WASHINGTON (AP)-Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign attorney was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI when she leaked information aimed at raising suspicions about Donald Trump and Russia ahead of the 2016 election.
Case against Michele Susman This is Special Attorney John Durham’s first courtroom trial since his appointment three years ago to find government misconduct in investigating potential links between Russia and the campaign. Trump in 2016. The verdict marks a setback in Durham’s work, especially after Trump supporters called for an investigation to discover what they say is the law enforcement bias investigating the former president.
The jury heard the case on Friday afternoon and Tuesday morning before the decision.
“Although we are disappointed with the result, we respect the jury’s decision and are grateful for their service. “I would also like to acknowledge and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking justice and fairness in this case,” Durham said in a statement.
The trial centered on Susman, a cyber security attorney and former federal prosecutor, who was hiding from the FBI when he leaked cyber data that he said revealed a possible secret channel between Russian Alpha Bank and Trump’s business. Trump’s organization. The FBI investigated, but quickly determined there were no suspicious contacts.
James Baker, the office’s attorney general at the time and a key government witness, said he was “100% confident” that Susman had told him not to represent any of the clients at the meeting. Prosecutors say he actually acted on behalf of Clinton’s campaign and another client’s and hid this information to look more credible and increase the FBI’s chances of having an investigation.
Susman’s lawyers denied he lied, and said it was impossible to confirm what he told Baker because they were the only ones who attended the meeting and none of them noticed.
They argued that if Sasman said he didn’t act on behalf of the Clinton campaign, he would be technically accurate because he didn’t ask the FBI to take any particular action. They said that even if he made a false statement, it was completely irrelevant because the FBI was already investigating the Russia and Trump campaign and analyzing Alpha Bank data regardless of source.
During the two -week trial, jurors heard current and former FBI officials describe attempts to check the legitimacy of the data, as well as former Clinton campaign aides.
The initial Trump-Russia investigation, overseen for two years by former special prosecutor Robert Mueller, saw several attempts by Russia to intervene in the name of Trump’s campaign, but did not stipulate that both sides cooperate. to influence elections.
After Mueller’s tenure, Attorney General William Barr then appointed the Department of Justice’s new attorney, then United States Attorney of Connecticut Durham, to investigate whether anyone from the FBI or other agency violated the law when the government launched of the investigation in Russia. Trump’s campaign.
Durham still works in the Biden administration. So far he has filed three lawsuits, although the case against Samsan is the only one that has gone to court. Former FBI attorney Kevin Klinsmith was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty in 2020 to exchanging emails of former Trump campaign aides and Russian analysts involved in a Democrat -funded investigation into a related file. And Trump is awaiting trial on FBI fraud cases with news sources.
Source: Huffpost
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