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Who is Susan Hennessey? Joe Biden's DoJ hire deleted tweets backing Trump-Russia collusion charges

Hennessey, who worked as a CNN legal analyst, has been slammed as one of the most 'deranged Russiagate conspiracists' by journalist Glenn Greenwald

Susan Hennessey, who has joined the justice department in the Joe Biden presidency, erased tens of thousands of tweets since November last year, including many that alleged that former president Donald Trump and his campaign had colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. On Monday, May 10, Hennessey announced that she would be joining Biden’s justice department as part of its National Security Division. On Twitter, she said: “I’m very honored to be joining the extraordinary team at the Department of Justice in the National Security Division. Thank you for all the kind words.” She also said that although she will continue to have her Twitter account, it will be quieter. 

According to a report in Fox News, Hennessey has “scrubbed” her social media account where she had several controversial posts, including those alleging the Trump-Russia collusion. It said she has been deleting tweets since Biden won last year’s presidential election. From 39,000 posts on November 16, she had less than 6,000 on November 29. In late January, the count went up to almost 8,000 but it went down to below 2,300 in late February. According to Social Blade, Hennessey’s account saw the deletion of more than 1,800 tweets over the last one month, making it less than 250 posts on Monday.

Who is Susan Hennessey?

Born in 1985, Hennessey is a Brookings Fellow in National Security Law and worked as an attorney in the Office of General Counsel of the National Security Agency, as per Lawfare, a blog which is devoted to national security issues. She has graduated from Harvard Law School at the University of California. She has also been CNN’s legal analyst and one of the most vocal critics of the former Trump administration. Hennessey has appeared on several programs and talk shows during her career and is married and has two daughters. 

In 2019, Hennessey had tweeted defending Virginia’s Democratic Governor Ralph Northam over his remarks that parents should be allowed to take medical help for a “third-trimester” abortion after an infant is born alive if it is “non-viable” or might suffer from “deformities”. “Northam is clear in his comments that he is discussing a situation in which an infant is born but unable to survive and parents and physicians together decide whether to continue or remove life-preserving efforts,” Hennessey wrote, adding: “Which is not at all what the right is claiming he said.”

Hennessey has backed Trump-Russia collusion theory

Last year, Hennessey asked her followers on Twitter what “concrete steps” they would take to see that Trump is not re-elected in the 2020 presidential election and slammed conservative journalist Molly Hemingway on Twitter after the latter accused her and her colleagues “of perpetrating the Russia collusion hoax”. 

“Mollie, there was no Russia collusion hoax,” Hennessey had said then. “The IG found a properly predicated investigation.” She also said: “Mueller found a systematic plot by Russia to interfere in the US election, and that the president was aware of and sought to benefit from Russias assistance while lying to the public.”

“I recognize that's inconvenient for you. I recognize that you think if you yell and wave your hands and lie enough times people will believe you. Maybe some people will. But it won’t change the facts of what occurred,” she said.

Hennessey had tweeted several times about the Russia probe. She once tweeted about the Republicans and right-wing media slamming a classified memo that deliberately detailed misconduct related to the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign for a possible collusion with Moscow. In another tweet from June 2017, she asserted “concrete allegation of Trump team collusion”.

Hennessey had also attacked Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in the past for promoting his book on Fox & Friends and falsely claiming that he didn’t do interviews with other networks, calling it a “bad look”. In January last year, Hennessey earned the Twitterati’s ire after blaming escalation between the US and Iran over the shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane that killed many. In November last year, Hennessey claimed that former transportation secretary Elaine Chao used her government position to “personally enrich” herself, husband Mitch McConnell and their family.

'Hennessey one of the most deranged Russiagate conspiracists'

Journalist Glenn Greenwald slammed Hennessey for removing her tweets. Greenwald, a co-founder of The Intercept, said: “Because [Hennessey] was one of the most deranged Russiagate conspiracists of the last 4 years, she wisely deleted all her tweets at some point before this announcement. But you can still read her attempt to elevate the Steele Dossier here.” His reference was to the previous piece by Hennessey on the debunked Steele dossier, also called the Trump-Russia dossier.