After five years of accusations, investigations and recriminations, a federal jury will soon grapple with one of the legal hangovers of the 2016 presidential campaign: the trial of a politically connected lawyer charged with lying when he brought the FBI a tip about possible connections between Donald Trump’s company and a Russian bank.
The trial of Michael Sussmann centers on the narrow legal question of whether he lied when he claimed — less than two months before the 2016 election — that no client had spurred him to bring the tip to authorities, and whether that information was relevant to how FBI agents investigated the matter.
But the case, which begins Monday in federal court in downtown Washington, may also serve as a kind of Rorschach test for those still smarting over the 2016 election and eager to see political opponents suffer legal consequences for what happened.