A2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, MAY 28 , 2022
MICHIGAN
Detroit fire destroys
landmark restaurantFire destroyed a landmark
restaurant and brewpub Friday in
Midtown Detroit, but spared the
neighboring Third Man Records
store owned by musician Jack
White as well as Shinola’s
flagship watch store.
No one was inside Traffic Jam
& Snug at the time of the blaze
and the restaurant was believed
to be a total loss, fire of ficials said.
Detroit Fire Community
Relations Chief James Harris told
Detroit News that firefighters
were called before 2 a.m. The
cause wasn’t immediately known.
Traffic Jam was established in
1965, according to its website.
Owner Scott Lowell told the
newspaper that he was on a
humanitarian mission at the
border between Poland and
Ukraine and that he was trying to
return to Detroit.
— Associated Pressinvestigation from proceeding.
En goron granted James’s past
requests to enforce subpoenas
with which Trump and other
parties did not initially comply.
— Shayna JacobsPENNSYLVANIA
House blast leaves 5
dead, 2 injuredA house exploded northwest of
Philadelphia, killing five people
and leaving two others injured,
authorities said Friday.
Officials had earlier said four
people died and others might be
missing in Thursday evening’s
explosion in Pottstown but
confirmed the fifth fatality as
they combed through debris,
Borough Manager Justin Keller
said Friday, according to the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
Two people were hospitalized,
Keller said.
The cause of the blast is still
being investigated, Keller said.
— Associated PressA state court judge, Arthur
Engoron, who has overseen a
number of disputes between
James’s team and Trump, has
already refused to stop thesaid the decision would be
appealed. Habba argued in court
filings that James’s efforts were
so unfair that the federal judge
should have stepped in to stop it.NEW YORK
Judge rejects Trump’s
lawsuit against AGFormer president Donald
Trump’s lawsuit against the New
York attorney general — which
claimed that her long-term civil
investigation into his business
practices was an abuse of
authority that needed to be
stopped — has been dismissed by
a federal judge in Syracuse, N.Y.
The former president’s attempt
to halt Attorney General Letitia
James’s (D) probe into the Trump
Organization and its dealings
with lenders and tax authorities
was rejected in a 43-page
decision made public Friday by
U.S. District Judge Brenda K.
Sannes.
In a s tatement, James said her
office would “continue this
investigation undeterred,”
suggesting that Trump has made
efforts to “choose how the law”
applies to him.
Trump attorney Alina HabbaCORRECTIONS
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l A M ay 27 article in the Style
section about the line to get into
the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard
trial incorrectly said Fairfax
County sheriff’s deputies
responded to an altercation in
the crowd on May 22. Fairfax
City police responded.
l In some May 26 editions, an A-
section article about Republican
proposals that schoolteachers
carry weapons incorrectly said
that Texas Attorney General Ken
Paxton (R) is a gubernatorial
candidate. He is seeking another
term as attorney general.
l A M ay 22 chart in the Metro
section about where the
candidates in the upcoming D.C.
Democratic primary stand on
issues incorrectly identified
Zachary Parker as a Ward 3
candidate. He is running for the
Ward 5 council seat.
l A M ay 21 Real Estate article,
about a renovated home in
Chev y Chase, Md., was
incorrectly illustrated with an
image of a different home on the
cover. The correct photo appears
on Page 8 o f today’s Real Estate
section.
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DIGEST
EDUARDO MUNOZ/REUTERS
The Manhattan skyline, as seen from Weehawken, N.J., on Friday,
is covered by rain clouds at the start of the Memorial Day weekend.supremacists, saying there were
“very fine people on both sides.”
Reported hate crimes are rising
even as reporting from law
enforcement agencies is
declining, according to the Anti-
Defamation League (ADL). That
could indicate significant
underreporting.
ADL’s review of FBI data says
the number of hate crimes rose in
2020 to 7,759, the highest point in
12 years and a 6 percent increase
over the previous year. Hate
crimes reported against Black
people jumped 43 percent to
2,755. Yet at the same time more
than 60 jurisdictions with
populations over 100,
reported zero hate crimes, a
circumstance ADL finds “simply
not credible.”
Jake Hyman, an ADL associate
director of communications,
complained by email about “the
persistent lack of complete and
reliable data about hate crimes inSecurity charged with reporting
on the “threat posed by White
supremacists and neo-Nazis.”
Under the bill, an interagency
task force also would focus on
white racist infiltration into law
enforcement agencies and the
military.
Republicans opposed the
measure, arguing it could be
interpreted too broadly.
Gendron, the 18-year-old
suspect in Buffalo, left no doubt
about his motive.
His 18 0-page screed, The
Washington Post reported,
outlined his belief in a “great
replacement” theory that White
people would be overcome in
part, in his words, by the
“genocide of the European
people.” This recalls the “Jews will
not replace us” chants by racists
at a d eadly Charlottesville rally in
2017 who confronted
counterprotesters. Following
that, Trump comforted the whiteincidents “can be used as a tool
for prevention and response.” He
also announced a $10 million
grant program to address hate
crimes through state-run
reporting hotlines and
community programs.
