Trump-Appointed Special Counsel Indicts Lawyer at DNC-Associated Firm

John Durham, the special counsel appointed by former President Donald Trump to investigate the probe into Russian election interference, requested and received an indictment from a grand jury against a cybersecurity lawyer at a law firm tied to the Democratic National Committee for allegedly lying to the FBI. Michael Sussman is a well-known cybersecurity lawyer with the law firm Perkins Coie, which represented the Democratic National Committee after Russia hacked its servers and released its emails, though Sussman himself did not. The alleged lie arises from a meeting between Sussman and the FBI’s top lawyer about irregular data transfers. Durham alleges that Sussman “lied about the capacity in which he was providing... allegations to the FBI.” Sussman allegedly said he was not meeting with the FBI on behalf of a client but later testified before Congress that he had, in fact, attended on behalf of an anonymous cybersecurity expert. Trump and his associates have long accused Perkins Coie of fear-mongering about Russian influence on the former president. Sussman’s lawyers said denied their client had committed a crime: “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work.”