Durham Team Accuses Sussmann of Lying to FBI as Part of ‘October Surprise’ Plot to Bring Down Trump

Washington, D.C. — Deborah Shaw, a prosecutor working on Special Counsel John Durham’s team, began her opening statement in the trial of Michael Sussmann by accusing the attorney of lying to the FBI as part of a plot to plant an “October surprise” that would derail the Trump campaign just weeks ahead of the 2016 election.

Addressing the assembled jurors, who were selected Monday, Shaw accused Sussmann of leveraging his “privilege” as a former FBI employee and an attorney at the high-powered Perkins Coie law firm to use the bureau as a “political tool” in service of his then-client, the Hillary Clinton campaign.

“The evidence will show that this is a case about privilege… the privilege of a lawyer who thought he could lie to the FBI without consequences,” Shaw said.

Indicted on one count of having made a materially false statement to the FBI, Sussmann stands accused of telling former FBI general counsel James Baker that he wasn’t representing any client when he presented Baker with evidence of communications between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. The government alleges that Sussmann was in fact representing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and tech executive Rodney Joffe, who provided Sussmann with the evidence.

Shaw noted that Sussmann had texted Baker ahead of their meeting professing to be coming to him as a concerned citizen and not on behalf of “any client.” After their meeting, during which Sussmann allegedly reiterated this point, the FBI immediately opened up a case. Shaw contended that this constituted “a plan to create an October surprise and change the course of the 2016 election,” as well as to please several of his clients, including both Joffe and the DNC.

Throughout the trial, the government will describe that plan as including three parts: A “look,” a “leak,” and a “lie.”

The “look” came in the form of Joffe enlisting his employees to scour their databases for anything that could be potentially incriminating for Trump or his campaign. The “leak” came when Sussmann and Joffe leaked the data connecting Alfa Bank and Trump to New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau. And the “lie” occurred when Sussmann then took the information to the FBI, telling them he was doing so out of a sense of civic duty and not behalf of any client. Shaw submitted that Sussmann told this lie intentionally, to increase the seriousness with which the bureau pursued the lead.

“No one should be so privileged as to be able to walk into the FBI and lie for political ends,” said Shaw.

The defense presented an entirely different explanation for Sussmann’s motivations, and cast doubt on a number of the prosecution’s assertions.

“Michael Sussmann didn’t lie to the FBI. Michael Sussmann wouldn’t lie to the FBI,” said Michael Bosworth, who presented the defense’s opening argument.

Bosworth argued that in meeting with Baker, Sussmann was actually acting against his clients’ and in the FBI’s best interests. He suggested that the Clinton campaign didn’t want Sussmann to go to the FBI because the “leak” described by the prosecution had worked and no further action was required to hurt the Trump campaign. Two hours before he texted Baker, Sussmann received an email about the Trump campaign panicking about a New York Times article on the Alfa Bank connection being imminent.

According to Bosworth, Sussmann went to the FBI “to give them a heads-up” so they wouldn’t be caught “flat-footed.”

In a particularly forceful moment, Bosworth attacked Baker’s credibility, telling the jury that the former FBI general counsel’s “memory is mud.” Bosworth disparaged Baker’s memory to explain why a March 2017 presentation given by the FBI to top officials at the Department of Justice, attended by Baker, included materials that said the Alfa Bank data had come from an attorney on behalf of their client.

The defense is arguing on two fronts, making the case that the prosecution can’t prove that Sussmann said he wasn’t representing a client, and that it wasn’t necessarily inaccurate even if he had said he was coming to the bureau as a concerned citizen.

Bosworth said that Sussmann had everything to lose and nothing to gain from lying, and that Joffe is “one of the world’s leading cyber experts,” so he had no reason to doubt that the data represented a national-security concern. He also said that despite what government witnesses might say, “no one cared about the motivations of Mr. Sussmann, or his cyber experts [Joffe and his employees], let alone his clients.” As evidence, he pointed out that no one working on the Alfa Bank case ever interviewed him or Joffe about their motivations.

The trial will proceed on Tuesday with government witnesses, including several FBI agents and potentially prominent Democratic lawyer Marc Elias.