Clinton team: Sussmann not told to see FBI

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign did not authorize a lawyer to meet with the FBI and provide information that was meant to cast suspicions on rival candidate Donald Trump and possible connections to Russia, according to trial testimony Wednesday.

Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, is charged with lying to the FBI during a meeting at which he presented the bureau’s top lawyer with data that purported to show mysterious contact between computer servers of a Russia-based bank and Trump’s company, the Trump Organization.

Prosecutors say Sussmann misled the FBI by saying he wasn’t participating in the meeting on behalf of a particular client when he was actually there on behalf of the Clinton campaign and another client, a technology executive who had provided him with the data.

But under questioning from one of Sussmann’s attorneys, Marc Elias, the campaign’s top lawyer, said Sussmann did not seek his consent to go to the FBI. Elias said neither he nor anyone else from the campaign he was aware of had authorized Sussmann to meet with the FBI.

The defense team’s questioning was aimed at distancing Sussmann from the Clinton campaign, and at trying to establish that he had not lied to the FBI by saying he was not representing the interests of a particular client during the Sept. 19, 2016, meeting.

At that meeting, Sussmann presented James Baker, the FBI’S then-general counsel, with computer research that he said showed potential contact between servers of Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

If proved, that information would have been significant given that the FBI at the time was investigating whether the Trump campaign and Russia were coordinating to sway the outcome of the election.

But when the FBI examined the data, it found no secret backchannel and nothing suspicious.

Earlier Wednesday, prosecutors sought to link Sussmann’s work to the campaign by noting that as a lawyer in private practice he repeatedly billed the campaign for meetings and legal work.

When Baker himself testified at the end of the day, prosecutors entered into evidence a text that Sussmann had sent him the night before the meeting in which he requested a sitdown about an unspecified sensitive matter and said that he would be coming alone and not on behalf of a particular client.