Tangle - The Michael Sussmann verdict.

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Last week, Sussmann was found not guilty of lying to the FBI when, in 2016, he passed on a tip intended to raise suspicion about connections between Donald Trump and Russia in the lead-up to the election. Plus, a listener question on inflation and government spending. Plus plus, a little love for Isaac's special Friday edition last week.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Soule, and I hope you had a great weekend. On today's episode, we are going to be talking about the Michael Sussman verdict, which came down last week. It was kind of a nutty week last week, so we didn't get a chance to get to it, but this is a very important story. It's one that we have covered a little bit before, so we're going to jump back into that. Before we do, though, I want to briefly put a quick plug in for Friday's Subscribers Only newsletter titled A Note About My Wife. In Friday's Subscribers Only post, I took a little bit of a

step away from politics and I wrote a newsletter about my wife, Phoebe. We got a ton of positive responses to this. It was like one of the most popular things I think I've ever written. I'm going to read quickly a couple emails I got from readers. One said, in my humble opinion, this is the best email newsletter I think you've ever written and the bar is high. Another person said, ah, your best column ever. This is the best email newsletter I think you've ever written, and the bar is high. Another person said, ah, your best column ever.

Another person said, what a fantastic story. It made me cry and feel proud of your wife without even knowing her. Someone else said, that was beautiful. Thanks for a peek inside your life. It's pieces like this that take Tangle to the next level. And someone said, this is my favorite Friday edition ever. Such a moving piece. Your pride and her tenacity brought tears to my eyes. So yeah, I was not totally expecting all that, but if you are not a subscriber to Tangle, there's my pitch on becoming one. You can go

to readtangle.com slash membership. And if you go to today's newsletter, you can click a link in that newsletter to get to the post that I wrote on Friday that drew all this positive feedback. And you'll just have to, you know, you'll be prompted to subscribe, to log in, whatever. And when you become a paying member of Tangle, it's a huge, huge help to us. It's the whole reason this podcast exists, the newsletter exists. It's how we make 99% of our revenue and employ the staff and Trevor who edits this podcast. So yeah, go do that. Retangled.com slash membership, or just open today's newsletter and click the links to that

story, which I plugged there as well. All right, without further ado, we're going to kick it off with our quick hits for the day. First up, David McCormick conceded Pennsylvania's Republican Senate primary race to Dr. Mehmet Oz, who now faces Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman in the race for Pennsylvania's Senate seat. Number two, the police response at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas was hampered by radio issues, according to new reports. Number three, Abbott Nutrition restarted production on baby formula at its plant in Sturgis, Michigan over the weekend. Number four, Peter Navarro, the former Trump administration aide, was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of contempt of Congress.

Number five, Russia launched airstrikes on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv for the first time in over a month. The breaking news, former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussman found not guilty of lying to the FBI. But despite that acquittal, the trial was revealing. Sussman was acquitted of accusations. He wasn't honest when he gave the Bureau's general counsel a tip was a hoax, just like Trump had always said time and time again. In fact, Hillary and her team cooked up this phony Trump-Russia investigation and laundered it through the federal government. That's a good thing. But what's not a good thing is nobody is facing any real consequences. Last week, Sussman was found not guilty of lying to the FBI when in 2016, he passed on a tip

intended to raise suspicion about connections between Donald Trump and Russia in the lead up to the election. So a quick remind for those of you like me who might need a refresher because these stories get a little complicated. Remember the Trump-Russia investigation? That one was run by special counsel Robert Mueller for two years. That investigation led to a counter-investigation. This one led by John Durham. Durham was appointed by Attorney General William Barr in 2019 to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. In September of 2021, Sussman was indicted by Durham as part of that investigation. So, we have an investigation into the Trump-Russia investigation, and that new investigation produced this indictment of

Michael Sussman. Sussman is a high-profile cybersecurity lawyer who worked for the Clinton campaign and had ties to the Democratic Party. He was accused of lying to former FBI General Counsel James Baker. Sussman had presented the FBI with evidence that a server belonging to the Russia-based Alpha Bank was communicating with the Trump Organization computers. The allegation was dismissed by FBI investigators within weeks and was not part of Mueller's final special counsel report. However, prosecutors charged Sussman not for lying about those allegations, but for lying to the FBI when he told them he was bringing the tip forward out of a civic duty, not in his capacity of working with the Clinton campaign. He was accused of concealing his association with the campaign when he made the tip so the tip would seem more credible. So what happened?

