How the right embraced the false claim that Hillary Clinton ‘spied’ on President Donald Trump

On Feb. 7, former Trump administration aide Kash Patel aired an interview with his former boss on Epoch Times TV. Former president Donald Trump predicted there would be “a lot coming” from special counsel John Durham and that Durham would “fully expose” Democratic efforts to tie his campaign to Russia.

“All of the things they said about me and Russia — it was them and Russia,” Trump said. “It was them and Russia, they worked with Russia.”

Four days later, in a filing that appeared in electronic federal court records shortly before midnight, Durham made new claims about the case that exploded across right-leaning media during the weekend.

Coincidentally or not, the filing highlighted something that Patel knew in great detail — a February 2017 meeting between the CIA and former prosecutor Michael Sussmann, who is in Durham’s crosshairs. Patel in 2017 was a Republican Hill aide charged with investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. During a 2017 interview with Sussman, Patel indicated he knew about Sussmann’s meeting with the CIA and questioned him closely about it.