Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Sunday denounced the acquittal of former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, calling the verdict "contrary to the evidence."
In an interview on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," Ratcliffe lamented the judicial decision to not allow certain evidence in the case.
"The verdict was disappointing because it was contrary to the evidence," he said. "Michael Sussmann's own text messages confirmed exactly what the government said, which is that he claimed to just be a private citizen coming in when he had a story about a connection between the Trump campaign server and a Russian bank, which was clearly false, when the evidence clearly showed that he was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign."
"It wasn't a judge verdict," he added, because "the judge in this case wouldn't allow certain evidence of the Clinton conspiracy to be included."
But Ratcliffe said the "bigger picture" is that though special counsel John Durham's prosecution may have lost this battle … "they're clearly winning the war."
"The most powerful testimony to come out of this was admissions by the Clinton campaign about the fact that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was, in fact, approved by Hillary Clinton," Ratcliffe said.
According to Ratcliffe, some people in the FBI misled the American people for political reasons.
"The leadership at the FBI has played a prominent role in the American people losing faith in that organization," he declared.
"Our law enforcement community was briefed on the fact that it was Hillary Clinton that created this entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative and that the FBI knew that from the beginning," he said
"When that is the purpose of what your special counsel is to be, and you leave that out altogether, it shows that there was a deliberate effort here, unfortunately, on behalf of some folks in our law enforcement community to mislead the American people for political reasons," he said.
Ratcliffe railed that from the start, "the FBI and everyone in law enforcement that then became part of the Mueller investigation were aware from day one with that this whole Trump-Russia investigation that was playing out over years to the American people was created by the Hillary Clinton campaign."
"That was deliberate, it was the willful, it was political, it was intentional, and I think the American people see that now, and that's what's important about John Durham continuing … notwithstanding what individual juries will do," he said.
Accountability, he said, however, "is going to have to come from the American people themselves in November in 2022 and in 2024 — in holding officials accountable from the Democratic Party that were involved and from the FBI that were involved that were clearly acting on behalf to advance a Democratic, progressive, liberal agenda."
Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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