Sussman is charged with one count of making a false statement to the FBI. The 12-member jury, made up of seven women and five men and five people of color, deliberated for about four hours on Friday before leaving for the three-day weekend.
During closing arguments, special prosecutors said there was “compelling” evidence that Sussman “concealed” his connections to the Clinton campaign and hid his work under the guise of cybersecurity to promote an unsubstantiated innuendo between Trump and Russia for the FBI.
“It was not a national security issue,” prosecutor Jonathan Algor told the jury. It was about advancing the opposition investigation into opposition candidate Donald Trump.”
Prosecutors allege that Sussman lied to then-FBI Attorney General James Baker on Sept. 19, 2016, while feeding him information about possible ties between the Trump Organization and Alpha Bank, which is linked to the Kremlin. Sussman is accused of falsely telling Baker that he was not there on behalf of any client, even though, according to Durham, he was there on behalf of Clinton. (The FBI found no illicit activity after a four-month investigation.)
The case is the first major trial in court for Durham, the Trump-era attorney general who spent three years seeking misconduct in the FBI’s Russia investigation but failed to deliver the indictments Trump expected.
A conviction may bolster Durham’s credibility, while an acquittal could acquit his critics, who say he is conducting a politicized investigation of flimsy theories.
Sussman’s attorneys accused Durham on Friday of trying to “mislead” a jury by coaching and coercing witnesses to obtain a conviction in a case that “makes no sense” and “shouldn’t have been brought” in the first place.
“The time for political conspiracy theories is over,” defense attorney Sean Berkowitz said during closing arguments. “It’s time to talk about the evidence.”
He claimed that Durham “attempted to undermine” a key witness by threatening to prosecute him, and collected a large number of emails and government documents to fit his case against Sussman.
“Any evidence that doesn’t fit their tunnel vision theory, they ignore it,” Berkowitz said.
He also refuted the prosecution’s focus on “opposition research” during his closing remarks, which showed how Sussman meticulously worked with Clinton’s top campaign attorney and campaign-funded investigators to collect and disseminate anti-Trump material to the media.
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“The opposition investigation is not illegal,” Berkowitz said. “If that were the case, Washington, DC prisons would be overcrowded.”
Sussman, who has pleaded not guilty, could face up to five years in prison if convicted, though there is no guarantee he will spend any time behind bars and he will likely receive a lower sentence as a first-time offender.
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