Article by Victoria Taft in PJMedia
The D.C. Swamp – A Place Where Only Leftists Like Sussmann Get a Jury of Their Peers
After the Sussmann verdict, it appears that courtrooms in the Washington, D.C. swamp are where justice goes to die. You can question that assessment, but that’s the way it looks to people right of center. And Tuesday’s acquittal by the federal jury in accused FBI liar Michael Sussmann’s case did nothing to dissuade them.
It seems getting a fair trial in D.C. for people right of center is harder than convincing a 5th Avenue grand dame that, yes, folks outside Manhattan really do need an F-250 pick-up, or an L.A. Mayor understanding why a mother needs a pistol to walk his city streets. They don’t get it because they assume they’re right and you’re a hick, you smelly Walmart shopper, you.
Defendant or prosecutor, it doesn’t matter. If you’re not on the Left’s side, you’re sh*t out of luck in “the District of Corruption,” as one observer put it.
The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution doesn’t actually state that a criminal defendant gets a jury of his “peers” but it does promise an “impartial jury.”
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Michael Sussmann got a jury of his peers in the jurisdiction where he obviously lied to the FBI. But it’s also clear that moderate or right of center — even Constitutional — arguments won’t win the day.
The Roger Stone trial started with a tactical team storming his house in Florida before the sun came up to arrest him and ended with the revelation that one of his Washington, D.C. jurors was a Democrat activist who lied to get on the jury. He wasn’t given a do-over.
Many January 6 protesters have been held in prison for more than a year without a trial for doing less than what Antifa and BLM did when they threatened the White House grounds and burned the so-called President’s Church, sending President Trump and his family to the bunker. Many January 6 defendants have opted for bench trials before judges because they can’t trust the ardently Leftist Washington, D.C. jury pool.
TURLEY: “I mean, he is facing a jury that has three Clinton donors, an AOC donor, and a woman whose daughter is on the same sports team with Sussmann’s daughter. With the exception of randomly selecting people out of the DNC headquarters, you could not come up with a worse jury” pic.twitter.com/RHqen6AMAc
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 26, 2022
As I reported at PJ Media, the D.C. swamp is not a safe space for people on the Right.
Many Jan. 6 protesters still awaiting trial are taking their chances on bench trials with a judge rather than subjecting themselves to a jury pool that overwhelmingly consists of far-left Democrats, federal employees, and members of the swamp where 92.1% voted for the other guy in the last presidential election. Polls of the D.C. population show “that while 80 percent of D.C. residents think defendants will receive a fair trial in the District, 1 in 5 admit that they would have their doubts if they were the ones charged, and 1 in 10 don’t believe trials will be fair.”
And good luck with those D.C. judges. Judge Emmett Sullivan broke ethical canon to accuse Michael Flynn from the bench of treason without a trial. Knowing the odds were against him in D.C., Flynn pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI. But his wasn’t even a criminal case until the same players on the 7th Floor at the Hoover Building pushed it to unfairly snare Flynn in a perjury trap and entangle candidate and President Trump, his staff, and his White House in a made-up FBI morass. Michael Flynn was ruined. Michael Sussmann will land on his feet with a hearty thanks from his DNC paymasters. Maybe they’ll pay his millions in legal bills.
Sussmann was accused in a criminal indictment of lying to the FBI when he said he was bringing his Trump/Alfa-Bank information — which was bogus, by the way — on behalf of himself and not for Hillary Clinton. We found out during the trial that Hillary Clinton herself green-lighted the operation to disseminate the disinformation against Trump in the media with hopes of getting him criminally entangled with the FBI.
As I’ve reported on the pages of PJ Media, a troubling percentage of the jurors were those who’d given money to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and she was a player in the Sussmann case notwithstanding the judge’s admonition that jurors put politics on the shelf for the moment.
One juror gave money to socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and still another later admitted, after being picked for the jury, that her daughter rowed crew with Sussmann’s daughter, though they didn’t really know each other well. All of these people should have been dismissed.
But the judge picked the jury, and lawyers weren’t given many challenges.
The trial was decided in jury selection.https://t.co/cFrkOWHhgg
— Adam Baldwin (@AdamBaldwin) May 27, 2022
And who is the judge? As I wrote for PJ Media early in the trial, Judge Casey Cooper is a political insider and part of Team Democrat through his in-law and family connections.
The groom was Christopher Reid Cooper. “As an undergraduate at Yale,” the Washington Post reported, in an article that referred to the groom as a “well-connected rookie,” “Cooper’s roommate and close friend was John Rice, brother of President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice.”
Cooper, nicknamed “Casey,” wrangled a spot on Obama’s transition team and got a big thank you from the president for his efforts: a judgeship.
Obama named Cooper to the federal bench in 2014. The Senate vote was unanimous, which never happens for a GOP nominated judge, as you undoubtedly know.
