Attorney linked to Democrats may be indicted

Meeting with FBI’S general counsel at issue, sources say.

Special counsel John Durham, appointed during the Trump administration to investigate possible wrongdoing at the FBI and other agencies dating to the 2016 election, is preparing to seek the indictment of an attorney whose firm has close ties to Democrats, according to two people familiar with the matter.

These two people, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive political investigation, said Wednesday the lawyer, Michael Sussmann, is bracing for the possibility he will be charged with lying to the FBI in September 2016, when he raised concerns about possible ties between a Russia-based bank and a computer server at one of former President Donald Trump’s companies.

A charging decision could come within days, as the statute of limitations is due to expire on the fifth anniversary of Sussmann’s meeting with the FBI’S general counsel at the time, James Baker. That meeting took place Sept. 19, 2016. The prospect that Durham could bring charges against Sussmann was first reported by the New York Times.

Sussmann is a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at Perkins Coie, a law firm that has long represented the Democratic National Committee. Charging him would mark a strange twist in the special counsel’s probe championed by Trump and his Republican allies, which to date has resulted in a single conviction of a low-level FBI lawyer. Durham was tasked with finding crimes that may have been committed at the FBI and elsewhere in the federal government. But if he brings charges against Sussmann, the special counsel will be arguing in essence that the FBI was the victim of a crime.

In a statement, lawyers for Sussmann said he has committed no crime.

“Michael Sussmann is a highly respected national security and cyber security lawyer, who served the U.S. Department of Justice during

Democratic and Republican administrations alike,” lawyers Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth said in a joint statement. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work. We are confident that if Mr. Sussmann is charged, he will prevail at trial and vindicate his good name.”