Lawyer charged in probe of Trump-Russia investigation

WASHINGTON (AP) — The prosecutor tasked with examining the U.S. government's investigation into Russian election interference charged a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on Thursday with making a false statement to the FBI.

The case against the attorney, Michael Sussmann of the Perkins Coie law firm, is just the second prosecution brought by special counsel John Durham in two-and-a-half years of work. Yet neither case brought by Durham undoes the core finding of an earlier investigation by Robert Mueller that Russia had interfered in sweeping fashion on behalf of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and that the Trump campaign welcomed that aid.

It lays bare the wide-ranging and evolving nature of Durham's investigation. In addition to having scrutinized the activities of FBI and CIA officials during the early days of the Russia probe, it has also looked at the behavior of private individuals like Sussman who provided the U.S. government with information as it scrambled to determine whether Trump associates were coordinating with Russia to tip the election's outcome.

The indictment accuses Sussmann of hiding that he was working with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during a September 2016 conversation he had with the FBI’s general counsel, when he relayed concerns from cybersecurity researchers about potentially suspicious contacts between Russia-based Alfa Bank and a Trump organization server. The FBI looked into the matter but found no connections. Sussmann is a former federal prosecutor who specializes in cybersecurity.

Sussmann’s lawyers, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, said their client is a highly-respected national security lawyer who had previously worked in the Justice Department under both Republican and Democratic administrations and said they were confident he would prevail at trial and...