Lying seen as DC norm?
Over the last four years, Special Counsel John Durham has built a compelling case, supported by evidence, that the entire Russia collusion narrative that gripped the country during Donald Trump's presidency was built on falsehoods.
An FBI lawyer, after all, has admitted he misled the FISA court by falsifying a document. Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Party has paid a fine to federal election regulators for falsely disguising payments for Christopher Steele's dossier as legal work rather than opposition research.
Steele's primary source, Igor Danchenko, is charged with lying to the FBI. And before he was indicted, Danchenko told the FBI that Steele misrepresented some of his contributions to the dossier as intelligence when in fact they were based on "just talk" and "hearsay" and "conversation ... with friends over beers."
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified Hillary Clinton personally approved releasing Russia dirt on Trump in 2016 even though they weren't sure it was true.
And FBI supervisors who handled Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann's allegation of a secret Trump communications channel with the Kremlin misled their own agents, falsely claiming the evidence came from the Justice Department when instead it came from a private lawyer.
So when Durham asked a Washington, D.C. jury to convict Sussmann for an alleged lie, he again offered strong evidence.
Documents presented to jurors showed Sussmann texted the FBI's top lawyer he was bringing the allegations of the secret Alfa Bank communication channel to the bureau as a private citizen. But in fact he charged the work to the Clinton campaign.
And in later testimony to Congress, Sussmann gave a different story, claiming he did in fact approach the FBI on behalf of a client. One of the two statements could not be true, prosecutors argued.
In the end, it didn't matter. The case was made against a backdrop of so many prior falsehoods and a growing belief in America that lying has become a norm in politics in Washington.
The forewoman for the jury that acquitted Sussmann said as much in a brief statement to the news media Tuesday afternoon, suggesting it wasn't worth the jurors' time to convict someone for lying to the FBI.
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There appears to be no punishment for the politics of fraud. That is too bad because the Democrats and Hillary Clinton are unlikely to stop.
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