Did a tech firm help the Hillary Clinton spying operation against Donald Trumpalleged by Justice Department special counsel John Durham? Former Neustar executive Rodney Joffe says he’s apolitical, but the same can’t be said of his former colleagues.

Aruna Viswanatha and Byron Tau report in the Journal about the special counsel’s filing in his case against Michael Sussmann:

Many...

Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Did a tech firm help the Hillary Clinton spying operation against Donald Trump alleged by Justice Department special counsel John Durham? Former Neustar executive Rodney Joffe says he’s apolitical, but the same can’t be said of his former colleagues.

Aruna Viswanatha and Byron Tau report in the Journal about the special counsel’s filing in his case against Michael Sussmann :

While a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie, the filing said, Mr. Sussmann represented a tech executive who was working with researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology to examine internet data including from Trump Tower and the White House. Perkins Coie represented the 2016 Clinton campaign at the time, and Mr. Sussmann resigned from the firm after his indictment.
The filing went on to say the tech executive, who isn’t named but is identifiable as Rodney Joffe of the Washington-area tech company Neustar, had access to dedicated Executive Office of the President servers through a “sensitive arrangement,” and used it in order to gather “derogatory information about Donald Trump.” Mr. Joffe hasn’t been accused of any criminal wrongdoing.
Prosecutors said Mr. Sussmann had used that data to back up his assertions to U.S. government officials of suspicious internet traffic between Mr. Trump’s New York City apartment building, the White House and a Russian mobile-phone provider identifiable as YotaPhone. While some independent internet experts have said the traffic appeared odd, others have offered benign technical explanations.
Mr. Sussmann provided the traffic analysis to officials at both the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI. He is charged with lying to the FBI by saying he was passing on the information as a good citizen, rather than as a representative of Mr. Joffe or the Clinton campaign. Mr. Sussmann denies misleading anyone about his role.
Neustar didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Mr. Joffe said: “Mr. Joffe is an apolitical internet security expert with decades of service to the U.S. government who has never worked for a political party.” The spokeswoman said all the data Mr. Joffe accessed and provided were legally acquired, and that researchers were permitted to use the data to assess cybersecurity threats.

Many of Mr. Joffe’s former colleagues were clearly not apolitical. The nonprofit website OpenSecrets.org reports that in the 2020 election cycle, more than 90% of congressional campaign donations from Neustar employees went to Democrats. In 2016, the number was 100%. Yes, in the same year that the events described by the Justice Department special counsel allegedly began, every nickel of Neustar donations to congressional candidates went to Democrats, according to OpenSecrets. What a coincidence!

Are we supposed to believe that this group of partisans had no partisan motive in assessing data that might be used to tarnish Donald Trump? Let’s consider the group at Neustar that was in charge of overseeing the privacy of Internet users, including prominent ones. Becky Burr was a former Clinton administration official hired as the firm’s chief privacy officer in 2012. A Neustar press release announced her hiring and included quotations from Neustar’s CEO and general counsel:

“Becky’s industry savvy, combined with her vast experience in data-technology protection and privacy, will help us to ensure that privacy by design, consumer choice and transparency continue to be the cornerstones of everything we do,” said Lisa Hook, president and CEO, Neustar. “Formalizing the role of Chief Privacy Officer is a further sign of Neustar’s commitment to be at the vanguard of privacy protection. Hiring Becky Burr demonstrates how seriously we take these issues.”
“There is nothing more important to Neustar than protecting customer data and consumer privacy. It is the base on which our entire business is built,” said Scott Blake Harris.

Mr. Harris, now a law partner of Ms. Burr, was an official in both the Obama and Clinton administrations. He has long been a reliable and generous donor to Democrats according to the data posted on OpenSecrets. In 2012 Jason McLure reported in the National Law Journal that after working in the Clinton administration Mr. Harris had returned to private practice. Mr. McLure added:

Still, Harris had kept strong connections to the Democratic Party—his 14-year-old son was an intern for then-Senator Barack Obama, and Harris bundled more than $500,000 in contributions for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. In 2009, despite a background in telecom, he was appointed general counsel of the Department of Energy...

What would politicians do without non-experts?

As for the privacy expert Ms. Burr, she too has a record of generous and consistent support of Democratic candidates and political organizations, according to OpenSecrets. Beneficiaries of her campaign generosity include Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

This brings us to Ms. Hook, who is also no longer with Neustar. She has served both Democratic and Republican administrations but like the Neustar staff as a whole directed her political donations almost entirely to Democrats, according to OpenSecrets. Her donations to Democratic entities exceed $100,000.

In 2016 and 2017, did Neustar employ state-of-the-art privacy practices when serving the White House and when performing analyses related to Donald Trump? The special counsel report suggests the opposite.

Ms. Burr has not responded to this column’s inquiry. She and the other people who ran the company and oversaw its privacy practices have not been charged with any wrongdoing. They are free to share their point of view but what they can’t do is credibly claim that they were apolitical.

***

James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

***

Follow James Freeman on Twitter.

Subscribe to the Best of the Web email.

To suggest items, please email best@wsj.com.

(Lisa Rossi helps compile Best of the Web.)

***