(NewsNation) —Michael Sussmann’s fate is now in the hands of a jury as closing arguments were made by prosecutors and his defense Friday in a case that alleges Sussmann had partisan interests in mind when he took information about Donald Trump to the FBI in 2016.
Deliberations began Friday after prosecutors told a jury Sussman pushed “pure opposition research” to the FBI when he delivered claims found to be baseless about ties between former President Donald Trump and Russia in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
For several days, there was an open question as to whether Sussmann would take the stand in his own defense or not. In the end, he did not, so the trial was spared a final piece of drama and jurors will not hear from the man at the heart of the issue.
Allegations that Sussmann lied to the FBI back in 2016 when he brought the agency evidence of a link between a Russian bank and the Trump campaign are at the center of what the jury as to determine. Sussmann claimed at the time that he was working independently, when in fact he was being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Lying to the FBI in that manner is a federal crime.
Sussmann’s legal team argued he did not lie and even if jurors did believe he lied, the defense claimed the alleged lie did not have matter because Sussmann presented the FBI with national security information they would have looked into no matter who the source was.
“It was a very contentious time. The Russians had hacked the DNC. They were leaking emails. And there was an ongoing FBI investigation irrespective of this,” Sussmann lawyer Sean Berkowitz told jurors, referring to the Democratic National Committee. “And that was viewed as incredibly serious.”
Prosecutors argue however this was an effort to present Trump in a bad light before the 2016 election.
“It wasn’t about national security,” said Jonathan Algor, a Durham team prosecutor. “It was about promoting opposition research against the opposition candidate, Donald Trump.”
Jurors were shown a text message Sussmann sent to an FBI contact in which he made clear he was offering up the Trump information on his own, not at the behest of the Clinton campaign. They’ve also seen receipts surrounding his meeting with the FBI, and the info he provided, along with receipts, some charged to the Clinton campaign and some to his own law firm.
Sussmann is charged with a single count of making a false statement. That charge carries a maximum five-year prison sentence, though if convicted, Sussmann is likely to get far less — if any — prison time.