“If it ’s possible to even further
redouble our efforts ,” Garland
said referring to Buffalo,
“something like this can only
cause us to do so.”
But efforts are redoubled every
time the nation’s gun violence
sickness explodes with mass
fatalities, sometimes with hate as
the motive.
And not far down Pennsylvania
Avenue from Garland’s speech,
Senate Republicans later blocked
legisl ation that Democrats said
could have given law enforcement
more tools to address racist
violence. The bill would have
created bureaus in the FBI,
Justice Department and
Department of Homelandthis country. Data drives policy,
and without an accurate
assessment of the scope and
nature of this problem
policymakers and communities
are le ft to develop solutions with
one hand tied behind our backs.”
The FBI did not respond to
questions about its hate crime
data.
Garland’s toolbox to combat
hate crimes does not include
restraining inflammatory speech
by elected officials.
After noting “only the
perpetrator of a hate crime is
responsible for the crime,”
Michael Lieberman, a senior
policy counsel at the Southern
Poverty Law Center (SPLC), had
pointed words about Trump’s
influence.
“But we believe, strongly, that
words matter — and words have
consequences,” Lieberman added
by email. “We believe President
Trump’s divisive, polarizing
rhetoric and executive actions
helped create a climate in which
individual perpetrators could feel
emboldened to act.”
Hyman agreed, saying Trump’s
words “ created a climate that
normalized anti-Asian, Anti-
Muslim and anti-immigrant hate,
which in turn energized and
emboldened people to act. But
hate existed before Donald
Trump and it continues to thrive
even though he’s out of office.”
In response, Trump spokesman
Taylor Budowich blasted the
SPLC and the media. “The
disgraced and discredited
Southern Law Center is a hate-
based scam organization that
masquerades as a think tank to
sow division and wage partisan
battles,” he said. “The fa ct that
The Washington Post amplifies
SLC’s agenda tells readers
everything they need to know
about both.”
Budowich said nothing about
similar Anti-Defamation League
comments.Attorney General
Merrick Garland
had long planned
a May 20 Justice
Department event
to commemorate
the first
anniversary of
President Biden
signing anti-hate
crime legislation.
But as if to
mock seemingly futile efforts
against racist violence, days
before the program, a g unman
identified as Payton Gendron
drove three hours to a Buffalo
supermarket and shot 13 people
with a Bushmaster XM-15 rifle
after plotting to kill Black people.
Ten died.
The massacre sent a defiant
message to a ceremony meant to
highlight the Biden
administration’s fight against
racist violence.
“We now gather in the wake of
a horrific and painful reminder of
the urgency and importance of
this task,” Garland told a crowd in
the department’s Great Hall last
week.
“No one in America should fear
violence because of who they are,”
added Deputy Attorney General
Lisa O. Monaco. “The department
will not tolerate any form of
terrorism, hate-based violence, or
unlawful discrimination.”
The moment highlighted the
difficulty of preventing hate
crimes in a nation still rife with
tension exacerbated, many anti-
hate crime groups say, by former
president Donald Trump’s racist
rhetoric. Garland used the event
to present a new set of plans to
tackle the persistent scourge.
After citing successful
prosecutions in hate crime cases,
Garland announced “non-
criminal tools” to help prevent
them. One is guidance for
community organizations and
local governments on how
increased awareness of hateFederal
Insider
JOE
DAVIDSONJustice Department’s fight against hate crimes is an uphill battle
MATT BURKHARTT FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
The sun sets over the Tops grocery s tore in Buffalo this month, days after a g unman fatally shot and
killed 10 Black people. The suspect is accused of p osting an online document that shared racist beliefs.BY DEVLIN BARRETT
Prosecutors on Friday urged a
jury to convict well-connected
attorney Michael Sussmann, say-
ing that he thought he had “a
license to lie” to the FBI at the
height of the 2016 presidential
campaign. Sussmann’s defense
lawyers countered that the case
against Sussmann was built on a
“political conspiracy theory.”
In a c ase that rehashed bitter
controversies from the Donald
Trump-Hillary Clinton presiden-
tial contest, Sussmann is accused
of lying to a s enior FBI official
when he delivered allegations of
a secret communications chan-
nel between the Trump Organi-
zation and Alfa Bank, which is
based in Russia.
The case brought by Special
Counsel John Durham charges
that Sussmann lied by claiming
he did not bring the information
to the FBI on behalf of any client,
when he allegedly did so on
behalf of two clients: the Clinton
campaign and a tech executive,
Rodney Joffe.
The trial marks the first court-
room test of the investigative
work done by Durham, who was
appointed by Trump administra-
tion Attorney General William P.
Barr to probe whether the feder-
al agents who investig ated the
2016 Trump campaign commit-
ted wrongdoing.
A conviction of Sussmann
would be heralded by Trump and
his supporters as validation of
their claims the FBI conducted a
witch hunt investigation of the
Republican standard-bearer be-fore and after the 2016 election.
