Michael Sussmann has pleaded not guilty to a charge he lied to the FBI in a 2016 meeting.CSPAN
A federal judge said Michael Sussmann would likely stand trial between mid-May and early June 2022.
Sussmann was charged with lying to the FBI, in a case brought by a Trump-era special prosecutor.
Defense lawyers have pointed out flaws in the case and asked for an early May trial date.
A onetime lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign will likely stand trial in late spring 2022 on charges brought by the Trump-era special prosecutor investigating the origins of the Russia investigation, a federal judge said Wednesday.
Michael Sussmann, a former partner at the Democrat-aligned Perkins Coie firm, was indicted in September on a charge he lied to the FBI during a 2016 meeting about possible links between Russia and Donald Trump.
Prosecutors working with the special prosecutor, John Durham, alleged that Sussmann falsely told the FBI's top lawyer at the time that he was not meeting with him on behalf of any client. Sussmann has denied saying that to the FBI's then-general counsel, James Baker, and pleaded not guilty to the single false statement charge.
At a court hearing Wednesday, Judge Christopher "Casey" Cooper said he expected to schedule the trial to begin between mid-May and early June. Cooper, a 2014 appointee to the federal trial court in Washington, DC, said he would order a specific start date after consulting with court officials about scheduling issues connected to social-distancing precautions and other measures taken in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In the days leading up to Wednesday's hearing, the Durham team proposed that the trial start on July 25, with Susssmann's defense lawyers requesting a date almost three months earlier: May 2. Both sides said on Wednesday that they expect the trial to last about two weeks.
"I certainly understand the defendant's desire to get this over with and to move on with his life — win, lose, or draw," Cooper said.
Sussmann's indictment and upcoming trial represents some of the first public signs of activity out of the Durham investigation in months. Ahead of the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump repeatedly invoked Durham's investigation and voiced frustration that it had not produced dirt on the Russia inquiry.
Even after leaving office, Trump asked: "Where's Durham? Is he a living, breathing human being?"
Then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham as a special counsel in October 2020. Durham, who served as US attorney in Connecticut during the Trump administration, stepped down from that role in February but has remained special counsel through the early months of the Biden administration.
John Durham was appointed special counsel to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation.AP Photo/Bob Child
Trump's business & Alfa Bank
At the 2016 meeting with Baker, Sussmann relayed analysis by cybersecurity researchers who saw odd internet data as showing covert communications between servers tied to the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked financial institution. Durham's team alleged that Sussmann was representing both the Clinton campaign and a technology executive.
But Sussmann has said through his lawyers that he was representing only the technology executive at the 2016 meeting.
In a court filing Monday, Sussmann's lawyers disclosed evidence recently turned over to them that appears to help his defense. The evidence includes records of two Justice Department interviews of Baker in which he had differing recollections of a crucial point in his September 2016 conversation with Sussmann.
In a July 2019 interview with the Justice Department's internal watchdog, Baker recalled that Sussmann had come to him with information "that he said related to strange interactions that some number of people that were his clients, who were, he described as I recall it, sort of cybersecurity experts, had found."
Also included in the evidence was a summary Durham's team prepared of a July 2020 interview of Baker. According to that report, Baker said that the issue of whether Sussmann was representing a client never came up at the 2016 meeting. Baker said he merely assumed that Sussmann was not passing along the Alfa Bank data on behalf of a client.
The newly-disclosed evidence "only underscores the baseless and unprecedented nature of this indictment and the importance of setting a prompt trial date so that Mr. Sussmann can vindicate himself as soon as possible," Sussmann's lawyers said in the court filing.
Legal experts had previously pointed out flaws in Durham's prosecution of Sussmann, namely that the case revolved around the recollection of a single witness: Baker. In 2018, under questioning from the House Judiciary Committee, Baker testified that he could not recall portions of his 2016 meeting with Sussmann.
In the 27-page indictment, legal experts saw a level of detail that went beyond what was necessary to lay out a false statement charge. The charging document amounted, in the view of some experts, to a so-called "speaking indictment" designed to weave a political narrative about Democrats dishing on Trump behind the scenes in 2016.
