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https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/11/one-key-argument-for-michael-sussmanns-defense-has-crumbled-already/

COLLUSION

''One Key Argument For Michael Sussmann’s Defense Has Already Crumbled''

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND @PROFMJCLEVELAND APRIL 11, 2022 7 MIN READ

Michael Sussmann’s text message dispatches one of the strongest defenses pushed by his cohorts in the court of public opinion.

ormer Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann’s defenders have already been proven wrong on their claim that prosecutors will have a hard time proving Sussmann told the FBI that he was sharing Alfa Bank “intel” on his own, and not on behalf of a client.

Shortly after Special Counsel John Durham charged Sussmann with making a false statement to former FBI General Counsel James Baker when he provided Baker with data and three “white papers” purporting to establish a secret communication channel between the Trump organization and the Russia-based Alfa Bank, Sussmann’s friends, former colleagues, and political bedfellows launched a defense of the former Clinton campaign attorney.

Predictably, The Brookings Institute, which served as ground zero for the Russia collusion hoax, provided cover to Sussmann on its Lawfare blog. Chief collusion conspiracy theorist Benjamin Wittes penned a veritable defense brief. Wittes, who acknowledged in his article that “Baker is a personal friend and former colleague at Brookings and Lawfare,” attacked both Durham and the indictment.

Durham’s 27-page speaking indictment is “one of the very weakest federal criminal indictments I have ever seen in more than 25 years covering federal investigations and prosecutions,” Wittes proclaimed, asserting “the evidence that Sussmann lied at all is weak.”

“As a preliminary matter, the indictment by its terms concedes that the entire case—notwithstanding its many pages of narrative of the conduct of the Clinton campaign and its agents—hinges on the testimony of a single witness: the former FBI general counsel, Jim Baker,” Witte wrote. “This concession appears on page 18 of the indictment, which describes the Sept. 19, 2016, meeting between Sussmann and Baker at FBI Headquarters where the supposed lie happened. The indictment notably includes the fact that ‘[n]o one else attended the meeting.’”

Wittes then ticks off the prosecution’s three pieces of evidence that Sussmann told Baker he was not acting on behalf of any client, calling it “thin gruel,” with the gruel getting “a lot thinner when one looks at each of these pieces of evidence in any detail.”

First, there will be Baker’s testimony that Sussmann told Baker he was not acting on behalf of any client, Wittes notes. But Wittes claims Baker will be an unconvincing witness, because in his congressional testimony in October 2018, “Baker repeatedly disclaims specific memory of whether Sussmann identified his clients.” “It is hard for me to understand how a criminal case against Sussmann can proceed in the face of this testimony,” Wittes wrote.

Sussmann’s friend then downplays the “contemporaneous notes of Bill Priestap,” a higher up at the time in the FBI. Those notes, which Priestap penned after Baker relayed his conversation with Sussmann to his colleague, read “said not doing this for any client.” The note seems to corroborate Baker’s memory, Wittes acknowledges, before discounting it as hearsay. (Hearsay or not, the note will likely be admissible.)

Durham’s third piece of evidence concerns Sussmann supposedly repeating the lie to the CIA in January, but that “doesn’t cleanly corroborate the allegation that Sussmann lied to Baker,” Wittes concludes.

While Wittes’ Lawfare piece presented the most comprehensive defense of Sussmann, his fellow Russia collusion hoaxers also pushed the “it will be impossible to prove Sussmann lied to Baker” theme. In an op-ed for MSNBC, “Russia, Russia, Russia” queen Barbara McQuade called the case “weak on the merits,” claiming the special counsel could not prove Sussmann made the false statement.

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“Sussmann maintains that he did not make the statement,” McQuade wrote, before repeating Wittes’ point that “it appears that the whole case is built on the testimony of one witness, Baker.” Like Wittes, McQuade stressed Baker will be a weak witness given his prior testimony. She also discounted Priestap’s corroborating notes as hearsay.

The Washington Post likewise critiqued the special counsel’s case, arguing that “even if the charge is legally sound, proving it will be a huge challenge.” “The alleged false statement was not written down or recorded. There were no witnesses other than the FBI attorney,” the Post wrote. And “given the nature of human language and memory, it’s almost impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt precisely what was said during a portion of a single conversation five years ago,” the article announced.

The New York Times also worked to counter the special counsel’s criminal case by citing Sussmann’s defense lawyers, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth. According to the Times’ piece, Sussmann’s legal team “have denied the accusation, insisting that he did not say he had no client and maintaining that the evidence against him is weak.”

