WASHINGTON — Special Counsel John Durham sought a federal grand jury indictment against attorney Michael Sussmann and got it. The Democratic lawyer is accused of lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation.
Specifically, the federal indictment accuses Sussmann of concealing the fact that he worked for the Clinton campaign while pushing for an investigation into then-candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016, Fox News reported.
According to HuffPost, the indictment says he “stated to the General Counsel of the FBI that he was not acting on behalf of any client in conveying particular allegations concerning a Presidential candidate, when in truth, and in fact, as the defendant well knew, he was acting on behalf of specific clients, namely, Tech Executive-1 and the Clinton Campaign.”
Durham was tasked with investigating the origins of the Russia probe by Trump. The indictment comes just weeks before the five-year statute of limitations was set to expire.
Sussmann not only worked for the Clinton campaign, but his firm had previously represented the Democratic National Committee. His legal troubles stem from telling telling the FBI’s James Baker in Sep. 2019 that he was not representing a client when pushing for an investigation into Trump.
During the investigation, Sussmann denied wrongdoing, but withheld a material fact; he was working on behalf of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, according to Fox.
Sussmann’s lawyers claim his innocence and that prosecuting him “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,” they said prior to the indictment, according to HuffPost.
