By Jan Wolfe
WASHINGTON -A U.S. judge on Wednesday declined to throw out a criminal case against Michael Sussmann, a Democratic Party-linked lawyer accused of lying to the FBI, setting the stage for a jury trial scheduled for May 16.
Sussmann was charged as part of U.S. Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI inquiry of suspected ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Sussmann is a former lawyer for the Perkins Coie firm who previously worked for 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Republican Trump, who became president.
In a written order, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in the District of Columbia denied a motion to dismiss the criminal case filed by Sussmann’s legal team.
Sussmann had argued as grounds for dismissal that he never made a “material,” or consequential, misstatement to the FBI. But Cooper said he needed to hear the government’s evidence before resolving the “materiality” issue.
“The battle lines thus are drawn, but the Court cannot resolve this standoff prior to trial,” Cooper wrote.
Sussmann has pleaded not guilty and denies that he lied to the FBI.
Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI about who he was representing when he met with the agency in September 2016.
Sussmann gave the FBI evidence of potential cyber links between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. The FBI eventually investigated the Alfa Bank matter but decided the suspicions were unfounded.
According to Durham’s indictment, Sussmann lied by saying he was not passing along information about Trump on behalf of any specific client.
The indictment said Sussmann turned over that information to the FBI not as a “good citizen” but as an attorney representing a U.S. technology executive, Rodney Joffe, and Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The case is the second criminal prosecution Durham has filed since Trump-era U.S. Attorney General William Barr tapped him in 2019 to investigate U.S. officials who probed the Trump-Russia contacts. Trump portrayed the 2016 FBI investigation as part of a political witch hunt.
The administration of President Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 election, has allowed Durham to continue his work as special counsel.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe, Editing by Grant McCool)