Durham grand jury indicts lawyer whose firm represented Hillary Clinton's campaign

[former9thward]

Source: Washington Post

A grand jury working with special counsel John Durham’s office handed up an indictment Thursday of lawyer Michael Sussmann, who prosecutors have accused of making false statements to the FBI during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Sussmann, the indictment charges, “lied about the capacity in which he was providing ... allegations to the FBI” of potential cyber links between a Russian bank and a company owned by former president Donald Trump.

An attorney at Perkins Coie, a prominent law firm tied to the Democratic party, Sussmann had been bracing for possible indictment.

Charging him marks a strange twist in the special counsel’s probe championed by Trump and his Republican allies, and which to date has resulted in a single conviction of a low-level FBI lawyer.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/john-durham-michael-sussmann-hillary-clinton/2021/09/16/ed8ba0e6-1696-11ec-a5e5-ceecb895922f_story.html?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert&wpmk=1&wpisrc=al_news__alert-politics--alert-national&pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJjb29raWVuYW1lIjoid3BfY3J0aWQiLCJpc3MiOiJDYXJ0YSIsImNvb2tpZXZhbHVlIjoiNTk2ZDViYWFhZGU0ZTIwN2QyOTZhYmVlIiwidGFnIjoid3BfbmV3c19hbGVydF9yZXZlcmUiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy53YXNoaW5ndG9ucG9zdC5jb20vbmF0aW9uYWwtc2VjdXJpdHkvam9obi1kdXJoYW0tbWljaGFlbC1zdXNzbWFubi1oaWxsYXJ5LWNsaW50b24vMjAyMS8wOS8xNi9lZDhiYTBlNi0xNjk2LTExZWMtYTVlNS1jZWVjYjg5NTkyMmZfc3RvcnkuaHRtbD91dG1fc291cmNlPWFsZXJ0JnV0bV9tZWRpdW09ZW1haWwmdXRtX2NhbXBhaWduPXdwX25ld3NfYWxlcnRfcmV2ZXJlJmxvY2F0aW9uPWFsZXJ0JndwbWs9MSZ3cGlzcmM9YWxfbmV3c19fYWxlcnQtcG9saXRpY3MtLWFsZXJ0LW5hdGlvbmFsIn0.Uf6imqiSaWsTtAfb42vdlRKKcTtGV7iScMV3Iyv4CQA

[Roy Rolling]

1. "Lying to the FBI"?

Seems like real selective prosecution.

[Miguelito Loveless]

3. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER,

speak to law enforcement. If you must, then have your attorney with you to avoid traps.

[gab13by13]

9. He is a lawyer

[Jose Garcia]

14. Apparently not a very good one

[wnylib]

20. But a prudent lawyer gets himself a lawyer

instead of handling his own case.

[Escurumbele]

18. Or just tell the truth, if you haven't done anything wrong then you should be fine.

[wnylib]

21. Not necessarily. Testimonies can be twisted

by interrogators. Always have the best legal counsel that you can get.

[Trueblue Texan]

25. Not necessarily true.nt

[Miguelito Loveless]

29. Please tell me you are kidding

I speak as a robbery victim who not only couldn’t get the police to do anything for him, but wound up being accused of inventing the robbery.

I wouldn’t give the police the color of the sky without a lawyer present.

[PoliticAverse]

4. That argument didn't work for General Flynn's defenders and it's unlikely to work in this case. n/t

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

2. The deadline for filing charges is here, so he had to come up with something to keep it going...

... even though the filing itself is just some kind of trolling/chum bait while they try to find something real.

[Jon King]

7. The statute of limitation is not extended though.

From what a prosecutor said on MSNBC, charging him for this does not extend the statute on other crimes. SO unless he did something other than this within the last 5 years, this is all they will get.

