Clinton campaign lawyer sought to ‘use’ FBI, prosecutor says
WASHINGTON — A lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign who is charged with lying to the FBI early in the Trump-Russia probe sought to “use and manipulate” federal law enforcement to create an “October surprise” in the final weeks of the presidential race, a prosecutor alleged Tuesday at the start of his trial. Defense lawyers told jurors he never lied.
Michael Sussmann is accused of misleading the FBI during a September 2016 meeting by telling the bureau’s top lawyer that he wasn’t acting on behalf of a particular client when he presented computer data that he said might connect Russia to then-candidate Donald Trump. In reality, prosecutors say, he was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and another client who had provided him with the data.
He lied, prosecutor Brittain Shaw told jurors, in hopes of generating an “October surprise” of FBI investigations into Trump and negative news coverage of him, and because he knew the FBI would consider the information less credible if it thought it was being presented on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
“He told a lie that was designed to achieve a political end, a lie that was designed to inject the FBI into a presidential election,” said prosecutor Brittain Shaw.
But Sussmann’s lawyers sought to counter each of the prosecution’s allegations, portraying him as a well-respected attorney with deep experience in law enforcement and cybersecurity matters who would never lie to the FBI. The fact that he represented Democratic clients was well-known to the FBI and not anything he intended to hide, they said.
“He was someone the FBI knew represented partisan clients,” defense lawyer Michael Bosworth said in his opening statement. “The FBI knew that he represented the Clinton campaign that summer. The FBI knew that he was an attorney for the DNC, the Democratic Party itself.”
In any event, Bosworth said, it would be impossible for prosecutors to prove that Sussmann had lied because only he and the FBI lawyer he met with, James Baker, were present and neither took notes. Five and a half years after the meeting, Baker’s memory of what was said is “clear as mud,” Bosworth said.
Sussmann’s trial is the first arising from special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the FBI’s original probe into Russian election interference and potential ties with the Trump campaign. Though Durham was thought to be focused at least initially on misconduct by government officials during the course of the Russia investigation, the Sussmann case alleges wrongdoing by a tipster to the FBI rather than the FBI itself.
In an early recognition of the politically loaded nature of the case, Shaw urged jurors to put aside any feelings they might have about Trump, Russia or Clinton.
“Some people have very strong feelings about politics and Russia, and many people have strong feelings about Donald Trump and Russia. But we are not here because these allegations involve either of them, nor are we here because the client was the Hillary Clinton campaign,” Shaw said.