In September, a federal grand jury in the US District Court for the District of Columbia charged lawyer Michael Sussmann, who previously represented the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton Presidential Campaign, for making a false statement to the FBI about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The lawyer pleaded not guilty to one count of making a false statement to a federal agent.
Sussman was indicted as a result of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia collision investigation.
According to the Durham indictment, an unnamed Clinton campaign lawyer “exchanged emails with the Clinton Campaign’s campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor [Jake Sullivan] concerning the Russian Bank-1 allegations that Sussmann had recently shared,” with an unnamed reporter, the report said.
There is only an indication that Sullivan received information from Sussmann while not being a target of Durham’s investigation, the report said.
Durham was appointed as a Special Counsel by former US Attorney General William Barr in May 2019 to review the FBI’s actions in the alleged Trump-Russia collusion probe, including the FBI spying on a former Trump campaign adviser and on the campaign. He was supposed to present the results of his investigation by the end of this summer but this term was pushed back.
In August, the Wall Street Journal reported that Durham’s team of prosecutors also focused the probe on individuals outside the FBI who provided information that helped fuel the 2016 investigation into the alleged collusion and whether tipsters knew the information they provided was false.