Attorney who investigated Trump’s ties to Russia is acquitted of lying to the FBI

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• Judy Woodruff:

  The latest chapter in the ongoing investigation into the origins of the Trump Russia probe came to an end today in what's considered a defeat for former President Trump's assertions that the probe was biased against him from the start.

  William Brangham has more on what happened today.

• William Brangham:

  That's right, Judy.

  A jury here in Washington, D.C., today acquitted a lawyer named Michael Sussmann on the charge of lying to the FBI. This was the first case brought to trial by special counsel John Durham. Durham was appointed during the Trump administration. And former President Trump long hoped Durham would uncover illegal behavior by officials who investigated him, his campaign and alleged links to Russia.

  So, for more on what today's acquittal was all about and what it actually means going forward, I'm joined again by Carrie Johnson. She covers the Justice Department for NPR.

  Carrie, great to see you again.

  This Sussmann trial and the case itself was very complicated for those who looked into it. You have been there all two weeks during the actual proceedings. Can you just give us a succinct recap of what the charges were against him?

• Carrie Johnson, NPR:

  I will do my best.

  This is a complicated case, but, in fact, it boiled down to a single count of making false statements to the FBI in a meeting that the defendant, Michael Sussmann, had with then FBI general counsel Jim Baker in September 2016, just a few weeks, six weeks or so, before the election

  And what the special counsel team and John Durham were alleging is that Sussmann lied in order to get this meeting, that Sussmann told Baker he was not appearing on behalf of a company or a client, but, rather, he wanted to bring allegations about strange links between the Trump organization and a Russian bank to the FBI out of the goodness of his heart because he was a good citizen.

  And Durham in fact argued to the jury that Sussmann was motivated for partisan political interests and wanted to use the FBI. That was the heart of this case.

• William Brangham:

  I see, right, because I remember Sussmann, his law firm did represent the Clinton campaign. He also represented a software executive who — that's how he heard about some of these alleged links.

  But this whole case doesn't sound necessarily at the core of what Durham was principally charged with looking into, right?

• Carrie Johnson:

  When John Durham was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr during the Trump administration, it was a time when then-President Trump was talking a lot about the people who investigated him and making a lot of dark and shadowy allegations about the origins of this investigation.

  And Durham was supposed to get to the bottom of all that and bring to justice any FBI employees who engaged in wrongdoing and also to investigate members of the intelligence community who might have engaged in wrongdoing.

  In fact, in this case against Michael Sussmann, the FBI was a victim, was an alleged victim of Sussmann's lie, not the perpetrator of a crime. And to some lawyers who've been following these cases, that seemed pretty far afield from Durham's mandate.

• William Brangham:

  As I know you remember, and others might as well, when the original filings for this case were posted, the conservative media seized on those filings as evidence that, aha, we now can see that the Clinton campaign was spying on the computer networks of the Trump campaign.

  This was all somewhat debunked in real time. But did any of those allegations end up in this case in court at all?

• Carrie Johnson:

  No, none of that ended up in this case in court.

  Judge Casey Cooper told prospective jurors before the trial began that we were not going to re litigate the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton was not on trial, Donald Trump was not on trial. And he kept a lot of that rhetoric out of what the jury actually heard.

  The jurors basically said, the ones we talked to outside the courthouse today, that politics played no role in their deliberations, and that that was not something that they considered over the six hours that they were behind closed doors thinking about this case.

• William Brangham:

  President Trump took this jury's verdict pretty hard today, writing in a statement, in part: "Our legal system is corrupt. Our country is going to hell, and Michael Sussmann is not guilty," he wrote sarcastically.

  This is obviously a blow to Durham's investigation. Does he have more cases to come?

• Carrie Johnson:

  Yes, he has one more trial on the books in October in Virginia against a Russian national who worked at a think tank and is charged with making false statements to the FBI as well. As far as we know, that's going forward this fall.

• William Brangham:

  Carrie Johnson of NPR, always good to see you. Thank you.

• Carrie Johnson:

  My pleasure.