The Times’ Russian-hoaxer team of Savage and Goldman continued: “The case against Mr. Sussmann turns on Mr. Baker’s recollection that Mr. Sussmann told him he was not at the meeting on behalf of any client—which Mr. Sussmann denies saying. There were no witnesses to their conversation.”

Sussmann’s lawyers went further in a statement released after the indictment, with NPR and others reporting the Latham and Watkins attorneys’ claim that the special counsel “is bringing a false statement charge based on an oral statement allegedly made five years ago to a single witness that is unrecorded and unobserved by anyone else.”

For all the ink spilled over the “you can’t prove Sussmann said he was not representing a client” defense of the former Clinton campaign attorney, 42 words dissolve that narrative: “Jim—it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. Do you have availability for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own—not on behalf of a client or company—want to help the Bureau. Thanks.”

Last week, the special counsel’s office revealed Sussmann sent that text to Baker at 7:24 p.m. on the night before the meeting at which Sussmann handed the Alfa Bank material to the then-FBI general counsel. Just like that, the thin gruel seems more like cement.

Of course, it will be for a jury to decide whether Sussmann lied to Baker and is guilty of the offense charged, but Sussmann’s text message dispatches one of the strongest defenses pushed by his cohorts in the court of public opinion, which raises an intriguing question: Why is this text only becoming known now?

It isn’t as if Durham’s team went light on the details, either in the indictment or follow-up legal filings. And from comments they made to the press, Sussmann’s attorneys seemed unaware that prosecutors possessed the text message—which would be bizarre if the special counsel’s office knew of the text before dropping the indictment. After all, the special counsel would want to show Sussmann the strongest evidence it had of the alleged crime, to push him to enter a plea deal and cooperate with prosecutors.

Together these facts suggest that neither the special counsel’s office nor Sussmann’s legal team knew this damning text existed prior to the indictment. How, then, was the text discovered?

One possible explanation is that the text was recovered from one of Baker’s two cellphones the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General had secreted from the special counsel’s office until January 2022. But those phones were “FBI cellphones,” and according to Durham’s filing, the text was sent to Baker’s personal cell phone.

So, maybe instead the special counsel’s office somehow just recently obtained access to Baker’s personal cell phone or texts sent to that phone. If so, why the delay? Was someone keeping this evidence on the sly? Or did Baker possibly forward the Sussmann text from his personal cell phone to one of his FBI cellphones, and thus the text was on the phones the OIG had long possessed? If so, that raises even more questions.

The mysterious case of the appearing text will have to wait for another day. For now, though, we know that, contrary to the Russia-collusion hoaxers’ claim, the special counsel has ample evidence that Sussmann told Baker he was not working on behalf of a client, striking down one of the two main defenses touted by Sussmann’s backers. With a decision by the court on Sussmann’s motion to dismiss imminent, the second attack of the indictment—that the lie was not material—will likely crumble soon too.

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https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/11/one-key-argument-for-michael-sussmanns-defense-has-crumbled-already/

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent.

She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children.

Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

https://twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1513492899408846855

Revisiting Russian hoaxers defense of Sussmann that ran right after indictment dropped proved quite interesting: They all thought Durham's case rested on Baker's testimony–including Sussmann's attorneys = Mysterious Case of The Appearing Text. @FDRLST

8:23 AM · Apr 11, 2022·Twitter Web App

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https://twitter.com/marcusgilmer/status/1044604107997237249

And here is Germany literally laughing at Trump after he says the country could become totally dependent on Russian energy

11:06 AM · Sep 25, 2018·Twitter for iPhone

>>16054149

>was Baker's phone subpoenaed?

>or did he volunteer?

https://twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1513511156824035332

The "mystery" though is that the Durham's team said that the OIG gave them Baker's FBI cellphones in January and in revealing the text said the message was sent to Baker's personal cell phone. ''My "gut": Baker forwarded it to his FBI number so he could schedule a time & 1/''

9:35 AM · Apr 11, 2022·Twitter Web App

2/ that it was on Baker's FBI cell phone because Baker forwarded it there. I'd assume Baker's FBI cell phone had his calendar on it & would be easier to schedule that way. And then when OIG turned over Baker's FBI cell phones Durham discovered. That's my theory. BUT

9:37 AM · Apr 11, 2022·Twitter Web App

3/3 No matter how Durham belatedly discovered the text (and I'm 99% they did not know before the indictment), something smells b/c it means someone had it and hadn't handed it over.

9:38 AM · Apr 11, 2022·Twitter Web App

https://twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1513511930010472453

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>>16054167

>Not laughing now, are they?

''Need a twitter embed plz''

>>16054234

http://www.jimstoneindia.com/.zz7.html

>>16054361

>klute?

