OPINION:
For decades, Washington, D.C., has clamored to become a state — complete with all the power and privileges reserved for states in our federal system.
Yet once again, the District of Columbia has demonstrated conclusively that it is unworthy of statehood in a nation of laws. It cannot even assemble juries or carry out the most basic functions of a criminal court.
It has long been a running joke among journalists, government lawyers and political hacks who live in Washington about all the ways to wheedle out of jury duty. These people who spend all their days claiming to be pure as the driven snow suddenly claim in open court they are incapable of being fair or unbiased — just to get out of jury duty.
Because if you are a lying government journalist hack living in D.C., your time is so much more valuable than someone else’s. These people are as much poison to D.C.’s jury system as they are to our political process.
Not only should the District be denied statehood, but its residents have also once again shown themselves unworthy of the most basic citizenship rights.
The District should give up trying to run courts of justice. If D.C. residents want to enjoy the privileges and responsibilities of American citizenship, they should move to a legitimate state.
Also, every federal department of our government should be dragged out of the district to someplace else in the United States where it can be run by actual Americans who care about our country and understand the responsibilities of self-governance.
A sham jury earlier this week exonerated Democrat lawyer Michael Sussmann for lying to the FBI. That sham verdict came after prosecutors presented conclusive evidence that Mr. Sussmann had lied to the FBI about his motives for peddling false campaign opposition research on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign smearing then-candidate Donald Trump to the FBI.
“Jim — it’s Michael Sussmann,” the Clinton lawyer wrote in a text to FBI General Counsel James A. Baker.
“I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. Do you have availability for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the Bureau. Thanks.”
During the trial, prosecutors proved that Mr. Sussmann was, in fact, working on behalf of the Clinton presidential campaign when he peddled the bogus information that triggered the FBI to launch a sprawling investigation into a political candidate and his campaign at the very height of a national political presidential election.
The only election more corrupt and dishonest than the 2016 election would turn out to be the 2020 election.
Not that a jury in the District of Columbia cares about such things as justice. Clearly, they did not.
“I don’t think it should have been prosecuted,” one juror said after the verdict, according to Jeff Mordock of The Washington Times. “There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI.”
In other words, according to this D.C. juror, courts are no place for justice. They are not a place where crimes are to be considered.
This is a stunning departure from the words etched in the stone pediment above the Supreme Court: Equal Justice Under Law.
For many in the media, which has studiously ignored this case from the beginning, the sham verdict is no big deal. They snicker to themselves that, once again, the system is rigged — in their favor or to their liking.
As I said, these people are a poison to our body politic.
Others have tried to explain away the sham verdict as “jury nullification,” where jurors choose to punish the system instead of the accused because the system has overreached in its pursuit of a largely innocent person.
In what sane world would anyone argue that a Clinton campaign lawyer is somehow an innocent victim of abuse by the FBI? From the very beginning until Mr. Trump’s last day in office, the FBI was on a crazed mission pursuing the Trump campaign on behalf of political operatives from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.
The only shred of truth in all this is that the FBI has so thoroughly disgraced itself and destroyed its own credibility over the past few years. But the evidence presented against Mr. Sussmann was in no way reliant upon the credibility of the FBI or any of its rogue agents.
The sham verdict in the Sussmann trial was nothing other than pure raw politics and further proof of just how dishonest and unjust our nation’s capital is and how unworthy D.C. is of self-governance.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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