{"id":1485055,"date":"2022-05-20T07:16:13","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T11:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1485055"},"modified":"2022-05-20T07:16:31","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T11:16:31","slug":"reluctant-witness-devastates-defense-claims-in-special-counsel-criminal-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/reluctant-witness-devastates-defense-claims-in-special-counsel-criminal-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Reluctant Witness Devastates Defense Claims In Special Counsel Criminal Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/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%2Freluctant-witness-devastates-defense-claims-in-special-counsel-criminal-case%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=1485055&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\/durhamexitingcar.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Former FBI General Counsel James Baker felt responsible for dragging his friend Michael Sussmann \u201cinto a maelstrom,\u201d yet remained \u201c100 percent confident\u201d that Sussmann had claimed, when providing Baker the Alfa Bank \u201cintel,\u201d that he was not there \u201con behalf of any particular client.\u201d Baker\u2019s testimony yesterday in <em>United States v. Sussmann <\/em>proved devasting to the former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney both in substance and in circumstance.<\/p>\n<p>The indictment charged Sussmann with violating Section 1001 of the federal criminal code by telling Baker he was passing on the Alfa Bank information as a concerned citizen, not on behalf of any client, when in fact Sussmann represented both the Clinton campaign and tech executive Rodney Joffe. Earlier this week, during opening arguments, Sussmann\u2019s legal team told the jury that prosecutors would be unable to establish what Sussmann actually said to Baker and would fail to prove the alleged lie \u201cmattered.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, Baker proved Sussmann\u2019s high-powered Latham and Watkins\u2019 attorneys wrong when the former FBI general counsel <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/05\/19\/fbi-official-james-baker-testifies-michael-sussman-lied\/\">testified<\/a> he was \u201c100 percent confident\u201d that Sussmann had denied acting \u201con behalf of any particular client\u201d during their September 19, 2016 meeting. \u201cMy memory on this point, sitting here today, is clear,\u201d Baker <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/05\/19\/james-baker-fbi-michael-sussmann-00033963\">told<\/a> the jury.<\/p>\n<p>Sussmann made the comments \u201cpretty close to the beginning of the meeting,\u201d Baker explained, noting it was \u201cpart of his introduction to the meeting.\u201d Sussmann would go on to provide Baker with two thumb drives and several whitepapers, which Baker said Sussmann explained concerned \u201can apparent surreptitious communications channel between Alfa-Bank, which he described as being connected to the Kremlin in Russia, and some part of the Trump Organization in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Besides attesting to his 100 percent confidence level in what Sussmann had said, Baker explained to the jury his apparent earlier equivocation about Sussmann\u2019s representations. When asked by lead prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis about his congressional testimony in which he appeared not to remember Sussmann\u2019s statements, Baker <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AGoudsward\/status\/1527325648574115843\">told<\/a> the jury he had not prepared for questions about his meeting with Sussmann and had not refreshed his memory at the time.<\/p>\n<p>The transcript of his House testimony <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ProfMJCleveland\/status\/1527305275572486145\">confirms<\/a> that the congressional hearing\u2019s focus concerned the Christopher Steele dossier and not Sussmann or the Alfa Bank hoax. Baker\u2019s full testimony reveals he was a witness caught off-guard by a topic and attempting to recall the events while being peppered with questions.<\/p>\n<p>Baker further <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AGoudsward\/status\/1527386010794876928\">testified<\/a> on Thursday that \u201cit wasn\u2019t until Durham\u2019s investigators began \u2018homing in\u2019 on meeting with Sussmann in June 2020 that he thought in detail about what Sussmann said about not having a client.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A jury is likely to find Baker\u2019s explanation believable given Baker\u2019s belated discovery of a text message Sussmann sent to Baker the night before the September 19, 2106 meeting. \u201cI\u2019m coming on my own \u2013 not on behalf of a client or company. [W]ant to help the Bureau,\u201d the text from Sussmann to Baker read.<\/p>\n<p>Baker\u2019s Thursday testimony also helped seal a second substantive point being challenged by Sussmann\u2019s defense: the government\u2019s claim that Sussmann\u2019s alleged lie \u201cmattered.