On Thursday, attorneys for Michael Sussmann, the lawyer from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign who was charged last year with lying to federal agents, filed a motion to dismiss Special Counsel John Durham’s case against him, reports the New York Post. The lawyers called the matter “extraordinary prosecutorial overreach.”
Sussmann’s legal team insists that he didn’t make false statements to the FBI and that he’s being targeted on a technicality. Sussman voluntarily approached FBI agents in Sept. 2016 to “pass along information that raised national security concerns.” Instead, Sussman came to them with bogus information linking the Trump Organization and the Kremlin-linked Alfa-Bank.
“He met with the FBI, in other words, to provide a tip. There is no allegation in the indictment that the tip he provided was false. And there is no allegation that he believed that the tip he provided was false,” Sussman’s lawyer’s motion reads. “Rather, Mr. Sussmann has been charged with making a false statement about an entirely ancillary matter — about who his client may have been when he met with the FBI — which is a fact that even the special counsel’s own indictment fails to allege had any effect on the FBI’s decision to open an investigation. Allowing this case to go forward would risk criminalizing ordinary conduct, raise First Amendment concerns, dissuade honest citizens from coming forward with tips, and chill the advocacy of lawyers who interact with the government.”
Related: The Media Lied Repeatedly About Trump Being Spied On, and We’ve Got the Receipts
“Where individuals have been prosecuted for providing tips to government investigators, they have historically been charged with making a false statement only where the tip itself was alleged to be false, because that is the only statement that could affect the specific decision to commence an investigation,” the motion continued. “Indeed, the defense is aware of no case in which an individual has provided a tip to the government and has been charged with making any false statement other than providing a false tip. But that is exactly what has happened here.”
Sussmann faces up to five years in prison if convicted of lying to federal agents. He has pleaded not guilty.
In a tweet, Hillary Clinton mocked the recent bombshell from the Durham investigation on Wednesday. “Trump & Fox are desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones. So it’s a day that ends in Y,” Hillary claimed. “The more his misdeeds are exposed, the more they lie.”
After days of silence, there now seems to be a coordinated effort by Hillary, her allies, and the media to attack the Durham investigation. From where I sit, it sounds like they’re panicking.
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