{"id":1466715,"date":"2022-05-06T14:14:35","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T18:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1466715"},"modified":"2022-05-06T14:14:43","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T18:14:43","slug":"clinton-lawyer-michael-sussmanns-latest-defense-strategy-litigate-trump-russia-collusion-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/clinton-lawyer-michael-sussmanns-latest-defense-strategy-litigate-trump-russia-collusion-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinton Lawyer Michael Sussmann\u2019s Latest Defense Strategy: Litigate Trump-Russia Collusion Lies"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fclinton-lawyer-michael-sussmanns-latest-defense-strategy-litigate-trump-russia-collusion-lies%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1466715&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/35440055840_b5b5afd4a0_k.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>With trial set to begin in just over a week in a Washington D.C. federal court in the criminal case against Michael Sussmann, the former Clinton campaign attorney has revealed his defense strategy: put Donald Trump on trial for colluding with Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Given the heavily slanted anti-Trump jury pool living in the district, it is no surprise that Sussmann\u2019s defense team would seek to play on the Orange-Man-Bad sentiments likely living loudly in the eventual jurors. But a court filing from late yesterday reveals that Sussmann\u2019s lawyers hope to make Trump and his supposed Russia affiliations a focus of the trial.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Sussmann and Special Counsel John Durham\u2019s legal teams filed their respective <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/05\/06\/clinton-lawyer-michael-sussmanns-latest-defense-strategy-litigate-trump-russia-collusion-lies\/courtlistener.com\/docket\/60390583\/united-states-v-sussmann\/\">objections<\/a> to each other\u2019s proposed trial exhibits. The Special Counsel\u2019s office objected to three categories of exhibits Sussmann appears poised to present to the jury, including: (1) emails related to Sussmann\u2019s work on cyber issues for the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign; (2) notes taken by an FBI agent concerning his investigation of the Alfa Bank allegations and notes taken during a March 6, 2017 briefing by the FBI for the Department of Justice on various Trump-related investigations; and (3) a series of more than twenty news articles about Trump and Russia, which prosecutors listed in a table for the court.<\/p>\n<p>The Special Counsel acknowledged there may be some relevance to the first two categories of trial exhibits, but prosecutors argued that Sussmann must nonetheless establish the documents do not constitute inadmissible hearsay. The third category of supposed evidence in the form of news articles, however, has \u201cno evidentiary or factual basis,\u201d according to Durham\u2019s team.<\/p>\n<p>Those articles, the Special Counsel noted in its court filing, \u201cappear to relate to (i) the DNC hack, and\/or (ii) Donald Trump\u2019s purported illicit ties to Russia.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cNews articles regarding such matters are not themselves probative of the charged conduct in any way,\u201d Durham explained. And \u201cpermitting the defense to admit the above-listed series of news articles would amount to the ultimate \u2018mini-trial\u2019 \u2013 of the very sort that will distract and confuse the jury without offering probative evidence,\u201d the Special Counsel stressed in objecting to the admission of the twenty-some articles that date from May 14, 2016, to August 15, 2016.<\/p>\n<p>The Special Counsel did not specify what that \u201cmini-trial\u201d would consist of, but a quick skim of the article titles makes clear Sussmann\u2019s goal is to put Trump on trial for colluding with Russia.<\/p>\n<p>From the first article, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/donald-trump-goes-his-own-way-with-vladimir-putin-1463172396?mod=trending_now_\">Election 2016: Trump Goes His Own Way with Putin\u2014Warm words and push to improve ties with Moscow aren\u2019t shared by Obama, GOP rivals<\/a>\u201c, and onward, the media coverage Sussmann seeks to present to the jury consists of a <em>tour de force <\/em>of the press pushing the Russia collusion hoax. And as with the Alfa Bank hoax that Sussmann and Fusion GPS peddled to the press, much of the coverage Sussmann seeks to rely upon seems to find its roots in efforts by the Clinton campaign to seed the Trump-Russia story with friendly media.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, The Time\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/4433880\/donald-trump-ties-to-russia\/\">article<\/a> Sussmann seeks to admit as evidence, entitled, \u201cDonald Trump\u2019s Man, Many, Many, Many Ties to Russia,\u201d quotes Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. Mook, of course, launched the entire Russia-collusion hoax live on CNN on the convention floor to distract from news that the DNC had worked to sabotage Bernie Sanders\u2019 campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Time Magazine\u2019s coverage also relied on reporting by the Slate\u2019s Franklin Foer. Emails since made public reveal Foer worked hand-in-glove with Fusion GPS to frame Trump as a Russian operative, with Foer eventually \u201cbreaking\u201d the Alfa Bank story shortly before the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>The Washington Post\u2019s similarly titled article, \u201cHere\u2019s what we know about Donald Trump and his ties to Russia,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/heres-what-we-know-about-donald-trump-and-his-ties-to-russia\/2016\/07\/29\/1268b5ec-54e7-11e6-88eb-7dda4e2f2aec_story.html\">pushed<\/a> another pre-election conspiracy theory, implying that the Trump-connected Felix Sater was Russian mafia. To the contrary, since unsealed <a href=\"https:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/felix-sater-skullduggery-190009579.html\">documents<\/a> show Sater served as a vital asset to our intelligence community.<\/p>\n<p>Sussmann nonetheless seeks to admit these and other articles at his trial, and his legal team will surely argue they are admissible because they will establish his concern over the Alfa Bank data and whitepapers was genuine. But, as Durham argues, the articles should nonetheless be excluded because of the \u201cunfair prejudice\u201d that will result.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnfair prejudice,\u201d as the Special Counsel notes, results if there is \u201can undue tendency to suggest [making a] decision on an improper basis, commonly, though not necessarily, an emotional one.\u201d Said otherwise, \u201cevidence is unfairly prejudicial \u2018if it appeals to the jury\u2019s sympathies, arouses its sense of horror, provokes its instinct to punish, or otherwise may cause a jury to base its decision on something other than the established propositions in the case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Or, divorced from its legalese, prosecutors are complaining that Sussmann seeks to present to the jury \u201cevidence\u201d that Trump colluded with Russia so jurors will let Sussmann off scot-free. That the Clinton campaign pushed much of that other Russia-collusion coverage matters not to Sussmann because he knows it will be equally irrelevant to an anti-Trump jury.<\/p>\n<p>But it should matter to the judge because Trump is not on trial and the visceral hatred of Trump and Putin \u2014 especially now with Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine \u2014 make the articles framing Trump as a Russian stooge unfairly prejudicial to the prosecution.<\/p>\n<p>So, watch for the court to exclude those exhibits, while allowing Sussmann to nonetheless argue he approached the FBI out of a genuine concern for our national security. And don\u2019t be surprised if the D.C. jury buys it.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Margot Cleveland is The Federalist&#8217;s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. <\/p>\n<p>Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize\u2014the law school\u2019s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. <\/p>\n<p>As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With trial set to begin in just over a week in a Washington D.C. federal court in the criminal case against Michael Sussmann, the former Clinton campaign attorney has revealed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1466715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1466715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1466715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1466715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1466715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}