Is Rodney Joffe Next?

Over the last few weeks commentators have suggested Rodney Joffe is next on the chopping block for John Durham. Here, I will lay out why I don’t think any action against him is likely to come soon. 

One of the first data points we have suggests that Durham did not begin looking into David Dagon and the others until early 2020. 

As noted below, the reference is to conversations going back “several months ago” as of June 2020. 

It remains unknown precisely where Durham picked up the lead, although we learned during the Sussmann trial that David Dagon was outed as the author (or at least was represented to the FBI as such) of the fake Alfa-Trump allegations whitepaper by October 2016.

David Dagon, Manos Antonakakis and others refused to cooperate with John Durham until they were sent grand jury subpoenas in 2021. Dagon was then given immunity in July of 2021. 

While Durham was certainly sending out inquiries perhaps for over a year, I would argue July 2021 would serve as a starting point for developing substantive information on Rodney Joffe. 

This is where the challenge for Durham and his skeleton staff becomes immense. 

Joffe is known to have ties to the FBI, DHS, DOD and Obama administration. I further suspect that he has ties to NSA and CIA officials. 

He has numerous business entities, including ties to one with a registration in Panama. Joffe is also known to have been in contact with Fusion GPS and the Clinton campaign. 

He has numerous business contracts throughout the federal government. He also appears to be a significant figure in the Ops-Trust community, one where vetted executives of business entities and government unilaterally decide to share data and threat information. 

An investigation into Joffe therefore involves obtaining records through all of those contacts, contracts and connections. This immediately throws up a litany of privilege issues, including over what appears to be an extensive amount of communications directly with President Obama. 

With the indictment of Sussmann, Danchenko and anything else Durham has been doing over the last 11 months, I doubt he has been able to run everything to ground on Joffe. 

What is he likely to be charged for? 

It has been over five years since much of what we know about Joffe occurred. This limits the potential charges to Major Fraud under 18 U.S. Code § 1031 or a conspiracy charge. The underlying predicate offense to the conspiracy could be a multitude of charges.

Major fraud would come into play in relation to the DARPA contract awarded under what appears to be the “Rhamnousia” project. 

In talking with some of the brilliant legal minds of Sleuth’s Corner, it appears no personal gain needs to be proven. This is important.

The contract under a 18 U.S. Code § 1031 charge just needs to exceed $1,000,000, and the Rhamnousia contract is well over that. If Joffe used any data purchased through the Rhamnousia contract as the basis of any work towards the fake Trump-Alfa server allegations, he is at high risk of being prosecuted under this charge. Government resources were not intended to be used for political smear campaigns. 

Much of the potential charge comes down to whether Durham concurs with the work done by the CIA which concluded the DNS lookups were not “technically plausible” and were “user created.” 

This jives with the findings of the Ankura report, which suggested the work of a malicious actor. Moreover, given the ease with which FBI agents debunked the allegations as credible, it leads one to ask how a world-renowned DNS expert could not realize the data was incomplete, or did not support the narrative he was pushing. 

The fact that Joffe as a CHS attempted so vigorously to shove the allegations into the FBI, while not going to his handler may be suggestive of an ill-natured intention. 

Emails previously noted by Durham noted their analysis of the data being good enough to fool non-DNS experts, and to support an inference of a communications server being plausible to please “VIPs.” 

That the DNS lookups ended as they gave the allegations to the FBI could suggest a concern amongst conspirators that with the FBI looking, they couldn’t continue to report DNS lookups (as the FBI would obviously be unable to see them). 

Moreover, just around the time Joffe and Sussmann wanted to take the allegations to the CIA and knowing the FBI had concluded their investigation into the matter, the “pings” started again. This is suggestive that Joffe may have known or had a role in the manipulation of the DNS lookups.

Rodney Joffe’s potential criminal liability is not limited to the fake Alfa-Trump server allegations. We posed questions in a prior write-up that need to be answered. 

All of this to say, there is a mountain of leads that need to be run down related to Joffe. Based on Joffe’s role assisting the Fusion GPS/TDIP-Daniel Jones-Senate investigation into the fake Alfa server allegations, I suspect there is likely an overt act in 2018 that would give Durham at least another year to file a conspiracy charge. Major fraud has a 7 year statute of limitations and the Rhamnousia contract was effected in November 2016, likely giving Durham runway until late 2023 under that avenue. Durham might use every minute under the statute of limitations before bringing criminal charges.  

That opens up the possibility of other players at Fusion GPS, Orbis, or the FBI being indicted first.