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a matter of law, a lie must \u201cmatter,\u201d or in legalese be \u201cmaterial,\u201d for it to constitute a Section 1001 offense. To be material, the lie must be \u201ccapable of influencing a decision\u201d of the government actor. While Sussmann\u2019s legal team has told the jury that Sussmann\u2019s alleged statement did not matter even if false, in his testimony yesterday, Baker explained several ways in which the lie \u201cinfluenced a decision\u201d of the FBI.<\/p>\n<p>First, Baker testified that he would not have <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AGoudsward\/status\/1527356805457727491\">taken<\/a> the private meeting with Sussmann if he knew Sussmann was working on behalf of the Clinton team. Next, Baker <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AGoudsward\/status\/1527288660416032777\">explained<\/a> he had \u201cvouched\u201d for Sussmann, telling top FBI counterintelligence agents that Sussmann was a serious lawyer \u201cwho could understand the importance and validity of the information,\u201d based on his belief that Sussmann was acting as a concerned citizen. The former FBI general counsel further <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AGoudsward\/status\/1527295822408593408\">explained<\/a> that because Sussmann had brought the information to him supposedly on his own behalf, he treated Sussmann as a sensitive confidential human source and protected his identity from other agents investigating the data.<\/p>\n<p>On cross-examination, Sussmann\u2019s legal team challenged Baker\u2019s testimony and attacked his memory. But the defense is unlikely to leave a mark on Baker\u2019s credibility, and not merely because of Baker\u2019s 100 percent confidence in the substance of his testimony. Rather, it is the circumstances under which Baker testified that render him untouchable.<\/p>\n<p>Baker testified that he considered Sussmann both a friend and a colleague. When asked why he had not previously provided the special counsel with the damning text Sussmann sent him the evening before their September 19, 2016 meeting, Baker <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/05\/18\/marc-elias-clinton-campaign-sussmann-00033404\">told<\/a> the prosecutor (and the jury):<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not out to get Michael. This is not my investigation. This is your investigation. If you ask me a question, I answer it. You asked me to look for something, I go look for it. To the best of my recollection, nobody had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/05\/18\/marc-elias-clinton-campaign-sussmann-00033404\">asked<\/a> me to go look for this material. I had not recalled that he had texted me until I saw this text in March.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Baker\u2019s answer conveyed to the jury much more than an explanation for why he had only recently provided prosecutors with the Sussmann text: His response told the jury he is a reluctant witness, and that reality is much more damaging to the defense than Baker\u2019s assertion of 100 percent confidence in his memory.<\/p>\n<p>The jury is unlikely to forget that point because, in one of the few unforced errors coming from Sussmann\u2019s legal team, defense attorney Sean Berkowitz made the mistake of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/05\/19\/james-baker-fbi-michael-sussmann-00033963\">highlighting<\/a> the fact that Baker is a reluctant witness testifying against his friend.<\/p>\n<p>In cross-examining Baker, who had earlier told the jury that testifying before Congress \u201cwas terrible\u201d and \u201csucked at multiple levels,\u201d Berkowitz asked Baker whether testifying against his friend Sussmann was also a \u201cterrible\u201d experience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is more orderly,\u201d Baker replied, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/05\/19\/james-baker-fbi-michael-sussmann-00033963\">reportedly<\/a> pointing to his chair, \u201cIt\u2019s terrible, but orderly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sussmann\u2019s legal team is unlikely to repeat that mistake today when it finishes its cross-examination of Baker, but the jury is also unlike to forget Baker\u2019s words\u2014and the special counsel is unlikely to let them.<\/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>Former FBI General Counsel James Baker felt responsible for dragging his friend Michael Sussmann \u201cinto a maelstrom,\u201d yet remained \u201c100 percent confident\u201d that Sussmann had claimed, when providing Baker the<\/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-1485055","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\/1485055","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=1485055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485055\/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=1485055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}