Michael Sussman, former attorney for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, acquitted of lying to the FBI
A lawyer who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 losing presidential campaign was cleared Tuesday of lying to the FBI when he pushed information about the explosive ties between Russia and then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.
Ex-federal prosecutor Michael Sussmann was acquitted of charges in a major blow to special counsel John Durham, who has tried without success to unearth misconduct in the launching of the Russia collusion investigation.
“Despite being falsely accused, I believe that justice ultimately prevailed,” Sussman said after the verdict.
Trump and his army of loyal supporters hoped the Durham probe would expose sweeping wrongdoing by the feds in targeting the MAGA man during his winning 2016 White House run.
The former president wasted little time lashing out at the verdict as an example of supposed “corruption” in the legal system.
“Our Country is going to HELL, and Michael Sussmann is not guilty. How’s everything else doing?” Trump wrote after the verdict on his new social media platform.
Attorney Michael Sussmann (Jose Luis Magana/)
The failed prosecution focused on the seemingly innocuous issue of whether Sussmann concealed that he was working for Clinton when he spilled the beans about a possible link between a Kremlin-allied Russian bank and the Trump Organization. The FBI investigated but quickly dismissed the supposed link.
The star witness was the FBI’s then-general counsel James Baker, who testified that he was “100% confident” that Sussmann had told him that he was not representing any client.
Sussmann’s lawyers, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, said in a statement that Sussmann should never have been charged in the first place.
“This is a case of extraordinary prosecutorial overreach. And we believe that today’s verdict sends an unmistakable message to anyone who cares to listen: Politics is no substitute for evidence, and politics has no place in our system of justice,” the lawyers said.
The Russia collusion probe, later overseen for two years by special counsel Robert Mueller, uncovered a broad effort by Russia to interfere on the Trump campaign’s behalf but failed to conclusively establish that they worked together to sway the election.
Unlike Durham, Mueller’s team won several convictions including Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort and self-proclaimed dirty trickster Roger Stone.
After Mueller’s work was done, Trump’s then-Attorney General William Barr named Durham to examine whether anyone from the FBI or other agencies violated the law as the government opened its investigation into Russian election interference.
Durham has brought three criminal cases so far, though only one has been against a federal government employee and none of them has established any sort of sweeping conspiracy to frame Trump or derail his candidacy.
With News Wire Services
