Briefly Noted: John Durham Rides Again; Tucker And The Trans Religion

PLEASE NOTE: THIS DURHAM STORY APPEARS TO BE A YEAR OLD. I’M LEAVING THIS AS IS WHILE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT JOHN SOLOMON IS UP TO.

Just the News is running with an article based on John Durham’s latest court filing. Durham is preparing for the trial of Clintonista lawyer Michael Sussmann. The filing is a pre-trial motion that asks the court to approve the use of certain evidence at the trial. The idea is for the court to rule on objections to the evidence before the trial. The possible objections all revolve around the Hearsay Evidence rule, which has many exceptions that can be quite technical. I don’t want to get into those aspects, because the basic concept here is fairly straightforward.

Recall, Sussmann has been charged with one count of making a false statement to the federal government—the FBI. The false statement is that he told the FBI that when he presented the Alfa Bank Hoax to the FBI he was acting on his own, not acting for any client.

Durham wants to present evidence that might, on its face, appear to be hearsay:

A statement made out of court that is offered in court as evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.

In the motion, which is 48 pages long, Durham lists all the evidence and argues that it is not hearsay, in that it is not being offered to prove the truth of the statements themselves. Rather, they will be used to prove that Sussmann was part of a joint venture or conspiracy, and that the other parties to that joint venture were in a client relationship with him. Thus, he lied to the FBI by claiming that he was not acting on behalf of a client.

"As an initial matter, the Government expects that the evidence at trial will show that beginning in late July/early August 2016, the defendant, Tech Executive-1, and agents of the Clinton Campaign were 'acting in concert toward a common goal,' ... namely, the goal of assembling and disseminating the Russian Bank-1 allegations and other derogatory information about Trump and his associates to the media and the U.S. government," Durham's team said.

"The evidence of a joint venture or conspiracy will establish," according to the prosecutors, "that in November 2016, soon after the Presidential election, Tech Executive-1 emailed a colleague, stating, "I was tentatively offered the top [cybersecurity] job by the Democrats when it looked like they'd win.'"

"In sum," the special counsel concludes, "the above evidence, public information, and expected testimony clearly establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant and Tech Executive-1 worked in concert with each other and with agents of the Clinton Campaign to research and disseminate the Russian Bank-1 allegations."

So, Durham will not use the described evidence to prove that the contents of that evidence are themselves true, but to show the existence of the joint venture, with Sussmann acting on behalf of that joint venture when he told his lie to the FBI.

Now, here’s an important caveat. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Durham to charge Hillary on a conspiracy count of some sort. Pp. 12-13 explain very clearly that there is no allegation here of a criminal conspiracy—the case against Sussmann remains a simple one count false statement case:

Importantly, although Rule 801(d)(2)(E) refers to “conspiracy” and “co-conspirators,” the D.C. Circuit has expressly held that “the doctrine is not limited to unlawful combinations.” ... “Rather, the rule, based on concepts of agency and partnership law and applicable in both civil and criminal trials, ‘embodies the long-standing doctrine that when two or more individuals are acting in concert toward a common goal, the out of-court statements of one are . . . admissible against the others, if made in furtherance of the common goal.’” …, the D.C. Circuit has also explained that “[Rule 801(d)(2)(E)] was meant to carry forward the universally accepted doctrine that a joint venturer is considered as a coconspirator for the purpose of this [R]ule even though no conspiracy has been charged.” ...

At least six other Circuits have similarly held that the objective of a joint venture for these purposes need not be criminal. … That is because “[c]onspiracy as an evidentiary rule differs from conspiracy as a crime. The crime of conspiracy comprehends much more than just a joint venture or concerted action, whereas the evidentiary rule of conspiracy is founded on concepts of agency law.”

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Yesterday Tucker Carlson captured, in masterful style, the essential nature of the Trans movement. It’s a fairly typical, albeit more unhinged, Leftist religion—in the sense that it’s not a religion in the usual meaning of the word, but instead mimics religion as the mirror opposite of a real religion. In other words, it’s an anti-human ideology verging into a cultish embrace of mental illness:

Another aspect of this cultish embrace of mental illness is the embrace of political and cultic violence—as we see in the upcoming “Day of Vengeance.” Everywhere on the internet we see mainstream Leftists sporting T-shirts that call for violence against their opponents—people whose typical offense is to use normal pronouns. The calls for violence against Christians are getting particularly heated.

Not the Bee has a very nice summary of this disturbing phenomenon—indeed, in the wake of the horrific massacre in Nashville, the Left is terming the murderess a “martyr” and calling for more violence:

Trans activists are calling for more blood after the Nashville shooting.

After Monday's mass shooting at the K-6 school at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville, trans activists are doubling down on calls for bloodshed, putting their support behind the murderous woman who took the lives of 6 people.

…

Much of the trans activist outcry comes around laws that protect kids from genital mutilation or hormone injections as minors, as well as laws that prevent teachers from forcing sexual ideology on children who are too young for such conversations.

One has to seriously ask why these activists are so concerned about reaching and grooming young children into their ideology, and why they get so violent when anyone opposes them.

At a guess, it probably has to do with the drugs these people are on.

However, rather than focus on the ravings of these mentally ill people, I’d like to present from the article a graphic that supports the validity of the “slippery slope” argument. I have always maintained that once a particular conceptual position is advanced, it becomes virtually inevitable that it will be developed to its logical extreme. So …

And, of course, at the bottom of the slippery slope you’ll find demonically evil rich people making more and more money off further evil.