On Tuesday, a jury acquitted Sussman. They said he was not guilty. Throughout the trial, Sussman maintained that he provided the information based on a genuine national security concern despite working with the Clinton campaign on the research into Alpha Bank. Sussman had texted Baker asking to meet, saying he was coming forward with information on his own and not on behalf of any client. Baker did not take notes during their meeting, but briefed two officials afterward. Both of those officials took notes saying Sussman didn't bring the information forward on behalf of a client, but one noted that he had represented Democrats and Hillary Clinton in other work. Conflicting evidence about what FBI officials believed

about the source of Sussman's information was presented during the trial. Under oath, FBI General Counsel Baker testified that he was 100% confident that Sussman had told him he was not providing the information on behalf of any client. But Baker had made conflicting comments in past interviews. Sussman had billed the Clinton campaign for work on the Alpha Bank server allegations on the day that he met with Baker, though the billing did not reference a meeting with Baker, according to the Wall Street Journal. He also billed his law firm, Perkins Coie, for cab rides to and from the FBI, rather

than billing any specific client. Sussman's lawyers argued that it was impossible to know what was discussed in the meeting since Baker didn't take notes and they were the only two participants with conflicting stories. They argued that Sussman didn't attend the meeting on the campaign's behalf and didn't ask the FBI to take any action to benefit the campaign. Sussman's lawyers also elicited testimony from former campaign officials who said Sussman had not been authorized by the campaign to visit the FBI. That's according to the Associated Press. Former President Trump and many of his allies have accused the court of assembling a biased

jury pool in the Washington, D.C. court, which helped lead to Sussman's acquittal. We've covered the Sussman case a few times. There are links to that previous coverage in today's newsletter. And in a moment, you're going to hear some arguments from the left and the right about this case and then my take. Alright, first up, we'll start with what the left is saying. The left said this outcome was predictable, as Durham didn't have strong evidence for his claim. Some accused Durham of concocting a fake conspiracy. Others say this should put an end to the Russiagate allegations. In MSNBC, Barbara McQuaid said everyone but Durham seemed to see this verdict coming.

To show that a statement is false, the government must be able to show that it conflicts with the truth, McQuaid wrote. But Sussman's statement did not involve an objective fact that could be shown to be true or false. But as most jurors understand, it is possible for two things to be true at the same time, that Sussman worked for the law firm that represented the Clinton campaign and that he was going to the FBI on his own. One plausible explanation for this conduct is that as a former Justice Department employee who had come into possession of information about the apparent efforts of a hostile foreign adversary to influence an election, he felt compelled to report it to his former

colleagues at the FBI. The materiality element was also fatally flawed. Materiality means that the statement mattered, that it was capable of influencing the topic under consideration, McQuaid said. First, Sussman's affiliation with the law firm representing the Clinton campaign was already well known, and if FBI agents thought they should discount the information based on this affiliation, they had the information they needed to make that assessment. Indeed, according to the indictment, to make that assessment. Indeed, according to the indictment, notes written by one of Baker's colleagues shortly after the meeting with Sussman said, quote, represents DNC, Clinton Foundation, etc. Second, at a previous meeting with congressional

investigators, Baker had testified that the FBI investigates leads regardless of who provides them. In other words, it did not matter whether Sussman was coming on his own or on behalf of any client. David E. Kendall, a lawyer representing Hillary Clinton, said John Durham tried to generate a Clinton conspiracy bang but ended with a not-guilty verdict whimper. The actual case against Sussman was both narrow and paper-thin from the start. He was charged with lying to the FBI's general counsel in a one-on-one, unrecorded meeting on September 19, 2016, about whom he was speaking for, Kendall wrote. While the alleged lie was simple, straightforward, and could have been explained in two pages, it was encased in 27 pages of dark and inchoate allegations of wrongdoing by a number

of Clintonites. What was the lie? Not that Sussman provided false evidence of Donald Trump's alleged collusion with the Russians, that was neither alleged nor proven. Not that there was a vast conspiracy to falsely besmirch Trump as seeking Russian assistance, that was neither alleged nor proven. Not that there was a successful deception of the FBI. Many witnesses testified they were well aware of Sussman's many Democratic connections and clients. The Durham indictment charged only that Sussman had failed to tell the FBI General Counsel why he was meeting with him. The jury saw through the fog of misdirection and innuendo in the indictment's overstuffed allegations and quickly returned a not guilty verdict, Kendall said.

