolved them on May 7 in favor of the defense, as reported here in Judge spares Clinton camp in Sussmann ruling. The trial is scheduled to begin May 16.
Durham’s case against Sussmann, a former partner at the DC office of law firm Perkins Coie, has generated substantial interest in the national press, particularly in pro-Trump circles where some Trump supporters regard it as their last best hope to vindicate Trump’s 2016 election victory as a purely American popular effort, thereby debunking claims that Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 election to hurt Clinton and other Democratic candidates.
Sussmann and his defenders, on the other hand, have defended his actions as both non-criminal and reasonable, particularly in view of what they see as confirmed threats to the elections process posed by Russians, Trump and their allies. Sussmann’s defense lawyers accused Durham, for example, of promoting a “baseless narrative that the Clinton campaign conspired with others to trick the federal government into investigating ties between President Trump and Russia.”
Sussmann’s attorneys also have pointed to evidentiary problems in Durham’s case, including the lack of contemporary notes by the key FBI witness, James Baker, to support the Durham prosecution team's allegation that Sussmann criminally deceived Baker regarding his relevant clients.
The case, in other words, has come to be regarded in some quarters as either a rigorous and fearless application of the law by Durham and his team -- or, conversely, as an example of over-zealous overreach by an unaccountable prosecutor suspected of bringing a baseless prosecution to favor pro-Trump politics.
A consistent theme in the news accounts exploring the Durham investigation is that prosecutor and his team, including Nora R. Dannehy, a former Acting U.S. Attorney in Connecticut and longtime Durham colleague, bring to their work outstanding reputations as career prosecutors long entrusted to fulfill their responsibilities with the highest standards of professional expertise and justice-seeking.
And this is why the 2008 federal court decision, invalidating Durham’s prosecution of Spadoni for prosecutorial misconduct, remains especially relevant today in Durham’s prosecution of Sussmann.
- CNN, Who's who in the Michael Sussmann trial, Marshall Cohen (see below for details)
Here’s the story: New Questions Raised About Prosecutor Who Cleared Bush Officials in U.S. Attorney Firings, which we at the Justice Integrity Project originally reported in 2010 in Nieman Watchdog, a niche website published by Harvard University and edited by Barry Sussman, left, the former Watergate editor of the Washington Post who supervised its coverage of that scandal. Sussman is also the author of the recently released fifth edition of The Great Cover-up, a widely praised account of the Watergate probe.
The Nieman Watchdog story focused primarily on the appointment of Durham and Dannehy as special counsel investigating allegations of CIA and Justice Department misconduct. The story began this way:
"Four days before Nora Dannehy was appointed to investigate the Bush administration’s U.S. attorney firing scandal, a team of lawyers she led was found to have illegally suppressed evidence in a major political corruption case.....[T]his previously unreported fact calls her entire investigation into question as well as that of a similar investigation by her colleague John Durham of DOJ and CIA decision-making involving torture."
The New York-based U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that Durham’s team should have known that the Spadoni defense was entitled to an FBI's agent's notes, which could have been used by Spadoni to argue that his conduct was legal.
The three-judge court ruled unanimously in vacating the major convictions against Spadoni, right. Judges held that the evidence 
unconstitutionally withheld might have helped Spadoni's defense against prosecution claims that he and his employer, Triumph Capital, Inc., illegally conspired to hire a political consultant in hopes of winning a major contract from the State of Connecticut.
U.S. District Judge John Gleeson, left, a former federal prosecutor, authored the opinion, which is available here. It did not name the federal prosecutors at fault but the case caption and relevant filings were signed by Durham and Dannehy as the most senior attorneys.
Follow up correspondence to the courts in 2010 provides a sense of the high stakes and continued rancor. A memo signed by Durham and assistant, William J. Nardini, now a federal judge, urged the courts to sentence Spadoni without delay.
Spadoni's attorney, William M. Sullivan, Jr.., responded this way:
In his Memorandum (“Mem.”), Charles Spadoni presents overwhelming evidence of the government’s continued misconduct in this case—misconduct which the Second Circuit previously recognized when it sternly rebuked the government. Instead of being chastened by the Second Circuit’s opinion, however, the government complains of Mr. Spadoni’s “tone” and of the delay which has taken place in this case—even though responsibility for both lies in its
hands.
Widespread Praise
Durham and Dannehy have achieved widespread praise and career advancement as special prosecutors entrusted with reviewing several of the most sensitive Justice Department controversies of recent years. These include investigations of suppression of evidence, partisan prosecutions or other alleged serious wrongdoing by Justice Department and CIA personnel in major proceedings of historic stature.
That pattern continued after May 2019, when the Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr named Durham, later assisted by Dannehy, to investigate the Trump team’s claims that the FBI and other Justice Department concocted phony claims of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election along with Democratic operatives associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Tabloids, pro-Trump media outlets and some leftist critics of the Democratic Party have labeled the claims of Russian interference "RussiaGate" in many news stories and commentaries that suggest that Russian "interference" is colossal fraud on par with the Nixon-era scandal of the 1972 break-in by GOP and CIA operatives of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC.
