Lawyers for Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann asked a federal court to dismiss the false statements charge against their client, arguing Sussmann did not lie to the FBI when passing along Trump-Russia collusion claims and, even if he did, the lie was “immaterial.”
Sussmann was indicted last year for allegedly concealing his clients, including Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, from the FBI when he pushed since-debunked claims of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty, and now, he wants the judge to toss the indictment altogether.
Sussmann’s lawyers said Thursday that he “voluntarily” met with the FBI in September 2016 “to pass along information that raised national security concerns” and characterized this as meeting with the FBI simply “to provide a tip.” They argued there was no allegation by Durham that the tip was false nor by Durham that Sussmann believed the tip was false. The lawyers contended Sussmann was instead “charged with making a false statement about an entirely ancillary matter — about who his client may have been when he met with the FBI — which is a fact that even the Special Counsel’s own indictment fails to allege had any effect on the FBI’s decision to open an investigation.”
Durham revealed last week that he has evidence that Sussmann’s other client at the time of the 2016 FBI meeting, known to be former Neustar executive Rodney Joffe, “exploited” domain name system internet traffic at Trump Tower, Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and “the Executive Office of the President of the United States.”
“Mr. Sussmann did not make any false statement to the FBI,” Sussmann’s defense team claimed. “But in any event, the false statement alleged in the indictment is immaterial as a matter of law. Furthermore, allowing this case to go forward would risk criminalizing ordinary conduct, raise First Amendment concerns, dissuade honest citizens from coming forward with tips, and chill the advocacy of lawyers who interact with the government.”
Durham’s indictment against Sussmann made it clear the special counsel believes the defendant lied purposely, saying he “did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement or representation” to FBI General Counsel James Baker. Durham said Sussmann’s alleged lie was “material” because it “misled” the FBI “concerning the political nature of his work and deprived the FBI of information that might have permitted it more fully to assess and uncover the origins of the relevant data and technical analysis, including the identities and motivations of Sussmann’s clients.”
HILLARY CLINTON DENOUNCES ‘FAKE SCANDAL’ AFTER DURHAM SNOOPING REVELATIONS
Sussmann’s new arguments to dismiss the case closely echo those made by fired FBI Peter Strzok in November’s Lawfare podcast. Strzok said Sussmann’s indictment is “more likely to cause greater damage to the FBI’s ability to recruit and maintain sources as those sources become increasingly fearful that incompleteness will be treated as a criminal false statement,” and “in the worst case, it’s part of the previous administration’s effort to scare off investigators looking at anything related to Trump and counterintelligence.”
Strzok suggested this was part of a “chilling effect” sought by former Attorney General William Barr when appointing Durham to the task.
Strzok was fired after the discovery of anti-Trump texts with then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page. He played a key role in opening the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in 2016 and interviewed retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in January 2017.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in his December 2019 report that the FBI “concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links” between Trump and Alfa Bank. When asked about the Alfa Bank claims during House testimony in July 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller said, “My belief at this point is that it’s not true.” And a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report from 2020 did not find “covert communications between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization personnel.”
Durham charged in a court filing last week that “Internet Company-1” accessed “dedicated servers for the [Executive Office of the President] as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP” and that Joffe and his associates “exploited” this arrangement by mining the traffic and other data to gather dirt on Trump.
Durham also said Sussmann told a U.S. government agency, widely believed to be the CIA, about the phony Russian bank connection in a February 2017 meeting, where Sussmann again allegedly misled about who his client was.
In response to Durham’s filing on Friday, Sussmann’s lawyers accused Durham of “provocatively and misleadingly” describing the internet traffic potentially associated with Trump and insisted that Sussmann provided the agency believed to be the CIA with data from only before Trump took office.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Durham’s Friday filing pointed to the 2021 indictment of Sussmann, charging that Joffe “exploited his access to non-public and/or proprietary Internet data” and tasked researchers to mine internet data to establish “an inference” and “narrative” tying Trump to Russia. Durham said Joffe indicated he was doing this to please certain “VIPs” on the Clinton campaign.
The special counsel said Sussmann claimed to the CIA in 2017 that data he had access to “demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.” Durham emphasized that he found “no support for these allegations.”
On Halloween 2016, Clinton tweeted, “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” And she shared a lengthy statement from Jake Sullivan, then her campaign adviser and now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, who claimed that “this could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.”
