FBI Appears to Have Referred to Sussmann as ‘the US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE’ in Document Opening Investigation of Supposed Trump–Russia Back Channel

I have a column up on the homepage this morning about the curious fact that Michael Sussmann, currently on trial for making false statements to the FBI, had a badge that permitted him to enter FBI headquarters and roam around the place. As I detail, that seems awfully peculiar since Sussmann has not been a Justice Department lawyer for many years — he is a highly paid private attorney whose clients (famously, the DNC with respect to its hacked servers, which were withheld from the FBI) sometimes take positions opposed to the government’s.

This intriguing fact seems to have escaped much notice at the trial last week. I theorize that this is because neither Sussmann lawyers nor Special Counsel John Durham’s prosecutors see upside in highlighting it. Regardless of that, I conclude, “the public deserves an explanation of why Sussmann had a badge allowing him to enter and wander around FBI headquarters, and why the FBI brass took such extraordinary measures to conceal Sussmann’s identity as the source of the Trump–Russia information.”

On that last point, this morning we have this remarkable report from the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy. Astonishingly, when the FBI wrote up its standard “EC” (electronic communication) that opened the investigation into the allegation that Donald Trump had established a communications back channel with Russia, it claimed that the information had come to the bureau from “the US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE.” In fact, it came from Sussmann, a lawyer for the Clinton campaign.

As I said when asked by the Examiner for comment, this seems outrageous to me. It was one (maddening) thing for the FBI’s top officials to decide to conceal Sussmann’s identity from the agents who were tasked with assessing the information that Sussmann had provided. But it is quite another thing to say that the information came, not from a confidential informant, not from a Clinton campaign lawyer, but from the Justice Department.

The trial is continuing this week and some of the agents involved in the investigation-opening document may be testifying. Perhaps there will be some explanation.