The top lawyer on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid, Marc Elias, testified in federal court Wednesday that his hiring of a private research firm to turn up damaging information about candidate Donald Trump was part of a broader effort to guard against possible libel suits against the campaign from Trump or others.
Prosecutors from special counsel John Durham’s office called Elias in the ongoing criminal trial in Washington of Michael Sussmann, one of Elias’ former colleagues at the Perkins Coie law firm. Sussmann is charged with lying to the FBI by denying he was acting for the Clinton campaign or any other client when he alerted the FBI in September 2016 to possible communication links between a Trump-related computer server and a bank owned by allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The prosecution’s main goal in questioning Elias appeared to be to reinforce its contention that Sussmann’s outreach to the FBI was part of a deliberate, broader effort by the Clinton campaign to spur press attention to the potential link between the Trump server and the Russian bank, Alfa-Bank. Sussmann’s defense has maintained that he was acting on his own behalf when he contacted the FBI and passed on data and documents supporting the notion of such a communications channel.
Under questioning by assistant special counsel Andrew DeFilippis, Elias acknowledged that he retained the private investigation firm Fusion GPS to assist him in representation of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Nat ..
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