June 1, 2022
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Sussman not guilty verdict not surprising as Trump declares ‘our legal system is corrupt’. After Spygate, who can blame him?
By Robert Romano
Former Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee lawyer Michael Sussmann has been found not guilty by a Washington, D.C.-based jury of making a false statement to former FBI General Counsel James Baker when he stated he was not representing the Clinton campaign when he provided false information to the FBI alleging Trump Tower was communicating with the Moscow-based Alfa Bank in 2016.
Responding to the trial’s outcome on his new social media app, Truth Social, former President Donald Trump declared, “Our Legal System is CORRUPT, our Judges (and Justices!) are highly partisan, compromised or just plain scared, our Borders are OPEN, our Elections are Rigged, Inflation is RAMPANT, gas prices and food costs are ‘through the roof,’ our Military ‘Leadership’ is Woke, our Country is going to HELL, and Michael Sussmann is not guilty. How’s everything else doing? Enjoy your day!!!”
While Trump was clearly disappointed by the outcome of trial, the verdict was not necessarily a surprising outcome.
Special Counsel John Durham had shown evidence at trial that Sussmann had billed the campaign for his time around the meeting with Baker, with a Sept. 19, 2016 bill for “work and communications regarding confidential project.” Sussman’s defense argued that at the time, Sussman was doing all sorts of work around the campaign and that the receipt did not state “FBI meeting” via a memo, calling into question what the bill was actually for.
On the other hand, at trial, District Judge Chris Cooper disallowed additional emails into evidence against Sussmann that might have showed a more concrete link between Sussmann and the researchers working for the campaign as a “joint venture.” Cooper explained: “The Court will exercise its discretion not to engage in the kind of extensive evidentiary analysis that would be required to find that such a joint venture existed, and who may have joined it… While the Special Counsel has proffered some evidence of a collective effort to disseminate the purported link between Trump and Alfa Bank to the press and others, the contours of this venture and its participants are not entirely obvious.”
According to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, those exclusions from evidence hurt the prosecution’s case, writing on Twitter, “The Durham team was hit with limiting court orders and a jury that was hardly ideal. The limitations on this trial only reinforces the need for a Special Counsel report... The judge imposed limitations on the scope of evidence and examinations in the case. Those orders prevent prosecutors from showing more about the development of this false claim and the role of the campaign.”
At trial, former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook had testified in the trial of Michael Sussmann that Hillary Clinton “agreed to” a plan to take unsubstantiated allegations to the press, resulting in pieces by Slate’s Franklin Foer on Oct. 31, 2016, and in the New York Times on Oct. 31, 2016, entitled, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia,” by Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers.
Mook and Sussmann’s former partner at Perkins Coie, Marc Elias, both testified at trial that they were unaware that Sussmann had approached the FBI. Mook said, “Going to the FBI does not seem like an effective way to get information out to the public… You do that through the media, which is why the information was shared with the media.” Elias told jurors he didn’t learn of the meeting until Sussmann was indicted.
Importantly, neither witness contradicted the Sussman defense’s contention that going to the FBI was not a part of the campaign’s efforts. Was that enough reasonable doubt for the jurors? Apparently so.
Especially without the “joint venture” finding from the court that Durham was pushing for to be allowed into evidence, Durham appears to have had an uphill battle showing the campaign was indeed responsible for sending Sussmann to the FBI.
That, even though the Alfa Bank allegations were with the campaign long before Sussmann ever met with the FBI. In 2020, former British spy Christopher Steele, who was similarly hired via Fusion GPS who was hired by Perkins Coie, the Clinton Campaign and the DNC in 2016 to produce Trump-Russia allegations including on Alfa Bank, stated in a defamation trial brought by Alfa Bank that the source of the Alfa Bank allegations as it related to his own reporting was none other than Sussmann.
“I’m very clear is that the first person that ever mentioned the Trump server issue, Alfa server issue, was Mr. Sussmann,” Steele said during the trial of a meeting that occurred on July 29, 2016, months before Sussman had ever went to the FBI. And the Alfa Bank allegations definitely found their way into Steele’s own reports, including an Oct. 11, 2016 report that distributed to the U.S. State Department.
One unfortunate outcome of the trial is a lingering perception, particularly among Republicans and supporters of former President Trump, who watched as a top-secret investigation of the Trump campaign, the opposition party in an election year, was falsely predicated with “evidence” of a conspiracy with Russia provided by Trump’s opponent, the Clinton campaign.
That investigation led directly to the firing of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, the recusal of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the firing of James Comey and then the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2017, who ultimately found no Trump-Russia conspiracy, with the 2019 Mueller report stating, “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” and “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.”
Now, as a result in part, public confidence in America’s justice system has become a partisan issue. A Jan. 2022 poll by Rasmussen Reports found just 46 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the FBI, with 47 percent holding an unfavorable view, down from May 2020, when 60 percent had held a favorable view.
