After almost a year of total silence, Special counsel John Durham is according to several outlets, has finally issued an earth-shattering indictment of one Michael Sussmann, an attorney allegedly connected to the 2016 Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign. The allegations are that Sussmann lied to FBI investigators during a meeting about matters related to President Trump’s campaign and any Russian involvement in the election.
“Michael Sussmann, a partner with Perkins Coie who also represented the Democratic National Committee in connection with Russia’s hack of the organization, is accused of making false statements during a Sept. 19, 2016 meeting with former FBI General Counsel James Baker,” Reuters reported. “This marks the second criminal case Durham has filed so far since former Attorney General William Barr tapped him in 2019 to investigate U.S. officials who probed the Trump-Russia contacts.”
According to The New York Times,
“The case against Mr. Sussmann centers on the question of who his client was when he conveyed certain suspicions about Mr. Trump and Russia to the F.B.I. in September 2016. Among other things, investigators have examined whether Mr. Sussmann was secretly working for the Clinton campaign — which he denies.”
Motion From The Durham Investigation – Better Late Than Never
Sussmann and the firm he worked for at the time: Perkins Coie in spite of their repeated denials have left some pretty interesting questions in need of answering. The Times pointed out a few,
- “Mr. Baker, the former F.B.I. lawyer, is said to have told investigators that he recalled Mr. Sussmann saying that he was not meeting him on behalf of any client. But in a deposition before Congress in 2017, Mr. Sussmann testified that he sought the meeting on behalf of an unnamed client who was a cybersecurity expert and had helped analyze the data.”
- “Internal billing records Mr. Durham is said to have obtained from Perkins Coie are said to show that when Mr. Sussmann logged certain hours as working on the Alfa Bank matter — though not the meeting with Mr. Baker — he billed the time to Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign.”
Soooo…. was Sussmann: lying to Congress? Lying to the FBI? Falsifying company records and defrauding the Clinton Campaign? Or was he just a brutally incompetent lawyer with a bad memory? Interestingly another high-profile attorney from Perkins Coie who worked for the Clinton Campaign: Marc Elias bailed from the firm last month… And now the law firm seems to be scrambling to get in front of the narrative before Durham does.
The DailyWire reported, “The report said that Durham’s actions lead outsiders to believe that he is pursuing the theory that the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie to submit suspicious information to the FBI about Trump and Russia to hurt his campaign.”
President Donald Trump has been asking in statements for months: “Where’s Durham?” It seems he’s been busy. Perhaps, at least one can hope.