Washington – A District of Columbia jury acquitted Michael Sussmann, a prominent Democratic attorney, of a charge of lying to investigators during a Sept. 19, 2016, meeting in which he transmitted now-denied data that allegedly linked the Trump Tower to the Alfa Bank of Russia. .
Michael Sussmann was accused by Special Adviser John Durham, a remnant of the Trump administration, of hiding his ties to a technology executive and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign when he filed the allegations with then-Secretary-General the FBI Jim Baker.
Durham was tasked with investigating allegations of misconduct by those investigating former President Donald Trump’s alleged links to Russia. Sussmann was the first of Durham’s few defendants to stand trial.
After the trial ended, Sussman read a statement with his reaction to the verdict: “I told the truth to the FBI and the jury’s record clearly recognizes that with his unanimous verdict today, I am grateful to the members. of the jury for his care and attentive service. Despite being falsely accused. I am relieved that justice has finally prevailed in my case. ” He also said it has been a “difficult year” for him and his family, and thanked his friends and the legal team.
Durham said nothing when he left court, but said in a statement, “Although we are disappointed with the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service.”
Prosecutors tried to argue that Sussmann began lying the night before the Sept. 18, 2016, meeting, when he sent a message to Baker asking him to speak. He allegedly wrote, “I’m selling on my own, not on behalf of a client or company,” text messages revealed during the trial said, “[W]The Durham team claimed that Sussmann came in not because he wanted to “help the Bureau,” but rather to help two clients who had hired his law firm, Perkins Coie.
However, the government did not accuse Sussmann of lying in that text message, and the jurors were ordered to disregard it when acquitting the accused.
The single-count trial lasted nearly two weeks, with prosecutors summoning more than a dozen witnesses ranging from Baker himself to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager Robby Mook.
Baker told jurors that the notes and memory units containing the data Sussmann brought him were worrisome, and saw the information as a “potential threat to national security.” Finally, the FBI ruled that allegations of a link between Trump and the Russian bank were unfounded.
“[Sussmann] “I’m not here on behalf of any particular client,” Baker recalled as he testified to Sussmann at that 2016 meeting at the FBI headquarters, “I’m 100% sure he said that to the meeting “.
Under direct examination, Baker told the jury that Sussmann was a “friend” and that he had no reason to doubt the representations about his motives at the time. Sussmann did not ask Baker to do anything with the data, Baker said, but took the allegations to FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap, who was also called as a witness. Priestap’s notes were a key part of the trial record.
Defense attorneys investigated Baker’s memory, highlighting discrepancies in his account of the 2016 meeting and his testimony in Congress during which Baker said he thought Sussmann had initiated the meeting on behalf of a client. .
These apparent discrepancies in Baker’s memory may have contributed to Tuesday’s not guilty verdict.
Attorney General’s prosecutors focused the testimony not only on the September 2016 meeting, but also on a larger, no-charge “joint venture” between Sussmann, his chief technology officer Rodney Joffe, who had brought the data from Alfa Bank, and the Clinton campaign, including its opposition research firm Fusion GPS. These political connections contributed to Sussmann’s motivation for allegedly lying to the FBI, prosecutors said, and would have affected how the FBI investigated the allegations.
However, these allegations were not legal components of the charges against Sussmann, and the jurors were not in charge of deciding their validity.
Witnesses such as Clinton’s campaign attorney general and former Sussmann colleague Marc Elias and a former Fusion GPS employee testified that they were investigating Donald Trump before the 2016 presidential election, and Alpha data was discussed. Bank. Sussmann allegedly acted as a sort of intermediary between Joffe, data analysts, and members of the media, Elias and others said. Sussmann did not testify in his own defense, but his legal team did not answer his communication with members of the media about the data.
Prosecutors accused Sussmann of hiding his connection with his alleged clients in order to make the data seem more legitimate. But Elias, Mook, and others countered this argument and testified under oath that the campaign never authorized or ordered Sussmann to bring the data to the attention of the FBI, claiming that doing so would have really put the campaign on hold. at a disadvantage because they did not trust the federal government. researchers of the moment.
The Durham team also tried to link Sussmann’s billing entries, receipts, and communications directly to the Clinton campaign, telling the jury that it had billed work and material related to Alfa Bank’s allegations in the Clinton campaign. Clinton campaign.
“It wasn’t about national security. It was about promoting opposition investigation into opposition candidate Donald Trump,” prosecutors said in the final arguments Friday, “Your common sense tells you so.”
“A person who acts in good faith, a person who knows the law would not say or do the things that Mr. Sussmann did on September 19.”
In particular, Sussmann did not bill his taxi ride to the FBI headquarters on Sept. 19 in the Clinton campaign, according to the evidence, and jurors asked to see that record during their deliberations.
Sussmann’s defense, however, raised doubts about the government’s case, according to Tuesday’s verdict.
“This was a case of misdirection,” they said, a “magic trick.”
“The time for political conspiracy theories is over,” argued Sean Berkowitz. “Opposition research is not illegal.” Durham’s team, on the other hand, focuses on the alleged lie, the veracity of the witness’s testimony. , and the potential effect that Sussmann’s alleged conduct had on FBI investigators.
Sussmann’s connection to the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign was “tattooed on the forehead,” said Berkowitz, Baker League and other FBI investigators probably knew when they located the allegations.
The polarizing and notorious nature of the trial comes not only from its connection to the two former political enemies of 2016, but also from controversial court records full of political accusations and excessive pre-trial breadth and long arguments. of the judgment as to what evidence might be entered in the register.
Judge Christopher Cooper, who oversaw the jury trial, adapted the testimony in an apparent attempt to limit this polarization, banned prosecutors from discussing the accuracy of Alfa Bank data, and said the jury could only consider Sussmann’s statement to Baker on September 19 and not the text. message the night before, deciding his guilt.