The second week of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s trial begins on Monday morning, and the prosecutors from the Special Counsel John Durham’s team are expected to bring former FBI officers to testify, Fox News informed.
Bill Priestap, the former FBI associate director for counterintelligence, and Trisha Anderson, the FBI’s former deputy general counsel for national security, are expected to testify for the government.
Prosecutors could potentially invite Inspector General of the Justice Department Michael Horowitz to testify.
Sussmann was charged with giving a false statement to the FBI at a meeting in September 2016 with James Baker, the then-FBI General Counsel.
Sussmann brought “purported material and ‘white papers’ that supposedly revealed a secret communications channel” between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank, which has connections to the Kremlin, to that meeting less than two months before the election in US.
During that discussion, Sussmann told Baker that he was not working “for any client,” but that he is reporting the claims to the FBI as a concerned citizen.
Durham’s team claims Sussmann was working for the two clients: Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Rodney Joffe, a technology executive.
Durham believes Sussmann invoiced Hillary Clinton’s campaign for his efforts after the meeting with Baker.
Sussmann has denied the charges against him.
Sussmann’s defense attorneys chastised Baker for not taking handwritten notes during his meeting with Sussmann on Sept. 19, 2016, but prosecutors have repeatedly cited handwritten notes from Anderson and Priestap as evidence, as they have both written that Sussmann was not trying to bring the claims to the FBI on behalf of any of his clients, but he tried to do it on his own.
Last week, Baker testified that the FBI launched a probe into the Trump-Alfa Bank claims that lasted “a few weeks, or maybe one month and a half.”
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