On the partisan side, in January, 57 percent of Republicans said their view of the FBI was unfavorable, a view clearly shared by Trump (after Spygate, who can blame him?) and 60 percent of Democrats said their view of the FBI was favorable. Which is what happens when the Justice Department and the nation’s intelligence agencies become politically weaponized by the incumbent party faction as a means of keeping power, and then upon losing in it in 2016, as a means of reclaiming that power.
Special Counsel Durham might not have been able to convince a federal judge and a jury of Sussmann’s peers that there was corruption at the upper echelons of power in the Democratic Party to frame former President Trump and to have him investigated by the Justice Department for crimes he did not commit, but Republicans across the country were already convinced before the trial even began. They’ve already seen enough.
Hillary Clinton will have many legacies. For her part in the Spygate affair, besides badly damaging U.S.-Russian relations and risking war by falsely accusing former President Trump of being a Russian agent, eroding public trust in America’s law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies looms large, not to mention the incalculable damage that was done to the Presidency itself because of her supporters’ inability to accept she lost. Where it ultimately leads the nation remains to be seen.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
Sussman not guilty verdict reveals unequal justice in the swamp
May 31, 2022, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to the jury’s not guilty verdict of former DNC, Clinton campaign and Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussman:
“Michael Sussman clearly lied to the General Counsel of the FBI when he claimed that he was not acting on behalf of his client — the Hillary Clinton Campaign — in arranging an appointment for him to deliver phony Clinton campaign opposition research to the FBI that falsely alleged that former President Donald Trump was a Russian agent.
“Unfortunately, today’s Washington, D.C.-based federal jury’s verdict serves more as an indictment of the jury itself and the idea that Republicans and Democrats can expect to receive equal treatment in the swamp. According to Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley, the jury included three Clinton donors, an AOC donor and a person whose daughter played on a sports team with Sussman’s kid, and somehow, these jurors were deemed ‘neutral.’
“The only plausible way to end the dominance of left-wing juries in D.C. and Alexandria, Va. is to create a vehicle to move all federal election and politically charged cases outside of the confines of the Washington, D.C. metro area. In the meantime, I don’t know if this finishes any hope of getting to the bottom of the Clinton campaign, DNC, Justice Department combined successful effort in perpetuating the Russian Collusion hoax, what I do know is that those who subverted our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to further their political ends in cahoots with the Clinton team are breathing much easier today than they were yesterday.”
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2022/05/sussman-not-guilty-verdict-reveals-unequal-justice-in-the-swamp/
Charles Lipson: The stench from the Sussmann verdict
By Charles Lipson
Democracies cannot survive without public trust. Citizens must be confident that their elected officials represent their interests, at least in broad terms, and are not corrupt, self-dealing con men. They must believe the courts dispense justice fairly and equally, that there’s not one set of rules for insiders and another for everyone else. They understand that complex societies require bureaucracies and that bureaucracies are inherently non-democratic, but they want the bureaucracies’ rules and procedures to be subject to laws, passed by elected officials, overseen by them, and applied evenly. For transparency, they depend on newspapers and television and, in recent years, on websites and social media.
These essential elements of stable democracy are encompassed by two words: “trust” and “fairness.” For democracies to thrive, citizens must trust the four core elements of their government: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and the bureaucracies which pass and implement most of the day-to-day rules. A crucial element of that trust is the belief that each individual gets a fair shake. That means he won’t be arrested or fined because of the color of his skin or his religion. If he has to go to court, it means he’ll get a fair trial, with an even-handed judge and a jury of his peers. He won’t be pilloried by a biased judge who doesn’t like his politics. His case will be decided by a jury that weighs the evidence without prejudice. The public also has a right to see that trials are handled fairly, without bias.
Every one of those basic tenets was violated in Michael Sussmann’s trial for lying to the FBI. We know now that a Washington, DC jury has found him not guilty, though it is still unclear whether they believed he didn’t lie, or the government didn’t prove it, or it didn’t matter to a politically biased FBI, which was determined to investigate anything connected to Donald Trump. We also know something more: the whole case is drenched in the sulfurous smell of the Washington Swamp.
First, we know Sussmann, a private lawyer for political operatives, had special access to senior FBI officials because he once worked at the Department of Justice and maintained friendships with those officials. He still had a “pass” to get in the building. He could dash off a text message and get a meeting almost immediately with the Bureau’s top lawyer, James Baker. Later, when the FBI circulated Sussmann’s allegations, falsely showing Trump was communicating with the Kremlin, they referred to Sussmann as the “Department of Justice.” Under oath, an FBI official called that a “typo.” Yeah, sure.
Second, there is very powerful evidence that Sussmann deliberately lied to the FBI’s top lawyer. The text message to Baker, asking for the meeting, explicitly said Sussmann was coming as a good citizen and was not representing a client. Baker said Sussmann repeated that claim at the beginning of their meeting. Baker, in turn, communicated that assurance to several FBI officials he met immediately after the Sussmann meeting. But Sussmann was lying. In that meeting, he was representing Hillary Clinton’s campaign and aiding another client, Rodney Joffe, a computer scientist who expected to become Clinton’s cyber czar.
