Operatives linked to Clintons surveilled Trump Tower and White House servers in effort to link Trump to Russia: Durham Report

Trump released a statement Friday after Special Counsel John Durham put out a court filing. That filing was reported by Fox News to have said that Clinton campaign lawyers paid a technology firm to "infiltrate" servers that belonged to Trump Tower, which later belonged to the White House, and that this was done for the purpose of establishing an "inference" and "narrative" to link Trump to Russia.

Durham, however, did not say "infiltrate." Kash Patel who previously worked with the Trump administration and was a chief investigator under Devin Nunes on the House Intelligence Committee used the term "infiltrate" in reference to the report.

"Nor the indictment -- against a lawyer who simultaneously worked for the Clinton campaign and for a pro-Clinton tech executive -- nor the new filing say that Trump Tower and White House servers were infiltrated at all," fact checker Lead Stories countered.

The report instead said that Rodney Joffe, a tech executive, used the access he already had to access and share data from these servers. This was not per payment by the Clinton campaign, but on a volunteer basis by Joffe, who did not receive payment for this service.

The former president said that the filing gave "indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign."

"This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution," Trump said in the statement to supporters.

"In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death," Trump suggested in the Saturday press release.

The former president added that he thought reparations ought to be paid to "those in our country who have been damaged" by the Clinton campaign.

In 2019, then Attorney General Bill Barr appointed John Durham to investigate the origins of the FBI's inquiry into Trump's alleged collusion with Russia. The decision was praised by Trump, who said he hoped Durham would "go after" former FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and others in the FBI who colluded as a kind of "deep state" to bring down the president.

Last year, Durham finally initiated action against those who were a part of the conspiracy to bring down the president by charging Democratic-linked lawyer Michael Sussman with one count of lying to the FBI. Sussman was accused of making a false statement by saying he wasn't representing a client in presenting information to the FBI, alleging a "secret communications channel" between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, which is based in Russia.

Durham alleges that Sussman was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign and a tech executive, when he conveyed the allegations to the FBI. Sussman pleaded not guilty to the charge and is due to go on trial later in late spring.

On Friday, Durham's filing focused on the potential conflicts of interests related to Sussman's representation, Fox News reported.

The motion alleges that Sussman billed the Clinton campaign for his work on the "Russia Bank-1 allegations," involving a tech executive, an investigative firm, and several lawyers linked to the Clinton campaign. In the motion, Durham claimed that the executive asked researchers to "mine Internet data to establish 'an inference' and a 'narrative' that would tie Trump to Russia."

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that the Durham report alleged that the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to "infiltrate" servers belonging to Trump Tower and later the White House in an attempt to link Trump to Russia. The article has been updated to say that Fox News said that Kash Patel, formerly of the Trump administration, said that the Durham report alleged that the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to do so. The headline has also been updated.