An acquittal would probably fuel
calls from the left for the Justice
Department to end Durham’s
assignment.
The jur y, which began deliber-
ating about 1 p.m. Friday, is
tasked with answering a fairly
simple legal and factual question
— whether Sussmann lied about
his client and whether that lie
was relevant to the FBI investiga-
tion. During two weeks of testi-
mony, however, prosecutors have
argued the case is really about a
broader scheme by Clinton loyal-
ists to use the FBI and news
re porters to launch a d amaging,
last-minute revelation against
Trump that would tip the elec-
tion to Clinton. The FBI investi-
gated the Alfa Bank allegations
and decided they were unfound-
ed.
“You can see what the plan
was,” Assistant Special Counsel
Andrew DeFilippis told jurors in
D.C. federal court. “It was to
create an October surprise by
giving information both to the
media and to the FBI to get the
media to write that there was an
FBI investigation.”
“Under the la w, no one has a
license to lie to the FBI,” DeFilip-
pis said. “Under the la w, no one is
entitled to make a false state-
ment to weaponize a law en-forcement agency in support of a
political agenda — not Republi-
cans, not Democrats.”
Despite the trial’s frequent
references to Clinton, Trump and
other political figures, the pros-
ecutor insisted that “this case is
not about politics, it’s not about
conspiracy, it ’s about the truth.”
Sussmann lied, DeFilippis said,
because if he ’d told the FBI that
he was acting on behalf of Clin-
ton, the FBI was less likely to
consider his evidence or open an
investigation.
Sussmann’s lawyer, Sean
Berkowitz, said the prosecution
has tried to turn a b rief 30-min-
ute meeting more than five years
ago into a “giant political con-
spiracy theory.”
The defense lawyer said there
is plenty of reason to doubt the
account of James Baker, the
former FBI official who met with
Sussmann. Baker has offered
varying answers in the past
about the meeting. During his
trial testimony, in response to
various questions, he said he
couldn’t remember 116 times.
“The time for political con-
spiracy theories is over, and th e
time to talk about the evidence is
now,” Berkowitz said in a boom-
ing baritone. Sussmann listened
closely as lawyers argued over
his fate.
Prosecutors showed the jury
emails, law-firm billing records
and even a S taples receipt for
thumb drives to tie Sussmann to
the Clinton campaign.
But Berkowitz said much of
the witness testimony shows that
the Clinton campaign did notwant the Alfa Bank allegations
taken to the FBI, because they
wanted a news story about the
issue and feared an investigation
might complicate or delay such
stories.
“There is a difference,”
Berkowitz said, “between having
a client, and doing something on
their behalf.”
He ridiculed prosecutors for
painting as nefarious efforts to
dig up damaging information
about Trump for a campaign.
“Opposition research is not
illegal,” he said, adding that if it
was, “the jails of Washington,
D.C., would be teeming over.”
Berkowitz readily conceded
that Sussmann talked to report-
ers as p art of his job, including
journalists for The Washington
Post and Reuters. He said pros-
ecutors brought the case because
they suffered from “tunnel vi-
sion” over two news stories in
Slate and the New York Times
that appeared on Oct. 31, 2016,
and — he argued — had li ttle
impact on the campaign.
“That’s the story? That’s the
leak? That’s the conspiracy?
Please,” Berkowitz said.
The key witness of the trial
was Baker, who met with Suss-
mann on Sept. 19, 2016, when
Baker worked as the FBI’s top
lawyer. Baker told the jury he
was “100 percent confident” that
Sussmann insisted to him he was
not acting on behalf of a client
and that if he had known, he
would have handled the meeting
differently and perhaps not even
agreed to the meeting at all.
Baker is the sole direct witnessto the conversation, and Suss-
mann’s lawyers have repeatedly
challenged his credibility on this
point, noting that in one earlier
interview, Baker said Sussmann
was representing cybersecurity
clients; in another, he seemed to
say he didn’t remember that part
of the talk. Prosecutors intro-
duced billing records from Suss-
mann’s law firm li sting the time
he spent on the issue as work on
behalf of the Clinton campaign.
Baker, who now works for
Twitter, testified that Sussmann
also told him a major newspaper
— he later learned it was the New
York Times — was preparing to
write about the allegations. That
worried Baker: He knew a news
story would probably cause any
suspicious communications to
stop, so he wanted the FBI to be
able to investigate before an
article appeared. Prosecutors say
it was Sussmann himself who
had provided the allegations
about Trump information to the
Times.
“It would have concerned me,
whether there was an effort to
play the FBI and drag us into the
ongoing political campaign and
make us a pawn in the campaign
in some fashion,” Baker said. “It
would have alarmed me, this
nexus with the press and wheth-
er there was some effort to
engineer a situation where the
FBI would be investigating this
material and that the press —
even though it couldn’t deter-
mine the reliability of that ma-
terial and couldn’t report on it —
could report the FBI was investi-
gating it.”Jury begins deliberating in trial that revisited 2016 election
Lawyer is accused of
lying when giving FBI
information on TrumpBanca do Antfer
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