Evening Burn // MAY 31 // Vol. 36
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
I hope you all enjoyed your Memorial Day weekend.
Mine was filled with fun (insert sarcasm emoji) staining the backyard deck. I learned a lot about patience during that endeavor and I’m not sure I ever need to stain another deck in my life.
Now on to tonight’s evening burn.
The Special Investigation Into the Special Investigation Turned Up Nada
So this story is a bit in the weeds, but it was a slow news day following a holiday weekend.
A quick recent history lesson.
In 2017, President Trump fired the head of the FBI James Comey because he unprofessionally and improperly handled the disclosure of the reopening of the FBI investigation into candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails when new information came to light.
Before being fired, Comey had been investigating the potential collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russia. Numerous Trump Administration officials and members of the campaign were being called in and asked to give testimony. Trump even infamously told Comey “I hope you can let this go,” referring to the investigation into National Security Advisor Mike Flynn.
Once Trump had fired Comey, a Special Council Investigation was set up with Robert Mueller as Special Counsel. This investigation continued on for nearly two years, completely angering President Trump and Right-wing media. The result in terms of obstruction of Justice for Trump firing Comey was that the Justice Department can’t bring charges against a sitting president (not that he was innocent).
Anyways, while the entire investigation was going on, the Right-Wing media had to find a boogeyman and badguy.
Their solution was to attack the origins of the investigation into the collaboration between the Trump campaign and Russia. They did that through attacking attorney Michael Sussmann who is the one who reported and took thumb drives and white papers of evidence to the FBI documenting communication between Trump’s servers, Russia’s Alpha Bank’s and Russian President Putin’s servers.
Then-President Donald Trump was so happy to find someone else to investigate he had Attorney General Bill Barr launch a special investigation into the origins of the special investigation with Special Counsel John Durham. That investigation actually stretched on longer than Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel Investigation. Remember that next time someone suggests the Mueller Investigation was a waste of taxpayer money.
Well enough with history, we are talking about this today because Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation has led to a single charge of lying to the FBI which was filed against Attorney Michael Sussmann, the guy who brought the evidence of the connection between Trump and Russia forward.
Durham’s charges against Sussmann alleged that Sussmann failed to disclose that he was working on behalf of a client when he brought the evidence forward to the FBI. Sussmann had worked on cases for the Clinton campaign. Sussmann’s lawyers argued that there was no evidence the Clinton campaign authorized Sussman to go to the FBI.
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The jury today found Michael Sussmann not guilty of lying to the FBI. Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation is still ongoing 5 years later. No telling what their lone courtroom defeat will do for the investigation.
Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Hits 100 days
These nightly recaps started out in the midst of the Ukraine war, with major daily developments. Russia’s position in the war quickly weakened and Western assistance aided Ukraine, resulting in a more-prolonged, concentrated war that doesn’t yield the daily headlines.
But it is still day 100, and the people in Ukraine are still being terrorized by Putin’s regime. I wanted to take a moment to pause and make note of the grim milestone that this war has now achieved.
There are two minor updates on the situation in Ukraine:
The E.U. reached a landmark agreement to ban Russian oil imports by the end of the year. This has come at a far too slow of a pace as energy is Russia’s only major economy. However, I will take any progress against the oppressive Putin regime I can get.
A French journalist was killed in Ukraine when a shrapnel bomb exploded near where he was reporting from. The 32 year old journalist was killed when the armored bus he was traveling in what struck by shrapnel from the explosion.
Supreme Court Blocks Texas Law on Social Media Censorship
It appears the Supreme Court can actually block unconstitutional laws coming out of Texas. They won’t stop anti-abortion legislation enforced by vigilantes, but the will stop the Texas law from blocking the Tech companies first amendment rights to control what they have on their platforms.
The 5–4 ruling had odd bedfellows. The majority was handed down from Chief Justice John Roberts, Barrett, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kavanaugh. The dissenters included Kagan, Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas.
This was a big blow to scandal plagued Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton who has vocally argued that social media companies like Facebook and Twitter censor conservative voices. The tech companies argued that their first amendment rights allowed them to block their platforms from distributing content including: hate speech, extremist content and other violent rhetoric.
U.S. Justice Department Will Review Uvalde Shooting’s Police Response
The latest development in the completely botched law enforcement response to the killing of nineteen elementary schoolers is welcomed. The U.S. Justice Department will investigate the failings of the department and why the active shooter was allowed to rampage in classrooms full of children for over an hour.
The goal of the investigation will be to provide an independent account into the law enforcement practices of the day, their shortcomings and how to better prepare first responders in the future.
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