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Eric Trump has suggested that his father would have been subjected to "capital punishment" if he was found to have gained access to the servers of the Barack Obama administration, while discussing the recent allegations highlighted by John Durham.

Speaking to Fox News' Sean Hannity, the son of the former president questioned why the media was not making a bigger deal of the claims made by Durham, the special counsel appointed to investigate the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, in court filings submitted on Friday.

Durham alleged that a tech executive for company Neustar had accessed White House servers in order to look at internet traffic from Trump Tower and the White House to uncover "derogatory" information about the former president.

"At what point is it acceptable to break into the servers at the White House? That's the most cherished building in this country that has the most top secrets, everything in this country that runs our government," Eric Trump told Hannity.

"And it's okay just to break into servers? Why, Because you're a Democrat? Can you imagine if my father broke into servers in the Obama administration? It would be capital punishment, Sean."

Eric Trump was referencing the documents filed by Durham that allege that the person named in the legal filings as "Tech Executive-1"believed to be Rodney Joffeused his domain name system (DNS) to find out which computers and servers the White House servers were accessing while looking into supposed links between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank of Russia.

The details were listed by Durham as part of a case brought against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer with links to the Clinton campaign who has been charged with making a false statement to the FBI during a 2016 meeting where he shared information about the Trump Organization and the Russian bank. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty to the allegations.

The filings suggest that Sussmann had obtained that information that a Russian-made smartphone, YotaPhone, had been used from networks serving the White House and Trump Tower from Joffe, a client of his.

"Tech Executive-1's employer, Internet Company-1, had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP [Executive Office of the President] as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP. Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP's DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump," the filing stated.

Fox News had reported the claims as Clinton's presidential campaign paying a technology company to "infiltrate" servers tied to Trump, despite the word "infiltrate" not appearing in the motion.

Trump took the allegations as validation for his cries that the Obama administration had been spying on him during his time in office, even though the claim is now against the Clinton campaign, and that the Russian interference probe was nothing more than a "hoax."

Trump also appeared to suggest that members of Clinton's campaign staff should have been executed over the allegations.

"The latest pleading from Special Counsel Robert [sic] Durham provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia," Trump said in a February 12 statement.

"In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death."

In a Monday statement, Trump speculated that "all hell would break loose and the electric chair would immediately come out of retirement" if the roles were reversed and he got "caught illegally spying"a claim that was echoed by his son Eric on Fox News.

Ohio congressman Jim Jordan also appeared to back Trump's calls for Clinton's aides to face the death sentence over the allegations, telling Fox and Friends that the former president was "right on target" with his remark.

In a statement to The Washington Post, a spokesman for Joffe said: "Contrary to the allegations in this recent filing, 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, and who legally provided access to DNS data obtained from a private client that separately was providing DNS services to the Executive Office of the President (EOP)."

The statement added that Joffe's contract meant he had lawful access to analyze DNS data in order to identify and analyze security breaches or threats.

Read more:
Donald Trump Would Have Been Executed Over Server Access Claims, Son Says - Newsweek