John Durham’s special counsel’s investigation received a massive blow this week when his main trial against prominent Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann resulted in an acquittal.
The verdict is likely to do significant damage to the reputation of an already controversial investigation and raises the question of what will be next for the Trump-era prosecutor.
The two-week trial ended in a unanimous verdict by a federal jury that heard the Durham office argue that Sussmann was at the center of a 2016 plan to manipulate the FBI into investigating the then presidential candidate. Donald Trump.
It was a major setback for an investigation that began three years ago and has been accused of wanting to provide Trump with political ammunition.
During the Trump administration, former Attorney General William Barr commissioned Durham to review the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign over allegations that he had been colluding with Russia.
The Durham investigation began when Trump claimed he had been the target of a smear campaign orchestrated by his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton and the FBI.
At the end of Trump’s term, the prosecutor had been appointed special counsel, which allowed his investigation to continue after President Biden took office, despite a 2019 report from the Department of Justice’s inspector general. which concluded that the FBI was justified in initiating Trump’s investigation.
Durham has filed charges against three people, including Sussmann, but so far has provided little new information to support Trump’s claims.
Some legal commentators had questioned the decision to file charges against Sussmann.
The attorney general’s office had alleged that former law firm partner Perkins Coie had lied to the FBI’s attorney general when he held a meeting in October 2016 to provide data on The Internet was intended to show suspicious traffic between the Trump Organization and the Russia-based organization. Alpha Bank.
Sussmann was accused of falsely claiming that he was not acting on behalf of any of his clients, which at the time included Clinton’s presidential campaign, when he presented the data. Finally, the FBI concluded that it could not establish a link between Trump and the Russian bank.
Some analysts believed that the decision to charge Sussmann was questionable in part because there was no third-party testimony at the meeting in question, which took place almost six years ago, making it difficult to prove the lie to a jury.
Veronica Renzi, a former federal prosecutor, says the verdict should provoke some introspection from the Durham office.
“I think that’s an indication for the Durham team that they should really consider how they decided to charge this case,” Renzi said.
He added that prosecutors should examine whether they are “seeing the evidence in the same way that they think the jury will examine the evidence and actually examine it to decide whether the cases they are presenting justify a trial.”
It is unclear what impact, if any, the verdict will have on the Durham investigation.
“Although we are disappointed with the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service,” the special counsel said Tuesday in response to the outcome of the trial. “I also want to acknowledge and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts to seek truth and justice in this case.”
Some of Trump’s critics see Durham’s cases as politically motivated and have begun calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to end the special counsel’s investigation.
But Bruce Green, a law professor at Fordham University and a former federal prosecutor, says previous attorneys general since the Nixon administration have historically taken a free approach to special counsel investigations, and Garland would call for a political backlash. if it deviated from this rule. .
“I don’t think a designated Democrat can say that very easily, and it would probably be very hot, and I think it would probably be better for public confidence in the Department of Justice for the attorney general to just let that happen,” Green said. dit.
The Durham office is scheduled to return to court in October for a trial against Igor Danchenko, one of the sources in Steele’s controversial case facing five charges of lying to the FBI in 2017 when investigators they were investigating the document.
It is unclear whether the special attorney will be more successful in filing his case against Danchenko, but the trial will likely provide an opportunity for him to focus on the FBI’s handling of his investigation into Trump.
For his part, Trump has continued to litigate his claims from the 2016 campaign and it seems unlikely that he will be deterred by the outcome of the Sussmann trial.
Earlier this year, he filed a federal lawsuit for extortionism against Clinton and several Democrats and former law enforcement officials, alleging a widespread conspiracy to undermine him politically with a smear campaign that sought to link him to the Kremlin.
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On Thursday, Trump’s lawyers will try to persuade a federal judge to allow the case to continue while the various defendants ask for his dismissal.
Following the release of Sussmann’s verdict on Tuesday, Trump released a May 27 letter to the organization behind the Pulitzer Prize, outlining the evolution of the Sussmann trial detailing the opposition’s search efforts in the campaign. Clinton in 2016 and demanding that they retract their 2018 awards at The New. York Times and The Washington Post to report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“Once again, I’m asking you to revoke the award you gave based on blatantly false, derogatory, and defamatory news,” Trump wrote. “If you decide not to, we’ll see you in court.”