USA 2020 Elections: Thread

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Donald J Trump won the US 2020 Presidential Election


Sussmann Trial Exposes Dems' Scandal-Industrial Process

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/05/26/the_three-ring_circus_of_todays_political_scandals__147658.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/25/politics/sussmann-durham-rests-case/
https://nypost.com/2022/05/24/fbi-brass-were-fired-up-about-now-debunked-trump-russia-ties-texts-testimony/
https://www.justice.gov/sco/press-release/file/1446386/download

Modern political scandals, like Caesar’s Gaul, are divided into three
parts. The first is the actual malfeasance. That might be taking
bribes, lying to federal agents, leaking classified materials, sexual
misconduct, selling political access, whatever. The second part is the
hyper-partisan involvement of Congress and, often, federal agencies,
all eager to score points for their side. The third part is the
media’s role, which goes beyond bias to include active promotion of
political goals.

Federal agencies, like all bureaucratic institutions, have always
tried to increase their power and preserve their autonomy. What’s
different today is that the bureaucrats, and often their entire
agencies, are frequently partisan players. That’s disheartening but
understandable. One party is clearly the “party of government” and the
party of experts. Most educated professionals, including bureaucrats
and journalists, identify with that party. Filled with partisan “civil
servants,” these agencies routinely tilt investigations (or kill them
outright) to advance political goals – the same ones as their favored
party. For the same reasons, they leak insider information to friendly
media. Predictably, the opposing party tries to score points by
attacking them for doing so.

That brings us to the third element of these scandals: the “friendly
media.” Mainstream outlets are not just biased. They often become
outright partisans when a potential scandal could hurt conservatives
or populists. That bias degrades what was once called “hard news.”
Today, neutral reporting is as antiquated as rotary phones,
conservative Democrats, and liberal Republicans.

The media’s bias, both left and right, is amplified by the
fragmentation of the digital landscape. That fragmentation encourages
each outlet to appeal to its self-selected audience and avoid
alienating them with uncomfortable information.

The trial of Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann illustrates how
modern scandals have devolved into this dismal three-ring circus. Last
Thursday, the FBI’s former general counsel, James Baker, testified at
length that his old friend Sussmann had requested an urgent private
meeting and provided the bureau damning, confidential information.
Sussmann claimed he did so solely “as a good citizen,” not on behalf
of any client. Sussmann made the same claim in a text message to Baker
the night before. Baker testified that he was “100% confident”
Sussmann had repeated his disclaimer at the beginning of their
meeting. (Before Special Counsel John Durham’s team concluded their
case on Wednesday, they showed the jury that Sussmann had actually
billed the Clinton campaign for that meeting.) Baker’s testimony was
especially powerful because he was clearly reluctant to provide it.

The papers and thumb drives Sussmann gave Baker were designed to show
that Donald Trump was secretly communicating with a Kremlin-connected
European bank. The implication was that this back-channel
communication was part of Vladimir Putin’s effort to elect Trump, a
line the Clinton campaign eagerly promoted. Baker testified he was
alarmed by the prospect, which is why he immediately briefed his
bosses, including FBI Director James Comey. Baker gave the materials
Sussmann had provided to the bureau’s cyber experts, who quickly
discovered it was rubbish. Their conclusion: Trump was not secretly
communicating with Russia’s Alfa Bank.

Baker’s testimony was followed, on Friday, by that of Clinton campaign
manager Robby Mook. Mook casually (perhaps inadvertently) dropped a
bombshell. Hillary Clinton, he said, had personally approved sharing
the Trump-Alfa Bank story with the press. Mook said the campaign
wasn’t sure if the story was true but figured the press would look
into it. Hillary agreed and approved spreading the false story.

But Mook cannot be right when he says “the campaign” didn’t know if
the Alfa Bank story was true. Mook may not have known, but others in
the campaign surely did since they were the ones who created the false
story. They expended campaign funds to generate that dishonest
“inference and narrative” about Trump and Alfa Bank from internet
data, knowing it would fool only naïve FBI agents and reporters. Real
cyber experts could – and did – disprove the “inference” almost
immediately.

The Alfa Bank tale wasn’t the Clinton campaign’s only dirty trick.
They also commissioned the now-disproven Steele dossier and
aggressively shopped it to the FBI, Department of Justice, State
Department, and, of course, the press.

