A judge refused to grant a mistrial Thursday sought by former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann — and also let a woman remain on the jury after she revealed her daughter plays on a high school sports team with the defendant’s daughter.
Federal Judge Christopher Cooper rejected defense arguments that testimony by former Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias on Wednesday had poisoned the jury against Sussmman, who’s charged with a single count of lying to the FBI.
“I’m going to deny the motion for a mistrial to the extent one has been made,” Cooper said before the jury entered the courtroom.
But Cooper said he was “prepared to strike non-responsive portions of the transcripts” that the defense said were the result of “repeated improper questioning” by a member of special counsel John Durham’s team.
In court papers, the defense contended that the back-and-forth “violated Mr. Susmann’s constitutional rights by effectively suggesting to the jury that, in order to answer a key question in the case…’you would have to ask Mr. Sussmann.'”
Special counsel John Durham is prosecuting Michael Sussmann on charges that Sussmann lied to the FBI. REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson“That suggestion implicates Mr. Sussmann’s Fifth Amendment right not to testify in his own defense, and Mr. Sussmann was deeply prejudiced by Mr. Elias’s comments and the Special Counsel’s efforts to double down on those comments,” defense lawyers wrote.
Sussmann, 57, is accused of falsely denying that he was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign and another client, former tech executive Rodney Joffe, when he gave the FBI since-debunked computer data that purportedly revealed a secret back channel between a Trump Organization computer server and Russia’s Alfa Bank.
Michael Sussman was Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer. REUTERS/Andrew KellyAlso Thursday, Cooper denied a prosecution request to remove a juror whose daughter is on the same high school crew team as Sussmann’s daughter.
The unidentified woman alerted Cooper to the connection first thing Thursday morning, saying she learned about it after filling out a juror questionnaire last week.
Who’s who in the case
The students aren’t friends and there’s at least a three-year age gap between them, the woman said.
The juror also said that the team comprised at least 40 athletes and that she’d never met Sussmann or his wife.
Although the woman said she could be fair and impartial to both sides, prosecutor Deborah Brittain Shaw said Durham’s team would have asked for her removal during jury selection Monday.
“Our position is that she should not stay on the jury,” Shaw said.
But Cooper ruled that the connection between Sussmann and the juror was “not so close that it necessarily affects her impartiality.”
The judge also noted that the woman’s voluntary disclosure of the situation showed that she “takes her obligations as a juror seriously.”
“And as a senior, she’s probably out of there anyway,” he said of the juror’s daughter.