The Debasement of our Professional and Political Classes

amgreatness.com/2022/04/10/the-debasement-of-our-professional-and-political-classes

''Leftist professionals in politics, government, and private enterprise debased themselves for short-term political gain, or in furor at their bogeyman Trump, or in anger at the unwashed. ''

By Victor Davis Hanson April 10, 2022

The left-wing professional and political classes bequeathed a number of new protocols during the Trump derangement years. And it will be interesting to watch whether the Republicans abide by them in November should they take back the House and perhaps the Senate

—and the presidency in 2024 as well.

Will they follow the New Testament’s turn-the-other-cheek forbearance, or go for Old Testament style eye-for-an-eye retribution?

''What Are the New Rules?''

Will Republican magnanimity suffice to shame the Democrats to be more professional in the future? Or will tit-for-tat deterrent reciprocity alone ensure a return to norms? Specifically, will Biden be impeached Trump-style, after losing the House in November? Say, to give just one possible example, for deliberately not enforcing and, indeed, undermining U.S. immigration law?

Will Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in Pelosi-fashion, start yanking troublesome radical Democrats off House committees?

Will a conservative Robert Mueller-like “wise man” head a $40 million, 22 month-long special counsel investigation of the Biden-family influence-selling syndicate—arrayed with a “dream-team,” “all-star,” and “hunter-killer” right-wing lawyers to ferret out “Big Guy” and “Mr. Ten Percent” quid pro quo profiteering?

Would a Republican-led House set up a special committee to investigate the racketeering and “conspiracies” across state lines that led to a near “coup” and “insurrection” marked by “the riots of 2020?” Would such watchdogs offer up criminal referrals for all those responsible for attacking a federal courthouse and torching a police precinct or for setting an historic church afire? Or causing $2 billion of damage, over 30 deaths, and 1,500 law enforcement officer injuries—while carving out illegal no-go zones in major downtowns?

Given the need for “accountability,” the “threats to democracy,” and a need for “transparency,” would another congressional committee investigate the Afghanistan fiasco of summer 2021? Will it learn who was lying about the disaster—Joe Biden or the Joint Chiefs—and how and why such a travesty occurred?

Would a rebooted January 6 committee reconvene under new auspices—with Democratic members limited to those selected by a new Speaker McCarthy—to revisit the lethal shooting of Ashli Babbitt, to review thousands of hours of released surveillance video, to subpoena all email communications between the previous congressional leadership and the Capitol police, to demand the lists of all the FBI informants in the crowd, and to interrogate the sadistic jailers and overzealous prosecutors who have created America’s first class of political prisoners subjected to punishment without trial? Such a multifaceted legal inquiry would eat up most of Biden’s final two years in office. As accomplished leakers, Republicans then would also supply “bombshells” and “walls or closing in” special news alerts on cable TV, the fuel of supposedly “imminent” and “impending” indictments, based on special counsel leaks to conservative media.

Following the Democratic cue, should the Republican-majority Senate consider ending the “disruptive” and “anti-democratic” filibuster? Should there be a national voting law rammed through Congress, overriding state protocols, and demanding that all national election balloting must require a photo ID?

Will Speaker McCarthy, Pelosi-style, in furor at more of Joe Biden’s chronic lies, tear up the president’s State of the Union address on national television?

A Permanently Politicized Bureaucracy?

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>>16054577

''A Permanently Politicized Bureaucracy?''

Will the new Washington apparat likewise adhere to the Democratic Party’s new precedents?

Perhaps a newly appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs can reassure a Republican majority that its primary mission is not battle readiness

—and certainly not climate change or “white rage”

— but rather ferreting out service personnel with known ties to radical groups like BLM or Antifa or other “subversive” and “racist” organizations?

Will a conservative Lois Lerner emerge from the IRS shadows to start slow-walking nonprofit-status applications from left-wing organizations on the eve of a presidential election?

Will the FBI become a Republican retrieval service to hunt down and keep inert embarrassing lost laptops, diaries, and hard drives of absent-minded conservative grandees?

In the middle of a campaign, will the CIA Director believe it is his duty to inform the senior Republican leaders in the Senate that he has good “information” that leftists are intriguing with foreign governments to warp the election?

''The Lettered Classes ''

And what of our corporate and professional classes?

Should conservative zillionaires pool their resources and, Zuckerberg-style, select key precincts in the next general election, hire armies of activists, and then absorb and supersede the work of state or county registrars? Only that way, could they ensure the “right” people vote and their “correct” ballots were accurately counted?

