Dueling court filings have attracted considerable attention recently — especially among conservative media outlets — about the alleged inner workings of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign leading up to the 2016 election. The first missive, filed Friday by special counsel John H. Durham, led to claims by conservatives (such as Kash Patel on FOX News) and even by Donald Trump himself that liberal and Democratic figures were “infiltrating” or “spying” on his campaign. The Durham filing, however, does not directly make such a bald allegation, and the person against whom the filing was made has lashed back at many of the filing’s other factual assertions.
First, the background. Durham last September secured a single-count indictment against Michael Sussmann, a high-profile Perkins Coie cybersecurity lawyer who previously worked for the Hillary Clinton campaign and for the Democratic Party. Sussmann was accused of allegedly “mak[ing] a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement or representation” before an Executive Branch agency, namely, the General Counsel of the FBI (who at the time was James Baker). The crime alleged is a purported violation of 18 U.S.C. §1001(a)(2). Sussmann has pleaded not guilty to the charge.
According to the original Durham indictment from last year, Sussmann said “he was not acting on behalf of any client in conveying particular allegations concerning a Presidential candidate, when in truth, and in fact, and as the defendant well knew, he was acting on behalf of specific clients, namely, Tech Executive-1 and the Clinton Campaign.”