We know Sussmann had a client because he billed the Clinton campaign for the two thumb drives he turned over to the FBI at that meeting. It is clear (but not absolutely certain) that he billed the Clinton campaign for the meeting with Baker. The sliver of doubt is that Sussmann did not specifically list the FBI meeting in billing the campaign for his work that day. He listed only a “confidential” project, which is how he repeatedly billed his work for the Alfa-Bank-Trump fable. We also have his testimony, under oath, to a congressional committee that he was representing a client in that meeting. In short, the evidence he lied is overwhelming.
The evidence that Sussmann’s lie affected their investigation is strong but debatable. Any uncertainty here is crucial since the prosecution not only has to prove Sussmann lied but that his lie affected the Bureau’s work or had the potential to do so. That’s a low standard, but Sussmann’s team says the government didn’t meet it.
The defense makes a devastating point for anybody worried about corrupt law enforcement. They note that the FBI’s cyber experts quickly recognized that the white papers and thumb drives Sussmann gave Baker were garbage. They might fool someone without any cyber expertise but not a real expert. When the FBI learned that Sussmann’s materials were worthless, the Bureau should have immediately ended its investigation based solely on that material. They didn’t. Baker testified that his bosses on the Seventh Floor (FBI director James Comey and his number two, Andrew McCabe) were fired up by Sussmann’s materials and authorized a full-scale investigation of the Trump-Alfa Bank connection. When the Bureau asked the Chicago field office to look into the internet data Sussmann had given them, FBI leaders specifically prohibited the field agents from speaking to anyone who generated the data for Sussmann. The FBI’s approach was fatally biased, corrupt, and partisan — the now-familiar hallmarks of Saint James Comey’s tenure at the Bureau.
Bias like that at the nation’s top law-enforcement agency is noxious for democracy — and it may well have played a crucial role in this trial. Sussmann’s defense tried to persuade the jury that, even if Sussmann lied, it didn’t influence the FBI investigation. Why? Because the Bureau was already so vehemently opposed to Trump that it didn’t need influencing to launch his investigation. The defense’s best case was that the FBI would have launched the investigation anyway and simply used the Sussmann’s threadbare materials as an excuse.
The FBI was undoubtedly biased (and perhaps incompetent) here, but it should have been possible to persuade a fair-minded jury that Sussmann’s lie didn’t have some influence. But was this a fair-minded jury? There is sickening evidence that the presiding federal judge, Christopher Cooper, seated a jury he knew would strongly favor Sussmann, not because they liked Sussmann but because he represented Hillary Clinton and opposed Donald Trump. How did Judge Cooper tilt the scales of justice? By improperly seating three jurors who donated to the very candidate Sussmann was trying to help. Those jurors said they could be fair, but there is no way they should have been seated. Special Counsel John Durham’s team argued they should be excluded for “cause.” Durham was right; Cooper was wrong, and the only way to explain his decision is his own political bias.
This whole case was about a lie that was meant to help Hillary Clinton and hurt Donald Trump. That means there was a partisan political element at the very heart of the case. That would pose an uphill battle for Durham in any case since the trial was held in Washington, DC, where Trump received almost no votes. He is reviled there. Knowing that, the judge should have leaned over backwards to make sure the jury wasn’t overtly partisan. He did the opposite, and that’s unconscionable. He not only seated three donors to Clinton, he seated another who donated to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC may not have been a friend of Hillary’s but she was even more staunchly opposed to Trump. All four of those potential jurors should have been excluded.
The stench surrounding the judge, the defendant, the biased jury, and the FBI ought to outrage the public, no matter who they supported for president. In fact, the public has been kept in the dark throughout the trial because the media refuses to report on it. (Expect them to now shout the “not guilty” verdict from the rooftops because it supports their viewpoint.) When James Baker gave his devastating testimony, all three television networks devoted zero minutes to the trial. The New York Times said nothing. They did the same thing the next day, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager dropped the bombshell in court that Hillary herself authorized the campaign to spread the Alfa-Bank-Trump story to the media. Again, crickets.
That media silence is an outrage all its own. Durham’s team presented evidence of a massive, well-coordinated, and illegal dirty trick, concocted by the Clinton campaign, fed into the FBI, and promulgated by a credulous, partisan media, eager to report that the FBI was “investigating the Trump-Russian connection.” Actually, there were at least two prongs to Hillary’s dirty tricks. The second was the Steele Dossier. As false as the Alfa-Bank story, it, too, was pitched to the FBI, Department of Justice, State Department and, of course, the friendly media. The goal was to smear Trump before the 2016 election and, after his unexpected victory, to prevent him from governing.
Despite Sussmann’s not-guilty verdict, his trial revealed the rank odor of Washington politics. It suffuses our courts, our law enforcement bureaucracy, and the mainstream media. It reeks of insider dealing and extreme partisan bias. That stench should alarm anyone concerned about America’s ability to govern itself democratically. That governance requires trust in our institutions, including confidence our courts can resolve legal issues with fairness and integrity. Who could look at the Sussmann Affair and retain that confidence?
To view online: https://spectatorworld.com/topic/stench-from-the-sussmann-verdict/