Typical of such coverage are editorials by the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, including a headline in February, Eyes turn to Hillary Clinton, not Trump in the Russiagate scandal. A headline last fall was The real ‘collusion’ was the creation of ‘RussiaGate’ out of absolutely nothing. Fox News, pro-Trump Republican officers and many bloggers have similarly advanced arguments that Trump and Russians have been falsely accused.
of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook Medicine (NY) and author / co-author / editor / co-editor of over 35 books. He has been published also on many current affairs news sites. His own political website,
career triathlete (36 seasons, 256 multi-sport races), who is now retired from the sport.
Does vaccination have side-effects? Yes, it does. In most cases, beyond short-duration tenderness and redness at the injection site, are they primarily annoying rather incapacitating? Yes. As an example, I had the "tireds" for about two weeks after I received my second shot last spring. I had them again for a shorter period of time after I received my booster at the beginning of October. (Oh yes. I received the Pfizer vaccine.)
summer by a hearing panel of two members that Sirhan, shown at left soon after his 1968 arrest, be released on parole in accordance with California's standard parole policies. The recommendation would then go to California Gov. Gavin Newsom to approve, deny or let stand.
Sirhan Sirhan at his parole hearing in August. He was convicted for the 1968 murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (Photo by California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation).
9, 2021 (print ed.). Gov. Gavin Newsom will soon decide the fate of Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of killing my father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968. Gov. Newsom has stated he reveres my father and will consider the wishes of my family members. My family, however, is divided; I and two of my nine surviving siblings feel strongly that Sirhan’s release best reflects my father’s legacy.
The assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy appeared to be a cut-and-dried case, with Sirhan Sirhan, who undeniably fired a handgun towards Senator Kennedy, being convicted of murder and remaining in prison ever since. Over the decades, however, overwhelming evidence that RFK's murder was actually committed by a different gunman has emerged.
families, Daniel Ellsberg, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner, David Crosby, Reverend James Lawson Jr., Oliver Stone, Adam Walinsky, James Galbraith, David Talbot, and other public figures. It states:
Soon after President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, President Johnson, above center, appointed the Warren Commission (arrayed around him as they delivered their report in 1964) ostensibly to get to the bottom of who killed Kennedy and why. But the Commission appeared more interested in putting the public’s mind at ease than in finding the truth. Over time, researchers who analyzed the report were stunned by the inaccuracies, important evidence that was ignored, and testimony that was changed.
Named for its chairperson, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, left, the panel could just as easily been called the Dulles Commission after its most active member, former CIA director and Kennedy enemy, Allen Dulles. Kennedy and Dulles, right, had intractable differences, and Kennedy had actually fired him after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Oswald, a lone assassin who fired three bullets from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. But that claim was patently false for many reasons. At that point, Kennedy’s limousine was already more than 150 feet past the building—and still moving away. Also, there were several oak trees and a large road sign in the line of fire.
To protect the lone-assassin narrative, the overriding requirement of which was that only three bullets had been fired, all from behind the President, Warren Commission attorney Arlen Spector made a bizarre claim. He posited that one of these bullets, later dismissively called the “the magic bullet,” somehow passed through Kennedy’s body and zigzagged up and down, and left and right, and ultimately struck Texas Governor John Connally, who was sitting in the front seat. Spector said that the shot caused seven wounds. One problem was that this alleged “magic bullet” was later found on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital in pristine condition. Even Connally insisted until his death that he was struck by a different bullet than any of those that hit JFK. Also, the Warren Commission ignored physical evidence of additional bullet holes observed in the limousine and on the adjacent roadside.
Apparently, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy also believed this. Shown (at left) climbing onto the trunk of the car to retrieve a piece of her husband’s skull, she later told friends she believed that her husband had been ambushed by 
multiple conspirators.
have come forth and told of having seen multiple frontal wounds.
Despite a trove of new research and information emerging over the last 58 years, there are many people who still believe that the central questions—who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and why—remain unanswerable. Others cling to the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone nut” theory proffered by the Warren Commission (shown at left presenting its report to President Lyndon Johnson in September 1964).
Also, the Justice Integrity Project, whose editor was a founding board member of the T&R Committee, will excerpt the reports, beginning with today’s column focusing on JFK: The Real Story.
panel that RFK’s accused assassin, Sirhan B. Sirhan, deserves release under the state’s generally applicable policies for prisoners. Sirhan has been jailed since RFK’s shooting at the Ambassador Hotel shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968 following California's presidential primary the previous day.
New York Times, Biden took time to describe each of the victims of the racist massacre
New York Times, 
Washington Post, 
New York Times, 
New York Times, 
Washington Post, 
Payton Gendron, right, the 18-year-old accused of killing 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo on Saturday, wrote in increasing detail of his plans to murder dozens of Black people in statements posted online over the past five months, according to a compilation of messages by a writer who identified himself as Gendron.
