UPDATE 11:40 AM EDT 9/17/21: A prominent lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on Friday pleaded not guilty to making a false statement to the FBI in a charge stemming from a probe of the U.S. government’s investigation into Russian election interference.
Michael Sussman appeared Friday in D.C. federal court before Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui. He is just the second person to be prosecuted by special counsel John Durham in two-and-a-half years of work.
Sussmann’s lawyers, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, said their client is a highly respected national security lawyer and they were confident he would prevail at trial and “vindicate his good name.”
Sussmann’s firm, Perkins Coie, has deep Democrat connections. A then-partner at the firm, Marc Elias, brokered a deal with the Fusion GPS research firm to manufacture allegations about Trump having business ties to Russia.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE: (Headline USA) The prosecutor tasked with examining the U.S. government’s contrived investigation into Russian election interference charged a prominent lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on Thursday with making a false statement to the FBI five years ago.
The indictment accuses Michael Sussmann of hiding that he was working with Clinton’s presidential campaign during a September 2016 conversation he had with the FBI’s general counsel, when he allegedly gave false statements to cybersecurity researchers about potentially suspicious contacts between a Russian bank and a Trump Organization server. The FBI looked into the matter but ultimately found no evidence of a secret back channel.
From John Solomon at Just the News:
The indictment said Sussmann charged his time for the meeting with the FBI to the Clinton campaign as well as much of his work developing a white paper alleging computer communications between an Alfa Bank server in Moscow and Trump Tower in New York.
Those allegation was later deemed to be false by Russia Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller…
“Sussmann’s statement to the FBI general counsel that he was not acting on behalf of any client was knowingly and intentionally false,” the indictment said…
The indictment provides elaborate detail on how Sussmann and his law firm, Perkins Coie, worked on behalf of the Clinton campaign to create an allegation – later deemed false – and bring it to the FBI in the waning days of the 2016 campaign as Clinton and Trump were locked in a tight race.
That deception mattered because it “deprived the FBI of information that might have permitted it to more fully assess and uncover the origins of the relevant data and technical analysis, including the identities and motivations of Sussmann’s clients,” according to the indictment filed by special counsel John Durham and his team of prosecutors.
Sussmann’s lawyers said their client was charged because of “politics, not facts.”
“The Special Counsel appears to be using this indictment to advance a conspiracy theory he has chosen not to actually charge. This case represents the opposite of everything the Department of Justice is supposed to stand for. Mr. Sussmann will fight this baseless and politically-inspired prosecution,” attorneys Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth said in a statement.
The case against Sussmann is the second prosecution brought by Durham in two and a half years of work. Both involve false statements.
The indictment also lays bare the wide-ranging and evolving nature of Durham’s investigation. In addition to having scrutinized the activities of FBI and CIA officials during the early days of the Russia probe, it has also looked at the behavior of individuals like Sussman who fed the U.S. government with false information concocted by people associated with the Clinton campaign.
The indictment concerns a Sept. 19, 2016, meeting at FBI headquarters between Sussmann and the FBI’s then-general counsel, James Baker. During the meeting, prosecutors say, Sussmann provided Baker with three “white papers” and data files that purported to show a potential connection between Russia-based Alfa Bank and a Trump Organization server.
The indictment notes that the FBI investigation determined that the email server was not actually owned or operated by the Trump Organization but was instead administered by a mass marketing email company that sent advertisements for Trump hotels.
According to the indictment, Sussmann said he was not presenting the materials on behalf of any particular client, which prosecutors say led Baker to believe that Sussmann was acting as a “good citizen” rather than a “paid advocate or political operative.”
Sussmann’s attorneys say he met with Baker because a major news organization was about to publish a story about Alfa Bank, and he wanted to give Baker a copy of the material on which the story would be based. Besides, they say, it didn’t matter who Sussmann’s clients were because the FBI would presumably have looked into the issue whether there was a political connection or not.
Sussmann’s former firm, Perkins Coie, has deep Democratic connections. Sussmann represented the Democratic National Committee in connection with a Russian government hack of its email servers. A then-partner at the firm, Marc Elias, brokered a deal with the Fusion GPS research firm to study Trump’s business ties to Russia.
That work yielded a discredited dossier of research from former British spy Christopher Steele that helped form the basis of flawed surveillance applications targeting a former Trump campaign official, Carter Page.
A spokesman for Perkins Coie said Sussmann, “who has been on leave from the firm, offered his resignation from the firm in order to focus on his legal defense, and the firm accepted it.”
Until now, Durham had brought only one criminal case — a false statement charge against an FBI lawyer who falsified an email related to the surveillance of Page to obscure the nature of Page’s preexisting relationship with the CIA. That lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation, but has been reportedly re-admitted to the DC bar.
Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.