Despite the setback of the Sussman verdict, it's possible that Durham will ultimately draft a report that does in words what he has so far been unable to do in court, proclaim Trump is a victim and that the allegations of Russian support for him were a hoax of the Democrats or the deep state. Such a report will have all the appeal and credibility of a self-published memoir. Before the verdict came down, Ankh Kordori said Durham has already won. Since Durham's appointment, Kordori said, a clear dynamic has dominated his investigation, namely a palpable desire among right-wing operatives, commentators, and media outlets to use Durham's work, no matter how thin or nebulous the underlying evidence may be,

to try to vindicate the theory that Trump was grievously victimized by the Democratic Party in an effort to defeat him and later hobble his presidency. When it comes to perpetuating that narrative, whether or not the jury ultimately rules in his favor, Durham has effectively already won. If the investigation has revealed anything of note, it is just how secondary the law has come to be in politically charged prosecutions like this one. During the run-up to the 2020 election, both Trump and Barr suggested that Durham would finally unveil dramatic evidence of misconduct within the FBI and the Justice Department during the Obama administration, but nothing of the sort happened, Cardori said. The only conviction that Durham has obtained was from a low-level FBI lawyer who altered an internal email while working on an application to surveil advisor Carter Page. Despite much hype, Durham's prosecutors

were eventually forced to concede that there was no indication that the lawyer's misrepresentation actually affected the investigation, while the sentencing judge said that the lawyer was simply saving himself some work rather than trying to mislead the presiding surveillance court. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right said that even with the acquittal, the case uncovered wrongdoing. Some called out the alleged dirty trick of the Russia collusion story. Others criticized the biased jury and the FBI for its handling of the investigation into Trump. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning.

Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases.

What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the case revealed a lot more about the Russia

collusion dirty trick. The verdict is less important than what we learned about the false Clinton claims about the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia's Alpha Bank, the board said. The story was a concoction from the start, spread to the press by investigators for hire Fusion GPS and Clinton sources. We learned that Hillary Clinton personally approved leaking the false claim to a reporter, and the campaign and Mrs. Clinton then tweeted the press report approvingly. Mr. Baker handed off the claim for FBI agents to investigate, though he withheld from the agents that Mr. Sussman was his source. The agents quickly found the charges weren't credible,

but the Alpha Bank story nonetheless became part of the fog of collusion claims that bedeviled the Trump presidency for more than two years. Mr. Durham isn't finished, and later this year he will bring a separate case that will tell us more about another side of the collusion tale, the Christopher Steele dossier. He has indicted Igor Danchenko, the alleged source of Mr. Steele's information in the dossier, on five counts of lying to the FBI. Mr. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty, the board said. Evidence at that trial should reveal more details about the origins of the dossier smear and the role of the Clinton campaign and the media in spreading it. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was supposed to have investigated all of this long ago,

but he ducked the role of the Clinton campaign. Mr. Durham's task has been to tell us the rest of the dirty tale. In the Washington Examiner, Byron York said juries matter. The jury has the right to decide, but there nevertheless seems no doubt that Sussman lied to the FBI. He even did so in writing, York said. When requesting a meeting with FBI General Counsel James Baker, Sussman texted Baker, Jim, it's Michael Sussman. I have something time-sensitive and sensitive I need to discuss. Do you have any 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.