His father-in-law William Jeffress, a partner in the law firm for which both Cooper and Amy Jeffress worked, was enthusiastic about Cooper’s new gig. He said that even though Cooper was so young, he was resolute that his son-in-law “can handle it. Casey didn’t come from academia or a corporate boardroom. He came from the trial bar and he will be quite capable.”
The two also successfully defended Saudi Arabian government officials from lawsuits brought by victims of 9/11.
The case with which Durham chose to prosecute Sussmann was pretty much a slam dunk to prove that the former federal prosecutor-turned-Perkins Coie DNC and Hillary Clinton lawyer lied to the FBI. Durham’s team had a harder job of convincing the jury that the FBI believed Sussmann’s lie, that he brought the fake Trump Russia Alfa-Bank information on his own behalf. The jury apparently believed that of course Sussmann was on Team Hillary and the FBI knew it, notwithstanding meeting notes, witnesses, and texts saying otherwise. As Sussmann’s attorney said at trial, it was “tattooed” on his forehead.
Jurors didn’t speak much to reporters after the verdict, but they appear to have instituted jury nullification, which they were advised against in jury instructions but nevertheless have the right to do if they believe a wrong has been committed.
A juror scolded, “I don’t think it should have been prosecuted. There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI.” She continued, “It was the government’s job to prove it and they succeeded in some ways and not in others.”
Juror speaks to some media after Sussmann verdict
— Jeff Mordock (@JeffMordock) May 31, 2022
“I don’t think it should have been prosecuted,” she said of the case. “There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI.”
Paul Sperry of Real Clear Investigations was dumbfounded by Sussmann’s reaction, describing it as a “Through the Looking Glass” moment. “Sussmann just issued [a] statement proclaiming he was ‘falsely accused’ in a case in which he initiated a plot to falsely accuse a presidential nominee of treason and planted the false accusation at the FBI to trigger a false investigation,” tweeted Sperry.
And there’s the lesson.
Through the looking glass: Sussmann just issued statement proclaiming he was "falsely accused" in a case in which he initiated a plot to falsely accuse a presidential nominee of treason and planted the false accusation at the FBI to trigger a false investigation
— Paul Sperry (@PaulSperry30) May 31, 2022
Durham’s job has been to determine who and how, and to assess the damage done to the country, when the Democrats made up the Trump Russia disinformation and seeded it inside America’s institutions such as the FBI, CIA, and media to weaponize them against a duly elected President of the United States. Those Obama-era institutions were only too happy to comply.
Notwithstanding the value of knowing that information, there are a lot of people like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who expected to be disappointed by the Durham effort, saying, “I’ve never understood why anyone had any real expectations from the Durham investigation. It’s been years and no one is ever held accountable and no one goes to jail in spite of clear evidence. Unless you’re a regular person and your taxes pay for all this BS.”
I’ve never understood why anyone had any real expectations from the Durham investigation.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) May 31, 2022
It’s been years and no one is ever held accountable and no one goes to jail in spite of clear evidence.
Unless you’re a regular person, you never get off & your taxes pay for all this BS.
After the verdict, Durham said the usual pap. “While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service,” he deadpanned. And then he thanked investigators and prosecutors “for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice.” Yeah, we’d like to see truth and justice, too.
But Durham’s not done. There’s still the indicted fraudulent “Steele Dossier” sub-source, Igor Danchenko — a man who at one time was investigated as a Russian spy — whom Hillary allies used as a source to tie Trump to Russian spies. Rodney Joffe, the tech executive who helped make up the fake “evidence” of the Trump/Alfa-Bank, is an interesting character in this tale.
Still to be known is why Perkins Coie had such an incredibly cozy relationship with the FBI, which had passkeys and even offices on its premises. Sussmann was considered to be a “Confidential Human Source” for the law enforcement agency and had a cozy relationship with the CIA, too.
We found out some of this information during the trial.
Sussmann had a special FBI badge and access to the FBI and the CIA buildings.
— Svetlana Lokhova (@RealSLokhova) May 31, 2022
Sussmann had security clearance and access GCHQ, British NSA. pic.twitter.com/08WAaL8eUG
As Fox News’s Tucker Carlson exclusively reported on Tuesday, the DNC law firm “had a secret FBI workspace” in its building. There could be many reasons for that, but one may have to do with the DNC “hack.” The cozy relationship could be the reason why FBI Director Comey never investigated the DNC server but took the word of a Perkins Coie friendly, CrowdStrike, that it had been hacked by “the Russians” and acted on their word for it. Wouldn’t you love to know if that was a real hack or part of the larger Russia Collusion disinformation campaign to smear Trump? Do you suppose WikiLeaks ruined that storyline by posting the contents?
When I was a young reporter, I was part of a media panel for the Navy. I’ll never forget what an LA Times reporter told the gathering in answer to a question about using background information and whether she could keep a secret and not report something. Her reply was, “I’d rather know than not know.”
And so it is with me and Durham.
Durham smoked out a bunch of information that will help him tell the story when the time comes, which I’ll report.
I’m looking forward to him smoking out more.
I’d rather know than not know.
