Government

Fake Attorney General Opines On Fake Michael Sussmann Case... Questions DC 'Jury Of, Uh, You Know, Which, Uh....'

Oh go ahead and say it, it's Fox News.

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Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Speaks On Combatting The Opioid Crisis And Violent Crime

(Photo by Steve Pope/Getty Images)

Matthew Whitaker stormed into our hearts as the entirely illegally appointed Acting Attorney General for a month of the Trump administration on the strength of his college football career. That last part’s only partially a joke — Whitaker previously applied for a judgeship with an 8-paragraph biography half about football and serving as homecoming king — but he had since gone on to entangle himself with a company shut down by the FTC over a multimillion-dollar scam. So MORE than qualified!

He then wrote his autobiography and named it after us, which was sweet of him.

Anyway, he’s back! And appearing on Fox News to explain how Hillary Clinton isn’t going to prison because DC juries are filled with… uh… you know. (Psst. I think he means overwhelmingly Black people.)

After stumbling, he does say they’re “mostly left-leaning jurors” which might be true, but Fox News spends such considerable effort racially coding DC for their viewers that if he never intended to go there when he started mightily scrambling for the right words, he was at least reckless in indulging the audience’s base instincts.

And, not for nothing, he doesn’t seem at a loss for words at any other point in the interview.

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The John Durham investigation remains a fixture of right-wing fever dreams. To conservatives, Durham’s lengthy inquiry into the 2016 election is a deeply thorough investigation always just about to score a breakthrough and put Hillary Clinton in Gitmo. To everyone else, it’s a dragged out, costly boondoggle that dug deep and came up with what amounts to a Biglaw billing code error.

Perkins Coie represented a lot of folks, including a lot of Democrats. Michael Sussmann worked at Perkins Coie and, when he came into possession of some sketchy info about Trump and Russia, told the general counsel of the FBI that he wasn’t handing it over on behalf of any particular client. Though he seems to have billed his time to the Clinton campaign account (which wasn’t billing hourly).

In the above clip, Whitaker echoes a WSJ piece blaming 2016 private citizen Robert Mueller — for some reason — and claiming that an FBI Special Agent could have sniffed out false information. Except the false claim at issue in this case IS NOT the veracity of whatever Sussmann brought in. The extent of the case is one charge about whether or not Sussmann lied about whom he represented at the meeting. If FBI agents are needed to crack that case we’ve got a lot bigger problems in this country.

Which one might assume a former Acting Attorney General would be savvy enough to know, but that’s not really a guarantee here!

Durham’s investigation is notably slip-shod and bringing this sole case after years of spending considerable of the government’s dimes investigating the Clinton campaign is… whatever the opposite of a sign of strength would be.

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As national security journalist Marcy Wheeler notes, “Durham can only BE failed, according to Fox.” As opposed to the fact Durham “didn’t bother investigating Sussmann’s story until 6 months after he indicted.”

Yet Whitaker informs us that this is an “easy case” except for that Obama appointed judge and the aforementioned “jury of, uh, you know, which, uh….”

Indeed.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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