WASHINGTON (AP) – A lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign hid her partisan interests from the FBI while pushing for a “pure opposition investigation” related to Donald Trump and Russia in the weeks leading up to the elections, a prosecutor said Friday during the final arguments of the lawyer’s trial.
But Michael Sussmann’s legal team denied the prosecutors’ claims that he lied. And even if jurors believed Sussmann was lying, the defense said the alleged false statement didn’t matter because it presented national security information that the FBI would have investigated regardless of the source. At the time of Sussmann’s meeting with the FBI in September 2016, the office was already investigating whether Russia and the Trump campaign were concurrent in influencing Trump’s November election.
“It simply came to our notice then. The Russians had hacked the DNC. They were leaking emails. And there was an ongoing FBI investigation regardless of that, “Sussmann’s attorney Sean Berkowitz told jurors, referring to the Democratic National Committee.” And that was considered incredibly serious. ”
The case is the first judicial test of the work of special counsel John Durham since his appointment three years ago to look for government misconduct during the investigation into possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign. Jurors began deliberating Friday afternoon.
A guilty verdict would be applauded by Trump and his supporters, who have looked to the Durham investigation to undermine the original investigation between Trump and Russia that they have long viewed as a political motivation. But the case against Sussmann is narrow in nature, involves a peripheral aspect of this investigation, and alleges misconduct by an informant in government instead of anyone from the FBI or any other federal agency.
However, the two weeks of testimony in the federal court in Washington have exposed the extent to which Democratic interests, opposition investigation, media and law enforcement were entangled before the election. presidential elections.
Prosecutors have presented Sussmann as determined to push for investigations into Trump that could later be leaked to the media and give negative stories for his campaign.
“It wasn’t about national security,” said Jonathan Algor, a Durham team prosecutor. “It was about promoting the investigation of the opposition against the opposition candidate, Donald Trump.”
Sussmann is accused of a single count of making a false statement. This charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, although if convicted, Sussmann is likely to have much less time in prison, if any. He did not take office during the trial.
The case revolves around a meeting on September 19, 2016, in which Sussmann presented to the FBI’s chief lawyer, James Baker, computer data that, according to Sussmann, suggested a secret communications channel between a Russian-based bank. and the Trump Organization, the candidate’s company.
This later channel, if it existed, would have been explosive information at a time when the FBI was examining ties between Trump and Russia. But after evaluating the data, the FBI quickly determined that there was no suspicious contact.
Prosecutors say Sussmann lied to Baker by saying he did not attend the meeting on behalf of a particular client. They say he was actually there on behalf of the Clinton campaign and another client, a technology executive who, according to the Durham team, commissioned investigators to search for Internet traffic that included Trump and Russian associates.
Sussmann lied about his clients, prosecutors allege, to give more credibility to the data because he thought the information would not be investigated if the FBI thought it was a mere opposition investigation driven by the campaign. Clinton.
“The defendant knew he had to hide his clients if there was any chance of getting his allegations to the FBI, and that’s why, ladies and gentlemen, the defendant lied,” Algor said.
To convict, prosecutors must prove not only that Sussmann lied, but that the lie was material, that is, that it mattered, or at least could have mattered, for the FBI’s job.
Algor said the fact that Sussmann repeatedly billed the Clinton campaign for his work on the Alfa Bank affair is proof that he was acting on behalf of the campaign when he met with the FBI. But Berkowitz noted that Sussmann billed his taxi ride to the FBI headquarters for the meeting itself at his law firm, rather than the campaign.
Berkowitz also tried to question exactly what was said at the meeting. Prosecutors showed the jurors a text message Sussmann sent to Baker the night before the meeting in which he asked for a hearing on a sensitive matter and said he would come alone and not on behalf of a client.
But Berkowitz reminded jurors that the only false statement he was accused of took place during the next day’s meeting, and that no one can be sure exactly what was said because Baker and Sussmann were the only participants and no of the two he took notes.
Berkowitz also suggested that it was technically accurate if Sussmann said he was not acting on behalf of a client because Sussmann never asked the FBI to do anything with the information he provided.
“When you go somewhere on behalf of a client, you’re defending the client, you’re asking for something,” Berkowitz said. “Mr. Sussmann didn’t ask Jim Baker for anything.
The two sides also discussed Baker’s testimony, and Berkowitz cited dozens of instances in which Baker told the booth that he did not remember or did not remember anything. Prosecutors, meanwhile, took advantage of the fact that Baker said he was “100% confident” that Sussmann had told him he was not acting on behalf of a client and that he probably would not have taken the meeting if he had been told. on the contrary. .
“Ladies and gentlemen, James Baker, a former senior FBI official, would come to the stands under oath, and he would be sentenced to perjury if it were not true,” another prosecutor, Andrew DeFilippis, said on Friday. to the jurors. “No, he wouldn’t do that. None of us would do that, I’d take that risk.”
Durham has so far charged three people. The case against Sussmann is the only one that has come to trial.
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