In fact, Sussman was working for the Clinton campaign. He even billed them for the effort he made to tell the FBI. Even though the case seemed open and shut, Durham knew he was taking a risk in bringing it to trial in Washington, D.C. Why? Because the nation's capital has perhaps the deepest blue jury pool in the United States. In the 2016 election, Clinton won 90.9% of the vote in the district, with Trump receiving a scant 4.1%, York wrote. The Sussman jury reflected that political bent. During the trial, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley noted that the jury has three Clinton donors, an AOC donor, and a woman whose daughter is on the same sports team as

Sussman's daughter, Turley added. With the exception of randomly selecting people out of DNC headquarters, you could not come up with a worse jury. So it was not exactly a shock when the jury found Sussman not guilty. In The Federalist, Margot Cleveland wrote about the nine things we learned from the trial. Among other things, tech executive Rodney Joff pressured an executive at another tech company and a researcher at Georgia Tech to search broadly for data purporting to connect Trump to Russia, Cleveland wrote. Not only was no connection found, but in emails disclosed in the case, Georgia Tech's Manos Anakakis told the others they needed to regroup and rethink their theory, noting hatred of Trump was their motivating factor.

Instead, Jaffe forged ahead, drafting a white paper that hid the fallacies of the theories. Sussman then peddled that data and white paper along with two others to the FBI and later the CIA. Meanwhile, Fusion GPS pushed the Alphabank hoax to the media with the assistance of Georgia Tech's David Dagon, who Fusion GPS connected with reporters to supposedly authenticate the research and the conclusion. Many other players took part in crafting and peddling the Alphabank hoax, but the bottom line proven during the Sussman trial was that Hillary Clinton both paid for and personally okayed her campaign minions giving the press the fake story about a Trump-Russia secret communication network, Cleveland said. Former Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook testified that Clinton personally greenlighted the pushing Alphabank hoax, and Sussman's acquittal cannot erase that fact. Further, given that her campaign team sought Clinton's personal approval to peddle the Alphabank hoax to the media, logically one would expect that Mook,

or others close to Hillary, likewise sought her permission to push other angles of the Russia collusion conspiracy, such as those emanating from the Christopher Steele dossier. Alright, that is it for the left and the right's take, which brings us to my take. So, when I wrote about this case in September, before it went to trial, I said that if the allegations were proven true, it, quote, would show that there were some classic dirty tricks in Washington, D.C. politics at play in the early stages of the investigation into Trump. That such evidence was fed to the FBI by someone on the Clinton campaign's payroll is no small deal, especially when that evidence was later dismissed, but the news of the investigation caused a tidal wave of bad press, end quote. I also said, I don't actually see this indictment turning into a prosecution,

citing McQuaid's previous writing and the limited evidence to prove their case, noting that Durham looked headed to lead with a whimper and not a bang. In other words, I can take a mini victory lap on the fact this outcome basically happened exactly as I, and many others, predicted. In the actual trial, there were two very important competing pieces of evidence brought forward. One was Sussman's text, cited by Byron York above, in which he says explicitly to Jim Baker, I'm coming on my own, not on behalf of a client or company. The other was contemporaneous notes taken by Baker's colleagues, in which they note explicitly that Sussman works for the Clinton campaign. These two pieces of evidence, to me, sum up the story. The FBI knew who Sussman was, and Sussman frames his approach as him performing some kind of civic

duty. Since Baker did not take notes in the meeting and there was no recording, it essentially came down to a he said, she said. And given that Sussman's purported lie would have had no impact on how the FBI handled the information, since they already knew who he was, as evidenced by the notes, the case was always rather thin. We learned a lot about the dirty politics of D.C. and the way unproven allegations can make their way to the press, but a prosecution was always unlikely and Durham ultimately failed. Does that mean that the jury was unbiased or the case was unimportant? Definitely not. Juries matter a great deal, and supporters of the former president are well entitled to their opinion that this may have gone differently in another

jurisdiction. I personally don't think it would have, but these kinds of jury pools are a problem in cases every day in America, not just in political prosecutions in D.C. It's also not a small deal if someone lies to the FBI. That is, after all, what Robert Mueller charged people like Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos for doing. They pleaded guilty rather than going to trial, perhaps knowing the risk they faced in D.C. Durham's investigation is now entering its fourth year. Mueller's investigation lasted less than two. So far, Durham's pegged one lawyer for doctoring an email to continue a surveillance order on the Trump campaign, a crime worthy of prosecution, but hardly the uncovering of a vast, deep conspiracy

to take down Trump that many promised in the beginning. Mostly, Durham has confirmed what we already knew about the way political campaigns manipulate the press and use intelligence agencies to leverage tactical leaks. Is there more? Right now, we've got one more trial coming in which we'll learn a lot more about the Steele dossier's origins. In February, I said Durham was tugging at how deeply connected the Clinton campaign was to the obsessive coverage around the Trump-Russia collusion, but new charges or evidence was needed to make it the political scandal Trump has framed it as. It's not over yet, but I'm becoming increasingly skeptical that Durham is going to unveil that

