R&I – FS
Special Counsel John Durham slammed lawyer Michael Sussmann’s effort to have charged against him dropped as ‘absurd’ and again accused him of misleading the FBI in 2016 by passing on ‘highly explosive allegations’ about Donald Trump without disclosing his links with the Clinton campaign, in a new court filing.
The document opposes Sussmann’s attempt to have a change of lying to the FBI thrown out.
…’Far from finding himself in the vulnerable position of an ordinary person whose speech is likely to be chilled, the defendant – a sophisticated and well-connected lawyer – chose to bring politically-charged allegations to the FBI’s chief legal officer at the height of an election season,’ they wrote.
‘He then chose to lie about the clients who were behind those allegations.
‘Using such rare access to the halls of power for the purposes of political deceit is hardly the type of speech that the Founders intended to protect.’
And far from being immaterial, they went on to say that ‘the defendant’s false statement was capable of influencing both the FBI’s decision to initiate an investigation and its subsequent conduct of that investigation.’
John Smithe