Both the Alfa Bank story and the Steele dossier had the same goals:
Smear Donald Trump, generate media reports that the “FBI is
investigating,” and distract the media from Hillary’s own problems
with her private email server and the classified documents it
contained. The obvious goal before November 2016 was to prevent
Trump’s election. That’s why Sussmann wanted the late October meeting
with Baker so urgently. After Trump was elected, the new goal was to
hamstring his presidency by tying him up in investigations. That is
presumably why Sussmann later met with the CIA and gave them the same
Alfa bank story, plus another fable about secret Russian mobile phones
that were always near Trump. Again, pure garbage, based on
cherry-picked data and quickly shown to be worthless.

The Sussmann trial indicates how the media and federal agencies play
into the Democrats’ scandal-industrial process. Take Mook’s testimony
last Friday. It was a huge story because, for the first time, a
Clinton insider directly tied Hillary to the smear campaign. That
campaign was the biggest political dirty trick in modern American
politics, one the media had actively promoted. Yet, when the bombshell
exploded, the mainstream media went silent, both about the news and
about their own culpability. On Friday, when the news broke, ABC, CBS,
NBC, CNN, and MSNBC did not mention the Mook bombshell or even the
Sussmann trial. Not a peep. Saturday’s New York Times was equally
silent. The Washington Post did cover the story but buried the lede –
Hillary Clinton’s direct involvement – well down in their report. A
Post national correspondent actually ran an “analysis” piece entitled
“Again: There’s No Evidence Hillary Clinton Triggered the Russian
Probe.”

Robert Mueller’s prolonged investigation as Special Counsel missed
this whole massive scandal. When Mueller testified before Congress, he
was asked about Fusion GPS, a central player in Clinton’s smear
campaign, and the Special Counsel said he’d never even heard of the
firm.

What about the FBI? How did it treat Sussmann’s information about
Trump and Alfa Bank? General Counsel Baker testified that he
immediately informed the bureau’s top officials, noting Sussmann’s
assurance that he had no client. Although the Alfa Bank story was
quickly disproven, that didn’t stop the bureau’s relentless
investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia. Two days after Sussmann gave
the FBI his (false) information, the head of the bureau’s
counter-intelligence division texted a colleague, “People of the 7th
floor to include Director are fired up about this server.” They were
so fired up they refused to let agents know Sussmann’s name, referred
to him (dishonestly) as the “Department of Justice,” and refused to
let agents interview the authors of the cyber data given to Baker.

The FBI handled the Steele dossier the same way they handled
Sussmann’s material – a mixture of incompetence and malign intent,
trampling over administrative safeguards and legal rules in an effort
to ensnare Donald Trump. Even though the FBI couldn’t verify the
dossier’s salacious allegations, it used them to impale the
president-elect. Comey briefed Trump on the worst allegations and then
secretly told the press that the FBI was investigating them. Over the
next month, the bureau conducted lengthy interviews with Steele’s
principle source (Igor Danchenko, now indicted himself) and learned
the dossier’s allegations were based on bar talk and rumors, as told
by a Brookings Institution researcher, not Kremlin insiders. That
didn’t stop – or even slow – the government’s pursuit of Trump, and
its use of this discredited material.

The falsity of the Alfa Bank connection and Steele dossier – and the
FBI’s knowledge of their falsity – did not stop the bureau from spying
on Trump associates for purported “Russian connections.” That
surveillance didn’t stop even after field agents said their
investigation turned up no evidence and should be closed. Instead,
Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, personally kept the investigation
open. Since the spying required FISA warrants (from the court
overseeing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), the FBI omitted
or doctored exculpatory information to renew their authorization. Yet
another subversion of justice.

The full scope of this multi-pronged scandal is finally emerging after
five years of administrative misconduct, media coverups, partisan
reporting, and pervasive deceit by Washington insiders. What is still
submerged is any accountability. The media is still burying the story
and its own role in promoting those lies. Nobody has returned their
dubious Pulitzer Prizes. Senior officials in Comey’s FBI have never
been held to account. Congressmen, led by California Democrat Adam
Schiff, who continued the smear and leaked their closed-door inquiries
to the press, still appear on the Sunday talk shows. Hillary Clinton,
who sat atop the conspiracy, was given a quick “all clear” by the FBI
on her server and has not been targeted for federal investigation in
the subsequent scandals. That Mook’s testimony surprised Durham’s
prosecutors indicates they never bothered to probe Hillary’s
involvement before the grand jury.

The Sussmann trial, like all modern political scandals, is part of a
three-ring circus, showcasing sleazy political enablers, malfeasance
by public officials, and biased reporting. In this circus of deceit,
the public has to walk behind the elephants with a huge shovel.