The Patriot Post® · The DC Swamp's Rigged Game of Justice

What a sickening Swamp this is. And what a rigged game of justice.

Special Counsel John Durham is the government’s guy. He’s a straight shooter and a highly esteemed career prosecutor who’s taken some really sensitive political cases over the years. And, as a federal prosecutor, he should be playing on friendly turf now, with a case involving one political campaign’s dirty trick against another. But this is Washington, DC, and the Democrats own the town. And the judges. And the jury pool.

First, let’s hit the backstory. As Margot Cleveland writes in The Federalist: “Last fall, Special Counsel John Durham charged [Clinton campaign lawyer Michael] Sussmann with lying to former FBI General Counsel James Baker when Sussmann met with Baker on September 19, 2016, to provide Baker data and whitepapers purporting to establish a secret communications network between Donald Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank. Prosecutors claim Sussmann told Baker that he was sharing the information on his own, when in fact Sussmann represented both the Clinton campaign and [a tech executive who was working for her campaign, Rodney] Joffe.”

That’s the essence of the “false statement” charge Durham has brought against Sussmann. And, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy opines, Durham has the goods to make this narrow charge stick. “The evidence that Sussmann lied appears strong,” McCarthy writes. “While less strong, the evidence that the lie was material — that it made a difference, which is an essential element the prosecution must prove — is probably sufficient to support a conviction.”

Probably? We’re no legal eagle, but it seems pretty clear to us that if a high-powered DC lawyer specializing in cyber crime told the FBI he had evidence Donald Trump was a Russian agent, but he withheld the fact that he was actually working for the Clinton campaign and not just sharing this info as a concerned citizen, it might be kind of material as to whether the FBI found his claims against Trump credible and therefore grounds upon which to open an investigation of him, and to start spying on him.

In any case, as McCarthy correctly noted, “It is going to be hard for prosecutors to convince 12 Washingtonians to convict a Democratic lawyer who says he was trying to save America from Trump.”

Jury selection in the case took place Monday, and, as the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy points out, the jury pool was largely tainted, which is what one would expect from a jury pool in a town that 90% Democrat. “Many of the members of the broader jury pool, as well as some selected for the jury itself, expressed strong disdain for former President Donald Trump and/or support for Clinton,” Dunleavy wrote. “Most said they hadn’t heard of the Sussmann case until the judge told them about it last week.” What a tribute to our “objective” media.

Then there’s the judge in the case: Christopher Cooper. He’s an Obama-appointed judge with deep ties to the Clintons. How so? Cooper once clerked for Abner Mikva, Bill Clinton’s White House Counsel, and his wife is also a lawyer and has Lisa Page as a client. Page, you’ll recall, was the illicit love interest of FBI lead investigator Peter Strzok, the guy who Robert Mueller was forced to kick off the case because of his outrageous bias against Trump and people who shop at Walmart. None of these conflict-rich relationships were enough for Cooper to recuse himself, though.

Evidence of Cooper’s, ahem, impartiality was on display just yesterday, in fact, when he denied a prosecution request to remove a juror whose daughter plays on the same high school sports team as defendant Michael Sussmann’s daughter. We can’t make this stuff up.

Which brings us to a legendary remark McCarthy shared — a remark once made by notorious DC lawyer Roy Cohn: “Don’t tell me what the law is, tell me who the judge is.”

Good luck, Mr. Durham. You’ll need it.