The federal investigation of a Clinton-connected lawyer over his role in spreading news of a Trump-Russia mystery—the still unexplained computer links between the Trump Organization and Russia’s powerful Alfa Bank—has ended just like the conundrum he shared. It was a dud.
On Tuesday, a jury found Michael A. Sussmann was not guilty of lying to the FBI when he passed along computer signal information to the feds—but allegedly didn’t tell them he was a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic Party.
Sussmann was indicted in September 2021 and charged with a single count of “willfully and knowingly” making a “materially false” statement to a federal agent. He was the primary target of a politically charged prosecution led by a Justice Department attorney that Republicans had hoped would be the counter to the much-maligned Trump-Russia investigation.
ADVERTISEMENT
When the independent team led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrapped up its probe, the Trump administration started its own investigation of that investigation. The administration tapped Special Counsel John H. Durham, then the U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, to lead his own mission. Sussmann was supposed to be his first major takedown.
Shortly after the jury verdict acquitted Sussmann, Durham put out a statement: “While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service. I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case.”
During the two week trial, federal investigators laid out what they considered clear evidence that Sussmann had purposefully hidden his political ties—and the fact that he was, at the time, charging hourly fees for Clinton and Democrats—when he approached the FBI with details that would spark an investigation that naturally would harm the Trump presidential campaign just two months before the 2016 election.
As the Durham team of investigators put it in the indictment, “Sussmann lied about the capacity in which he was providing the allegations to the FBI. Specifically, Sussmann stated falsely that he was not doing his work on the aforementioned allegations ‘for any client.” They asserted that the FBI was duped into thinking Sussmann “was acting as a good citizen merely passing along information, not as a paid advocate or political operative.”
But until the very eve of trial, Sussmann maintained that he did, in fact, make it clear he was on the Democrats’ payroll—but that he truly believed the tip he was turning over was evidence of suspicious activity.
Sussmann’s legal team portrayed the story this way in a court filing on Friday: A renown South African computer scientist, Rodney Joffe, approached Sussmann with never-before-seen data that showed odd computer transmissions between computer servers used by the Trump Organization in the United States and Alfa Bank in Russia.
Sussmann, an established attorney in Washington with a cybersecurity law practice, reached out to his contact at the FBI, Jim Baker, who was then the bureau’s top lawyer. They met the next day on Sept. 19, 2016, and Sussmann shared details with Baker that would kick off an FBI investigation with serious national security implications.
While Sussmann and his cybersecurity contact passed the story along to then-New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau, FBI agents scrambled to make sense of computer data that was obtuse at best.
With just a week before the November 2016 elections, Lichtblau’s news story detailed the odd computer link with a story headline that would later be the subject of much ridicule, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.”
That same day, Slate ran a similar story with a much more damning tone, asking, “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?” While both stories whet the anti-Russia appetites of Trump-hating progressives, neither actually exposed any wrongdoing. They also setup the FBI to look as it the bureau had failed to properly investigate a presidential candidate before he became the top politician in the country.
Shortly after Trump assumed office in 2017, CNN detailed how the FBI was actually still investigating the odd “pings” between those servers—and how the explanations by the Trump Organization, Alfa Bank, and the company that actually independently ran the server didn’t hold up. If these communications were indeed simply random marketing emails, that wouldn’t explain why the pings ramped up sharply during the final months of the Trump campaign.
The technical evidence was vague, but one thing was clear: Internet data showed that Alfa Bank’s computer server repeatedly looked up how to directly contact a server being temporarily used by Trump’s family company.
Alfa Bank would later claim the entire ordeal was merely an effort to frame the bank for suspicious activities it didn’t commit, and it aggressively pursued menacing legal threats against a computer scientist who spoke up about her concerns.
In an effort to clear its name, the Russian bank hired the reputable American cybersecurity firm Mandiant—which has many ties to U.S. government agencies, hires former computer spies, and helps law enforcement on investigations.
The FBI investigation didn’t go anywhere, and the matter simply got filed away along with all the other unresolved Trump-Russia allegations. “The FBI investigated whether there were cyber links between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, but had concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links,” said a 2019 report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. The server issue didn’t even make it into Mueller’s final 448-page report.
Sussmann’s acquittal on Tuesday is quite the embarrassment for a federal prosecutor whose special team already spent more than $2.8 million in its first year—and a yet-unknown sum from October 2021 until now. Despite all the excitement, particularly from MAGA media, the team has indicted three people. The charges against Sussmann failed to stick. They have yet to go to trial on similar charges against Igor Danchenko, a Russian living in Virginia whose research fed most of what became known as the “Steele dossier.”
So far, the only successful case has resulted in 12 months probation for Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer who admitted to altering an email that was used to apply for spying authority during “Crossfire Hurricane,” the investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
