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What America Do We Want to Be?

Join Living Room Conversations, our civil dialogue partner, and America Indivisible for a nationwide conversation on April 13, Thomas Jefferson’s 276th birthday. "Reckoning with Jefferson: A Nationwide Conversation on Race, Religion, and the America We Want to Be" will be held via in-person and online video discussions. Sign up today!

What America Do We Want to Be?

Join Living Room Conversations, our civil dialogue partner, and America Indivisible for a nationwide conversation on April 13, Thomas Jefferson’s 276th birthday. "Reckoning with Jefferson: A Nationwide Conversation on Race, Religion, and the America We Want to Be" will be held via in-person and online video discussions. Sign up today!

What America Do We Want to Be?

Join Living Room Conversations, our civil dialogue partner, and America Indivisible for a nationwide conversation on April 13, Thomas Jefferson’s 276th birthday. "Reckoning with Jefferson: A Nationwide Conversation on Race, Religion, and the America We Want to Be" will be held via in-person and online video discussions. Sign up today!

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Practical, engaging webinars designed to transform how you approach current events and facilitate productive classroom discussions.

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Wednesday March 12, 2025 | 6:00 PM Eastern Time

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Practical, engaging webinars designed to transform how you approach current events and facilitate productive classroom discussions.

The Art of Discussion - Civic Learning Week

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Does Michael Sussmann being found not guilty cover up the FBI or further expose former President Donald Trump's ties to Russia?

The jury on Tuesday ultimately ruled that the investigation led by Special Counsel John Durham couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Sussmann was lying about not representing "any client" during a meeting with former FBI general counsel James Baker in September 2016, only weeks before the election. Sussmann met with Baker to disclose potential ties between Trump's campaign and Russia.

Left-rated voices echoed previous criticisms and said Trump was "extensively" lying about his campaign’s ties to Russia. Washington Post (Lean Left bias) writers Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent framed Durham's "flop" as the "culmination of years of efforts" by Trump and the Republican Party to "erase the enormous significance" of the Russia scandal. The Daily Beast (Left bias) criticized Fox News (Right bias) for "immediately" blaming the jury and "its supposed bias for not buying what Durham’s team was selling."

Many right-rated voices emphasized how the "FBI’s own machinations" allowed Sussmann to claim a legal victory. National Review (Right bias) writer Isaac Schoor suggested Sussman's win is "far from a vindication of his actions" but rather Durham not being able to find "smoking gun evidence" that he lied. Holman W. Jenkins Jr. argued in The Wall Street Journal — Opinion (Lean Right bias) that this "collusion hoax" cost Trump "millions of votes" and served as an "excuse" for Clinton's defeat. 

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For three years, conservatives hyped John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s original investigation of Russia’s effort to help Donald Trump get elected president in 2016. Durham, a prosecutor appointed in 2019 by then-Attorney General William P. Barr, would blow the lid off the real scandal, they said, which was a conspiracy between Democrats and the FBI to get Trump. This would show there was never anything to the Russiagate scandal.

If special counsel John Durham didn’t get the verdict he wanted in the Michael Sussmann case, it’s because he did a better job of convicting the victim than he did the culprit—the victim being the FBI, the agency to which the Democratic lawyer allegedly lied when claiming he wasn’t acting for the Clinton campaign while peddling slime about Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election.