Information about the alleged links between the Trump Organization and a bank in Russia was provided to the FBI by lawyer Michael Sussmann in 2016.
The FBI investigation did not find any evidence of the existence of any communication channel between the company of former U.S. President Donald Trump Trump Organization and the Russian Alfa Bank. This was stated on Thursday at the trial in the District of Columbia by the chief adviser of the department, James Baker.
In September last year, U.S. Special Prosecutor John Durham filed charges of perjury against a lawyer associated with the Democratic Party, Michael Sussmann, who in 2016 provided the FBI with information about alleged links between the company of Trump, who later became American president, and a bank in Russia. “We could not confirm that there was any secret channel <…>. There was nothing there,” the Fox News channel quoted Baker as saying. He also noted that “at that time, the FBI attached great importance to the investigation.”
Sussmann was a former employee of the U.S. Department of Justice, and later represented the interests of many clients. Among them are the National Committee of the Democratic Party of the USA, as well as the election headquarters of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in 2016 the main rival of Republican Trump in the presidential race. In September 2016, the lawyer provided the FBI with materials that related to the alleged “secret communication channel” between Trump’s Trump Organization company and a bank in Russia.
Durham, since May 2019, on behalf of the then head of the U.S. Department of Justice, William Barr, has been checking the circumstances of the beginning of surveillance of Trump’s headquarters by American intelligence services. He was given the powers of a special prosecutor, which allows the said proceedings to be conducted even under the current democratic administration.
