Trump allies such as former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel have ripped the media, arguing the latest news on Durham’s probe is not getting the same attention as various stories about the former president.
“Virtually every baseless Russian collusion allegation against Trump got printed and aired for 4 years,” Meadows said on Tuesday. “But today there’s a fraction of coverage on actual evidence in a Durham indictment pointing to spying on candidate and President Trump.”
“Since Durham’s filing became public on Friday, NBC, ABC, and CBS have not mentioned it once on their morning or evening newscasts,” added McDaniel.
The latest development in the Durham investigation broke Friday, when Fox News reported that the special counsel had alleged in court that a tech executive “exploited” access to White House data in order to find damning information about Trump.
Durham is prosecuting a case against Michael Sussmann, an attorney who represented a tech executive alluded to in Durham’s filing. Sussman, who once worked on behalf of Democrats and Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 campaign, faces one count of making false statements to the FBI’s general counsel.
He is specifically accused of falsely telling the FBI’s top attorney in a 2016 meeting that he was not representing any client when he presented data that researchers believed could have established a connection between Trump’s business and the Moscow-based Alfa Bank.
On Monday night, lawyers for Sussman argued the information Durham’s office submitted to the court was misleading and unnecessary and could only be intended to stir up media and jury bias against their client.
“Given the Special Counsel’s pattern of including unnecessary prejudicial material in public filings, there can be no doubt that the superfluous ‘Factual Background’ in the Special Counsel’s motion is intended to further politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool,” they wrote in their brief Monday night.