[groundloop]

5. This charge is utter nonsense, just a tiny little formality about who was working for whom.....

I found an article not behind a paywall about this matter (I hate when I can't read a linked article ), once you dig into it just a teeny tiny bit you begin to understand that it's a pure bullshit indictment with no real meat in it. It's a real shame that this kind of bullshit is happening in a Democratic administration (although I understand that it's pretty difficult to make a special counsel go away).

[cadoman]

17. here's a link to the actual indictment

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21063441/sussmann.pdf

From my reading of the indictment, it doesn't paint the FBI in a very flattering light. Sounds like a very gullible organization.

[kentuck]

33. Well, Trump did fire James Comey, the head of the FBI..

He was not very fond of the organization. It would follow that he would hire those with similar views, in an "acting" position, of course.

[Jon King]

6. All these years and millions and he got this nothingburger?

Wow, the guy might not have been completely clear about who he worked for. Yawn.

[Ford_Prefect]

8. The charge is based on a very selective reading of the terms and statute. It entirely ignores

a critical larger context of interpretation. A judge with reasonable experience is probably going to void the case as unsupportable.

[Evolve Dammit]

10. Watch TFG seize on this and the MSM to follow. 3, 2, 1....

[gab13by13]

11. From what I understand,

the FBI understood that Sussmann was just a private citizen bringing information. It appears, I could be wrong, that Sussmann was working for the Clinton campaign. I believe that there is a good case to be brought for lying to the FBI. Another reason I believe that this indictment has legs is that Merrick Garland let it proceed.

With all of that said, this guy had 3 years and could only come up with 2 indictments.

[Jon King]

12. The prosecutor on MSNBC said it was immaterial to the actual investigation.

Sure he may have been less than honest about who he worked for but the prosecutor said in almost every case she has seen, this is never actually prosecuted when it is immaterial to the main investigation. Now if Durham had discovered he lied about where he worked because that lie was to hide a bigger crime related to the investigation, different story. His less than honest answer in no way harmed the investigation.

So Durham decided to prosecute a minor white lie that in almost every other case would have been let go. So technically yes, the guy may have 'lied' about an immaterial matter.

[BlueIdaho]

28. Anything that can put the Clintons in a headline...

Is raw meat for the GQP. My understanding mirrors yours Jon - that this is not a significant misstatement of fact, but the sort of thing that usually doesn’t rise to a chargeable offense. If Durham’s authority weren’t expiring on Saturday and the Clintons weren’t somehow loosely connected this never would have been handed up.

[JohnSJ]

13. I hope those FBI agents who lied about the sexual assaults by Nassar get more than just firing for

what they did

[mackdaddy]

23. The story I heard is that the purposefully falsified some of their reports.

How is that not at a minimum "lying to the FBI" by these agents.

Does not seem to be a years long special prosecutor investigating this.

[JohnSJ]

24. Exactly

[Raven123]

15. Wow. Sure took a long time to bring a perjury charge.

Lots of taxpayer dollars. Hopefully this is the end and Garland can tell Durham to close up shop.

[halfulglas]

16. He was indicted, but it probably won't go anywhere.

He probably won't be bullied into pleading guilty and I could be wrong but it's going to wind up being a talking point for the right, but no conviction.

[riversedge]

19. sensational headline designed to get a click.

[underpants]

22. Watching CNN (Anderson) I thought it was one of Trumps lawyers

This is going to be set in concrete in RW world.

[riversedge]

30. yes. I have already blocked many for this issue.

[UnderThisLaw]

26. You can

almost feel the joy at the news in some of these posts

[LanternWaste]

27. And Ashli Babbit's estate still hasn't seen a penny

despite the dime-store prophecies.



self-styled attorneys. Go figure, eh?

[whistler162]

31. Turns out the lawyer had a

breakfast burrito instead of the egg mcmuffin he claimed to have had.

[Maeve]

32. From Google--"indict a ham sandwich meaning"

People also ask
What does it mean you can indict a ham sandwich?
The one-sidedness, combined with the low standard of proof (probable cause), means that federal grand juries almost always vote to indict someone. ... The ease of getting an indictment is why it is said that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.