Trump Demands Pulitzer Prizes Awarded For Russian Collusion Coverage Be ‘Rescinded’ Because He’s Been ‘Exonerated’

Apparently Trumpty Dumpty is having trouble sleeping nights because this is how he greeted the world Sunday morning, with a bizarre request to the committee that awards the Pulitzer prizes, i.e., that the ones awarded in 2018 for investigative reporting into Trump’s connections with Russia be “rescinded,” because John Durham’s two-year long investigation resulted in a sole indictment. Get ready for your mind to spin, this is vintage Trump b.s.

Now class, raise your hands if you believe Donald Trump wrote this letter, I’ll wait. …still waiting….what’s that you say? You could give him a million dollars to define “damning repudiation” and the closest he would come is “repair on a broken dam.” You’re probably right.

I especially like the part about how the recipients are supposed to “voluntarily surrender” their awards, based upon some lame allegation that John Durham’s indictment of Michael Sussman “exonerates” Trump. MSNBC:

Special Counsel John Durham was tasked with investigating the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation. He now appears to have ended his work not with a bang, but with a whimper.

It is hard to see how the case Durham filed on Thursday against Washington lawyer Michael Sussmann meets Justice Department standards. The indictment alleges that Sussmann met with FBI General Counsel Jim Baker in September 2016 to provide information about connections between a Russian bank and the Trump Organization. The FBI was unable to substantiate any links between Alfa Bank and former President Donald Trump’s businesses, but the charge against Sussman — making false statements to the FBI — doesn’t allege that the substance of the information was false. Instead, Sussman is accused of having misrepresented on whose behalf he was providing it.  […]

The case is equally weak on the merits. Although making false statements to an FBI agent is a serious crime, the government must be able to prove each and every element of the offense. Here, at least two of the five elements cannot be met.

First, Sussmann maintains that he did not make the statement. Many defendants deny misconduct, but this time it may work. In most false statement cases, the precise language of the statement at issue is memorialized in some way — the transcript of testimony under oath, a written submission, or a recorded oral statement. If not, the federal agency will usually provide two or more witnesses who personally heard the statement. Here, it appears that the whole case is built on the testimony of one witness, Baker. And in a he said, he said faceoff, the ties goes to the defendant.

In addition, it is not clear that Baker will be a strong — or even willing — witness. In a closed-door meeting with Congress in 2018, Baker testified that he did not recall whether Sussmann had represented himself as working on behalf of the Democratic Party or Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Hardly the star witness needed to convict in the absence of all other evidence.

Even assuming the prosecution can prove that the statement was false, that Sussmann knowingly lied and that the crime is in the FBI’s jurisdiction, it still cannot establish materiality. The materiality element requires a showing that the statement could influence a matter under consideration; not every false statement is a crime, only those that matter. If Sussmann had also bragged to Baker, say, that he runs a six-minute mile, but in fact, he runs a ten-minute mile, that statement might be false, but it would not be material to the matter at issue.

Here, the indictment alleges that Sussmann’s statement that he was not acting on behalf of any client was material because if the FBI had known that Sussmann was providing the information on behalf of the Clinton campaign, it would have treated the information differently. But this allegation is refuted by its own witness. In his 2018 congressional testimony, Baker was asked whether it would have mattered if Sussmann had told him he was there on behalf of the Clinton Campaign. He said it wouldn’t, a devastating admission for Durham’s case.

And here’s what you need to look at: Durham’s motive.

So why would Durham bother to file charges in a case so rife with issues? The date of the indictment carries one clue. It was filed on the last day of the grand jury’s term before the five-year statute of limitations was set to expire on Sept. 19. That this case and a prior case against an FBI lawyer for altering an email are the only charges Durham has filed suggests that this is the closest thing he has found to a crime in his search.

Another clue about why this case is being filed is the amount of detail contained in the 27-page indictment. It discusses the Clinton campaign’s efforts to engage in opposition research on former President Donald Trump, much of it beyond the scope of the very narrow offense with which Sussmann is charged. It may be that Durham is using this indictment as a vehicle to disseminate what he has found to the public so that Trump and his allies can paint a false equivalence between the conduct of the Trump and Clinton campaigns.

Mueller found that the Trump campaign shared polling data with a Russia intelligence officer, met with Russians to obtain dirt on Clinton, and coordinated messaging around the disclosure of stolen email messages. With this indictment, Trump can now say that it was Clinton who brought information to the FBI about links to Russia in the first place and yet again claim the Mueller investigation was a hoax.

Get the shovels ready, we’re about to be mired in manure. This is the set up for the next round of bothsiderism.