When asked if he would have preferred to hand over the server information to the FBI, Mook replied, “Absolutely not.”
“We didn’t trust them,” Clinton’s campaign manager said of the nation’s top law enforcement agency. “Two or three of probably the most damaging days of the campaign were caused by James Comey, not Donald Trump. … We just didn’t want to have anything to do with the organization at that time.
Mook said he had no knowledge of Clinton approving Sussmann to go to the FBI with the server information on behalf of the campaign.
“I don’t see why she would,” he said.
Mook confirmed that senior campaign officials were aware of Alfa Bank’s “secret server” allegations in the summer and fall of 2016, but said they preferred to turn them over to a reporter.
“Going to the FBI doesn’t seem like a very effective way to get this information out to the public. We do it through the media,” he said.
Mook said after discussions at the highest levels of the campaign, they decided to do just that. He also said that around this time he personally told Clinton and she agreed.
“I also discussed it with Hillary,” Mook said. “She accepted that. … She thought we made the right decision.
Under cross-examination, prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis appeared to suggest that it was reckless or underhanded for the campaign to relay server allegations to a reporter without fully exploring them.
“You didn’t collect the details of the technical aspects of the data yourself?” asked De Filippis.
“No. That was part of the problem: we didn’t have any expertise on the subject,” Mook said. “Part of the point of giving it to a reporter was that they could skim through it more.”
The prosecution’s opening statement to the jury outlines Sussmann’s approach to the FBI as part of a Clinton campaign attempt to create an “October surprise” that could devastate Trump, but Mook said that the campaign didn’t consider the server’s claims to be that hard-hitting.
“That was one of the many pieces of information we had. … Every day Donald Trump would say things about Putin, say things about Russia,” Mook said. “I don’t think we saw it as that silver bullet that was going to wrap up the campaign and determine the outcome.”
However, Mook said the idea of a secret communications channel between Trump and Russia was disturbing, if true.
“We thought it was very suspicious, and if it was anything troubling, we wanted the public to know about it,” Mook said. “It was certainly alarming and suspicious. The problem was that we didn’t know what this data was being exchanged.”
Jurors have already heard testimony that the FBI’s top cyber experts quickly concluded that the alleged evidence of a link between a Trump server and the Russian bank did not establish or even strongly suggest such a link, although the FBI has opened an official investigation into the matter anyway. Prosecutors say the Internet traffic at issue appears to have been caused by a server sending marketing emails.
Mook also testified that during the campaign, opposition research was done through the Clinton campaign law firm, Perkins Coie, where Sussmann worked with the campaign’s general counsel, Marc Elias.
“The opposition research on Donald Trump was really complicated,” said the former campaign leader. “He was incredibly litigious, so there was a lot of work to do around the various lawsuits he filed or had filed against him. …Understanding what was a very opaque network of companies on an international scale was incredibly complex. And so that part of the job was given to Perkins Coie.
However, Mook said he was unaware during the campaign that a private investigation firm called Fusion GPS was researching the opposition to Hillary’s bid through the law firm.
“I wasn’t aware during the campaign of anyone they were hiring to do this job,” Mook said. “I didn’t know they were held.”
Due to a planned trip overseas, Mook appeared as a witness for the defense even though the prosecution is still in the middle of their case. Prosecutors objected to the out-of-sequence testimony, but Judge Chris Cooper said he would allow him to allow Mook on his trip.
Previously, former FBI official Sussmann met to hand over the Alfa Bank allegations in September 2016, then-General Counsel James Baker completed his testimony, which began on Wednesday and ended extended to the entire court session on Thursday.
Defense attorney Sean Berkowitz questioned Baker about various anomalies in the FBI’s handling of the investigation. He noted that an FBI memo formally opening a counterintelligence investigation into the allegations presented by Sussmann, just four days after he did so, said the server information had been passed on by the Justice Department.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Baker said. “I have not received the information from the Ministry of Justice. I got it from Michael.
The defense’s repeated questions about inconsistencies in Baker’s statements and in FBI records appear aimed at generating reasonable doubt among jurors about Baker’s recollections of the September 2016 meeting and the FBI’s overall approach to it. the case.