Should conservatives start rounding up “professionals,” “scientists,” and “scholars” to express their superior morality and erudition in pursuit of political agendas?

Certainly, a recent trend has been a spate of letters of “conscience” and “statements of concern” signed by revolving-door government, academic, and corporate grandees who pose as disinterested experts to mold public opinion.

When we read such letters of principle

—characterized by shared and collective outrage by assorted professionals, replete with letters and/or titles after their name

—beware!

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>>16054592

Do we remember the recent “stellar” cast of Nobel-Prize winning and near-Nobel laureates who admonished us that Biden’s massive deficit spending programs would never lead to inflation?

In circular fashion, Biden solicited and then cited this “blue-chip” group of experts led by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz warned the hoi polloi not to worry about printing trillions of dollars at the very moment pent-up demand from the COVID lockdowns was surging, when for millions the government kept issuing checks that made staying home more lucrative than working, when interest rates were at near zero, and when the national debt was cresting at $30 trillion.

The distinguished economists promised us that if we just followed the Biden lead, then inflation would actually decrease. Or as they put it, “Because this agenda invests in long-term economic capacity and will enhance the ability of more Americans to participate productively in the economy, it will ease longer-term inflationary pressure.” [emphasis added].

As inflation nears or exceeds eight percent per annum, will they write an apology or instead issue yet another letter assuring us that inflation is easing?

Do we remember the 50 “former intelligence officials” letter writers rounded up by former National Intelligence and CIA Directors James Clapper and John Brennan? (The latter two previously had confessed to lying under oath to Congress.) Yet just two weeks before the 2020 election, these revered “professionals” assured us that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not just fake but likely Russian disinformation.

Or as the shameful 50 put it in their sorta, kinda conspiratorial style, “. . . our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.” The guidance of Brennan and Clapper alone—apart from the clear evidence that the laptop was Hunter’s—should have made all Americans “deeply suspicious” that the Biden campaign “played a significant role in this case.”

Do we remember “the over 1,000 health professionals” who in 2020 signed a letter of conscience, assuring us that:

. . . we wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to public health, including the epidemic response. We believe that the way forward is not to suppress protests in the name of public health but to respond to protesters demands in the name of public health, thereby addressing multiple public health crises.

So, in “follow the science fashion” we were told not just that some violations of strict masking, quarantines, and lockdowns were more equal than others, but that flagrantly ignoring health mandates entirely was, in Orwellian fashion, actually good for the health of the exempt.

Do we remember the 27 Lancet “scientists” who signed the now infamous letter reassuring us the Wuhan lab played no role in the origins in COVID? Do we also recall that all but one of these progressive humanitarians failed to disclose that they themselves had connections with Wuhan?

Leftist professionals in politics, government, and private enterprise debased themselves for short-term political gain, or in furor at their bogeyman Trump, or in anger at the unwashed. They have now set precedents, which if embraced by conservatives and applied to the Left, would be called unethical at best and fascistic at worst.

In the end, all the warped grandees accomplished was to further discredit the entire notion that those with high salaries, prestigious degrees, impressive titles, and insidious influence are somehow less likely to lie, connive, cheat, and conspire than those whom they libel and attack.

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https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/10/the-debasement-of-our-professional-and-political-classes/

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McConnell: If I’m Majority Leader in the Senate, McCarthy the Speaker — ‘We’ll Make Sure Joe Biden Is a Moderate’

breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/10/mcconnell-if-im-majority-leader-in-the-senate-mccarthy-the-speaker-well-make-sure-joe-biden-is-a-moderate

April 10, 2022

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that Republicans would “make sure Joe Biden is a moderate” if they retake Congress in the midterm elections.

Anchor Dana Perino said, “I want to ask about the midterms next anyway. You have a great way of transitioning, sir. Inflation, gas, and groceries. this is on everybody’s mind. What would be different for Americans if Republicans win back the majorities in the House and Senate this year?”

McConnell said, “Well, our agenda next year, if we are fortunate enough to be in the majority, will be focused on exactly what you and I have been talking about. Crime, education, beefing up the defense of our country. The president’s request for the Defense Department, this year’s request, doesn’t even keep up with inflation. We’ve got a war going on in Ukraine. We’ve got big power competition with the Russians and the Chinese. We need to meet the demands of the international situation. So all of those will be on our agenda.”

He added, “We will not have the presidency for two more years. Obviously, we will have to work with the administration to see what we can agree on, but … let me put it this way. Biden ran as a moderate. If I’m the majority leader in the Senate and Kevin McCarthy is the speaker of the House, we’ll make sure Joe Biden is a moderate.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

https://twitter.com/America1Scotty/status/1513069058853416962

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