vast conspiracy Trump bar and others said would be brought to light. In the meantime, we'll be here waiting. All right, next up is Your Questions Answered. This one comes from Steph in Bucks County, PA. Shout out Bucks County. She said, do you have any information about government spending being tied to inflation? Left says no and right says yes, but I can't find anything that seems transparent and honest. First off, hello, Bucks County. Nice to hear from somebody from home where I grew up. At this point, I think it's pretty clear cut government spending made inflation worse. In fact, many liberals close to the Biden administration will now admit as much. Bloomberg just broke a story on Friday that Janet Yellen, the former Fed chair who's now Biden's treasury secretary,

urged Biden to scale back the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. In a biography on Yellen, author Owen Ullman wrote, privately, Yellen agreed with Larry Summers that too much government money was flowing into the economy too quickly. Yellen has disputed that she urged for a smaller package, but she has also conceded that she was wrong about inflation. Paul Krugman, the liberal-oriented New York Times columnist, has also said he was wrong, and this week said inflation was worsened by, quote, an over-large fiscal policy at the start of Biden's presidency and the Fed's failure, which I shared, to recognize the problem early enough, end quote. When I wrote about inflation a few weeks ago, I called out two arguments I

found compelling. One was the fact there was just too much money, which in part was due to the monetary policy necessary to fund the vast increase in government expenditures since March of 2020. And number two was that corporate greed was playing a significant role in the higher prices you were seeing. I think number one is true, and the recent omissions affirm that belief. I got a lot of emails about number two, and I think my position is changing on that a bit. Noah Smith, one of the few economists I trust as a non-economist myself, wrote a very compelling piece that greedflation is not a thing. I trust his opinion more than my own judgment, honestly, so you can go read that piece if you're interested. In short, yes,

I think government spending is making inflation worse. The other debate, I think, is whether not spending what we did would have left us in a worse position than we're in now. All right, that's it for our reader questions, which brings us up to our story that matters. Roughly 96% of the jobs lost during the pandemic are back, but it looks strikingly different according to Axios' Courtney Brown. We have more warehouse workers and fewer waiters, more health store employees but fewer people working in public schools, and more construction workers but fewer mining and logging employees. The economy lost just over 615,000 government positions and 1.3 million leisure and hospitality jobs,

but the professional and business services gained 821,000 jobs, and the transportation and warehousing jobs exploded, adding 709,000 jobs. Ellen Gaske, an economist at PGIM Fixed Income, said there is more opportunity for workers to return to new jobs where the industries are growing and the outlook is potentially brighter. That churning is what offers up a possibility of stronger productivity gains and increased standard of living, end quote. You can read the story from Axios about how the job market has changed in today's newsletter. All right, next up is our numbers section. 99% is the percentage of jobs the private sector has recovered since the pandemic began. The percentage of jobs the public sector has recovered since the

pandemic began is just 58%. The number of jobs added in May, according to the Labor Department, is 390,000. The percentage of Americans who describe the economy as poor or not so good is 83%. The percentage of Americans who said they are satisfied with their financial situation is 35%. The percentage of Americans who said their country is greatly divided when it comes to the most important values is 86%. All right, last but not least, I have a nice day story. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the astonishing results of a small trial are making national news. 18 rectal cancer patients were entered into the trial, all of whom took the same drug, and the cancer vanished in every single patient, undetectable by physical exam, endoscopy, PET scans, or MRI scans.

I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer, Dr. Luis A. Diaz Jr. from Sloan Kettering said. It was a small trial, and the results still need to be replicated while the current patients need to be followed to ensure their cancers don't come back, but the results are very encouraging. The New York Times has the story, and there's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, like I said at the top, if you want to support our work, go to readtangle.com slash membership and become a member. You could also just give us a five-star rating, leave a nice review, or share the podcast with friends. But don't not do anything.

Do one of those things. Become a member, give us a good rating, spread the word about the podcast. All right, everybody. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Peace. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman,

and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. Thanks for watching! crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in

your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.