John Durham pushed back on Michael Sussmann’s claims that former FBI General Counsel James Baker undermined the special counsel’s false statements indictment against the Democratic lawyer, contending evidence from five government employees, including Baker, supports the charge.
The indictment against Sussmann centers on a Sept. 19, 2016, meeting between him and Baker in which Sussmann pushed debunked allegations of a secret back channel between Russia’s Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. Durham contends that while Sussmann told Baker he was not working for any particular client, Sussmann was secretly doing the bidding of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and billing his services to her, as well as working on behalf of technology executive Rodney Joffe.
Sussmann denies misleading the FBI and pleaded not guilty .
As part of its effort to push for an early May 2022 trial date instead of the late July 2022 trial date preferred by prosecutors, Sussmann’s team claimed on Monday that last week, Durham’s team handed over documents about Baker’s statements about the 2016 meeting that it said “directly contradict the Special Counsel’s allegation that Mr. Sussmann affirmatively told Mr. Baker that he was not meeting with him on behalf of any clients.” The team pointed to excerpts of interviews Baker gave to DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz’s investigators in 2019 and to Durham’s team in 2020.
Durham’s team quickly pushed back in a Tuesday court filing.
“As the defendant is...
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