Special prosecutor John Durham charged Washington-based lawyer Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who represented former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, with lying to the FBI during the 2016 campaign.
Sussmann works for the high-powered law firm Perkins Coie—which has long done legal work for the Democratic Party and other top Democrats, including filing election-related lawsuits.
The lawyer was indicted (pdf) on a single felony count of making a false statement during a meeting with FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016. Prosecutors alleged that Sussmann lied by denying he represented any client when he told the federal law enforcement agency about evidence that allegedly linked then-candidate Donald Trump’s Trump Tower to a bank in Russia.
Sussmann met with Baker to hand over papers and data files containing evidence of the alleged link between the Trump Organization and the Russian bank, which was not disclosed. Unconfirmed media reports have said it was Alfa Bank.
The indictment is the second criminal case brought by Durham since he was named by former Attorney General William Barr in 2018 to investigate officials who investigated the Trump-Russia probe. Durham, a former U.S. attorney, was asked to stay as a special counsel and continue his investigation after President Joe Biden’s administration took office in January.
Sussmann, the indictment alleged, did not turn over the information as a “good citizen” but rather as an attorney representing Clinton, a technology executive, and an internet company.
“Sussmann’s lie was material because, among other reasons, Sussmann’s false statement misled the FBI General Counsel and other FBI personnel concerning the political nature of his work and deprived the FBI of information that might have permitted it more fully to assess and uncover the origins of the relevant data and technical analysis,” the indictment stated.
A report from The Epoch Times in 2019 found that Sussmann provided the information to Baker and at least one journalist ahead of the FBI’s application for a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Perkins Coie on behalf of the Democratic National Committee also hired Fusion GPS, which in turn hired Christopher Steele to produce the dossier that contained since-discredited claims against the former president.
About a month later, the New York Times and other large news outlets reported on the FBI investigation in the alleged Alfa Bank-Trump Organization. The FBI said it looked into the matter but found no connections.