[PJ Media] On opening day of week two of the Michael Sussmann trial about "Trump Russia Collusion," we found out that when it comes to remembering a domestic threat to the national security of the United States — supposedly from a person who could become the President — the guy who used to run the FBI Counterintelligence department has a really, really bad memory.The Special Counsel prosecution team put former FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap on the stand to ask him about the Alfa-Bank hoax. This was a smear of Donald Trump by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that used bogus data to tie Trump to the Kremlin in order to entice law enforcement into opening an investigation before the 2016 election. Prosecutors called it an "October Surprise."
Priestap left the bureau after a 21-year career to found a security company called "Trenchcoat Advisors" in 2019, the same year the Inspector General issued his report naming the former high-level FBI man as the person who green-lighted all other investigations into Trump-Russia Collusion.
In trial testimony, Priestap produced notes from a meeting with the former FBI General Counsel, James Baker. The notes confirmed that Sussmann, a former DOJ prosecutor, did not bring the bogus information to the FBI on behalf of his clients, Hillary Clinton or the DNC, or the cybersecurity executive who produced the data. Rather, he did it because he was a concerned American and not because he was paid to do so by Hillary’s campaign. That’s important because prosecutors contend that Sussmann lied to the FBI about this material point in bringing that data to them.
Priestap didn’t remember much and seemed cagey about the Alfa-Bank debacle. He didn’t remember details of the Alfa-Bank investigation, nor meeting with reporters about it, nor thinking that the Chicago FBI field office assigned to the investigation needed to know about the provenance of the dirt. That information was kept from line officers investigating the case.