Furthermore, billing records that Durham obtained from Perkins Coie allegedly show that when Sussmann “logged certain hours as working on the Alfa Bank matter,” he billed the time to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. At the time, Marc Elias, another partner at Perkins Coie, was serving as general counsel for the Clinton campaign.
According to the indictment, Sussmann — a prominent cybersecurity lawyer whose law firm Perkins Coie worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign — lied at a September 2016 meeting with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in which Sussmann shared information about possible connections between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank.
The indictment follows a report in the New York Times on Wednesday announcing that Durham would seek an indictment by a grand jury over a meeting between Michael Sussmann and the FBI in 2016 when Sussmann claimed to not have been working on behalf of a client while raising suspicions about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.
A panel of 16 judges concluded that U.S. Attorney General William Barr has enough evidence to indict Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on conspiracy charges.
The Trump Administration was quick to issue a statement through Director of Information and Propaganda, Art Tubolls:
The judges all agreed that the initial dossier narrative used to obtain a wiretap of the Trump campaign was most likely bogus and that the conclusions inferred from any evidence gathered from them is, therefore, fruit of the poisonous tree and not admissible in court.
In Clinton's case, on the question of whether there was intentional misconduct, indications of disloyalty to the U.S. or obstruct justice, Comey concluded, "We do not see those things here."
But the case against Petraeus was, in fact, far more clear. Melendres, who was the lead prosecutor against David Petraeus, compared his case to Clinton's. In Petraeus' case, "the FBI uncovered an audio recording that included a conversation between the former CIA director and his biographer [Paula Broadwell] about the classified information that he ultimately shared with her." In that recording, Broadwell asked Petraeus when he would show her the information, and he explained to her that it was highly classified. And then, he told her he'd share it with her. Petraeus then went on to lie to the FBI when he was asked about it.
On Wednesday afternoon, Attorney General Loretta Lynch received and accepted the FBI's "unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation."
Republicans are puzzled about why it is FBI Director James Comey declined to recommend prosecuting Hillary Clinton, but they'll have a chance to ask him about his reasoning Thursday, when he testifies before Congress.