Elias and the campaign paid a flat monthly retainer to the firm, so Mr. Sussmann was not charging his client for work on the Alfa Bank matter, but needed to show internally that he was working on something. They are also said to have argued that the billing records are misleading because Mr. Sussmann’s lawyers are said to have insisted that their client was representing the cybersecurity expert he mentioned to Congress and was not there on behalf of or at the direction of the Clinton campaign. In their attempt to head off any indictment, Mr. Sussmann logged certain hours as working on the Alfa Bank matter - though not the meeting with Mr. Durham is said to have obtained from Perkins Coie are said to show that when 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. But in a deposition before Congress in 2017, Mr. Sussmann saying that he was not meeting him on behalf of any client. lawyer, is said to have told investigators that he recalled Mr. Durham did apparently find an inconsistency: Mr. To date, there has been no public sign that he has found any such evidence.īut Mr. Durham has been using a grand jury to examine the Alfa Bank episode and appeared to be hunting for any evidence that the data had been cherry-picked or the analysis of it knowingly skewed, The New Yorker and other outlets have reported. (In fact, The Times was not ready to run that article, but published one mentioning Alfa Bank six weeks later.) Sussmann’s lawyers have told the Justice Department that he sought the meeting because he and the cybersecurity researchers believed that The New York Times was on the verge of publishing an article about the Alfa Bank data and he wanted to give the F.B.I. Mueller III, ignored the matter in his final report. The special counsel who later took over the Russia investigation, Robert S. eventually decided those concerns had no merit. Sussmann relayed data and analysis from cybersecurity researchers who thought that odd internet data might be evidence of a covert communications channel between computer servers associated with the Trump Organization and with Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked Russian financial institution. Durham has a deadline of this weekend to bring a charge over activity from that date.Īt the meeting, Mr. They spoke on condition of anonymity.īecause of a five-year statute of limitations for such cases, Mr. Baker, who was the F.B.I.’s top lawyer at the time, according to the people familiar with the matter. Sussmann focuses on a meeting he had on Sept. Durham but is said to have declined to, did not comment. Garland, who has the authority to overrule Mr.
#DNC SERVER NOT GIVEN TO FBI TRIAL#
Sussmann is charged, he will prevail at trial and vindicate his good name.”Ī spokesman for Attorney General Merrick B. “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. Sussmann has committed no crime,” they said. Bosworth of Latham & Watkins, acknowledged on Wednesday that they expected him to be indicted, while denying he made any false statement. Sussmann was secretly working for the Clinton campaign - which he denies.Īn indictment is not a certainty: On rare occasions, grand juries decline prosecutors’ requests. Among other things, investigators have examined whether Mr. Sussmann centers on the question of who his client was when he conveyed certain suspicions about Mr. Sussmann’s, represented the party and the Hillary Clinton campaign - of seeking to stoke unfair suspicions about Mr. Trump and his supporters have long accused Democrats and Perkins Coie - whose political law group, a division separate from Mr. Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to scrutinize the Russia investigation, has told the Justice Department that he will ask a grand jury to indict a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on a charge of making a false statement to the F.B.I., people familiar with the matter said.Īny indictment of the lawyer - Michael Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, and who represented the Democratic National Committee on issues related to Russia’s 2016 hacking of its servers - is likely to attract significant political attention.ĭonald J.