Clinton campaign lawyer sought to 'use' FBI, prosecutor says
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign who is charged with lying to the FBI early in the Trump-Russia probe sought to “use and manipulate” federal law enforcement to create an “October surprise" in the final weeks of the presidential race, a prosecutor alleged Tuesday at the start of his trial. Defense lawyers told jurors he never lied.
Michael Sussmann is accused of misleading the FBI during a September 2016 meeting by telling the bureau's top lawyer that he wasn't acting on behalf of a particular client when he presented computer data that he said might connect Russia to then-candidate Donald Trump. In reality, prosecutors say, he was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and another client who had provided him with the data.
He lied, prosecutors told the jury, in hopes of generating an “October surprise” of FBI investigations into Trump and negative news coverage of him, and because he knew the FBI would consider the information less credible if it thought it was being presented on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
“He told a lie that was designed to achieve a political end, a lie that was designed to inject the FBI into a presidential election,” said prosecutor Brittain Shaw.
But Sussmann's lawyers sought to counter each of the prosecution’s allegations, presenting him as a well-respected attorney with deep experience in law enforcement intelligence matters who never lied to the FBI and never would. The fact that he represented Democratic clients was well-known to the FBI and not anything he intended to hide.
“He was someone the FBI knew represented partisan clients," defense lawyer Michael Bosworth said in his opening statement. ”The FBI knew that he represented the Clinton campaign that summer. The FBI knew that he was an attorney for...