Durham Is Said to Seek Indictment of Lawyer at Firm With Democratic Ties

The lawyer, Michael Sussmann, is accused of lying to the F.B.I. in a 2016 meeting about Trump and Russia. He denies wrongdoing.

Mr. Durham did apparently find an inconsistency: Mr. Baker, the former F.B.I. lawyer, is said to have told investigators that he recalled Mr. Sussmann saying that he was not meeting him on behalf of any client.

Internal billing records Mr. Durham is said to have obtained from Perkins Coie are said to show that when Mr. Sussmann logged certain hours as working on the Alfa Bank matter - though not the meeting with Mr. Baker - he billed the time to Mrs. Clinton's 2016 campaign.

In their attempt to head off any indictment, Mr. Sussmann's lawyers are said to have insisted that their client was representing the cybersecurity expert he mentioned to Congress and was not there on behalf of or at the direction of the Clinton campaign.

Mr. Tyrrell added: "He sought legal advice from Michael Sussmann who had advised him on unrelated matters in the past and Mr. Sussmann shared that information with the F.B.I. on his behalf. He did not know Mr. Sussmann's law firm had a relationship with the Clinton campaign and was simply doing the right thing."

Perkins Coie responded with a letter to the editor saying that was not Mr. Sussmann's role and that the unnamed client on whose behalf he spoke to the F.B.I. had "No connections to either the Clinton campaign, the D.N.C. or any other political law group client."

In a deposition to Congress in 2018, Mr. Baker said he did not remember Mr. Sussmann "Specifically saying that he was acting on behalf of a particular client," but also said Mr. Sussmann had told him "He had cyberexperts that had obtained some information that they thought should get into the hands of the F.B.I.".

Mr. Durham's team is said to have found handwritten notes made by another senior F.B.I. official at the time, whom Mr. Baker briefed about the conversation with Mr. Sussmann, that support the notion that Mr. Sussmann said he was not there on behalf of a client.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/us/politics/durham-michael-sussmann-trump-russia.html