A juror in the trial of former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann told the media after he was unanimously acquitted Tuesday that she did not think the case should have been prosecuted because lying to the FBI was not a big deal.
“I don’t think it should have been prosecuted,” she reportedly said, according to Jeff Mordock, White House reporter for the Washington Times. “There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI.”
The case was the most high-profile prosecution undertaken by Special Counsel John H. Durham, who is investigating the origins of the “Russia collusion” conspiracy theory. The trial saw testimony that tied Hillary Clinton directly to the hoax.
Sussmann was widely considered by legal observers to have been proven guilty, given the testimony of FBI agents and a text message that suggested he claimed to be acting as a concerned citizen rather than a Clinton campaign lawyer when he tipped off the agency about supposed collusion between then-candidate Donald Trump and the Russian government via Alfa Bank — a claim that was later debunked.
However, as former White House national security official Kash Patel warned on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM Patriot 125 last week, there could be “jury nullification,” in which the jury simply decided not to convict, regardless of the evidence.
The juror’s attitude hinted at nullification, and contrasted sharply with the approach taken by a federal judge in the same D.C. jurisdiction when it came to former Trump aide Michael Flynn, who was charged with the same crime. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan would not let the case go, even after new evidence emerged that convinced prosecutors to withdraw the charge.
Ultimately, President Trump had to pardon Flynn to extricate him from what observers considered a wrongful prosecution.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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