This past Wednesday, Marc Elias, a well-known high-powered Democratic attorney, was called onto the stand in the government’s case slated against cybersecurity attorney Michael Sussmann.
Sussmann is standing trial for allegedly telling lies to the FBI concerning his motivations for passing heavily flawed data sets on to law enforcement agencies that supposedly attempt to show a connection between Russia’s Alfa Bank and Former President Donald Trump. Sussmann’s case is just the first courtroom test for special counsel John Durham’s investigation concerning the overall origins of the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy that attempted to outright undermine the elections back in 2016 and damaged the standing and reputation of former President Donald Trump throughout his entire presidency.
Elias is formerly a partner of Perkins Coie, a Democratic-link law firm, and looked over Sussmann’s work for the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Elias also took strides to hire Fusion GPS, which were the original propagators of the now-infamous Steele dossier, as the consultants for Perkins’ work alongside the Clinton Campaign. In effect, Fusion conducted opposition research that targeted Trump and his various associates, a description that Elias stated he would not “quibble” with throughout the testimony, as reported by The Washington Examiner.
Elias hurled criticism at Trump over his precious comments concerning Russia, and Elias called out former FBI Director James Comey for “putting the thumb on the scale” of the 2016 election in such a way as to benefit trump.
Jurors were instructed by Judge Christopher Cooper to not make use of their feeling one way or the other concerning Clinton and Trump and to try and just only make use of the facts brought forth in the case. The prosecution team asked jurors to look at the presented evidence and not allow any political biases to color their potential judgment.
Elias labeled Trump “a bully” who made use of the legal system and the threat of legal suits to try and intimidate others. The Democratic-linked attorney went after Trump regarding his statements about the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
“There was clearly an attempt by Russia to ruin the one clean shot that candidates get to talk to the American public,” stated Elias, as reported by CNN. “And instead of doing what any decent human being would do, and condemn it, Donald Trump said, ‘I hope Russia is listening and will find the 30,000 Hillary Clinton emails … and release them.'”
Elias also went after Comey and made the claim that the FBI was not “particularly helpful” throughout the investigation of Russian attacks targeting the DNC throughout the 2016 campaign.
“The FBI, for a variety of reasons, was not going to do anything to stop these bad things from happening,” Elias stated. “James Comey had taken public stances around that time period that were, in my view, unfair, and putting the thumb on the scale against Secretary Clinton.”
The jurors for this case were picked primarily out of mostly deep blue neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. During the selection process for this jury, a good portion of the members of the jury pool, some of whom were picked to move forward into the jury, stated their support for Clinton and disdain for Trump.