ROGER SIMON: Sussmann Jury Nullification Marks the End of American Justice as We Knew It.
American justice isn’t only dead, it’s decomposed. Long live totalitarianism!
We can join the world now. Au revoir, American Exceptionalism. We are China. We are Putin’s Russia. We are the European Union, drifting ever more swiftly into Davos globalism and the Great Reset. We are the Ayatollah’s Iran. We are Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and then some.
Most of all, goodbye to the rule of law. Was it ever there? I seem to have vague memories.
The jurors in John Durham’s trial of attorney Michael Sussmann—which resulted in the Clinton campaign lawyer’s acquittal—will be remembered, by those allowed to remember, if any, as the moment our already decaying justice system went completely south.
The D.C. jurors, revealed in the voir dire to have been completely biased in the first place, demonstrated that the English language itself—and the evidence available therein—was of no interest to them. They not only nullified a possible verdict, but they also nullified English by ignoring the email that Sussmann wrote then FBI attorney (now Twitter stalwart) James Baker the night before their meeting.
“I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. I’m coming on my own—not on behalf of a client or company—want to help the Bureau.”
Baker testified that Sussmann told him the same thing in person, yet billing records, and much subsequent activity, clearly show that Sussmann was lying. He was working for Hillary Clinton via the Perkins Coie law firm. Several years of ugly U.S. history flowed from that.
Did the jury care? Evidently not. Their decision was close to immediate.
Earlier: The stench from the Sussmann verdict. “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.”