Michael Sussman, a cybersecurity lawyer who worked for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, pleaded not guilty to lying to the FBI on Friday.
The charge stemmed from special counsel John Durham's two-and-a-half year probe into the government's investigation into Russian election interference in 2016.
Sussman was indicted for allegedly telling the FBI in September 2016 that he was not doing work 'for any client' when he requested a meeting with the FBI's general counsel to warn them of concerns from cybersecurity researchers of potentially suspicious contact between Russia and the Trump team.
At the meeting the attorney allegedly gave the FBI data and analytics from cybersecurity researchers who thought the numbers might be evidence of hush-hush communications between Trump Organization's computer servers and Alfa Bank - a Kremlin-linked Russian financial institution.
The FBI looked into the matter but found no connections.
Former federal prosecutor Sussmann, 57, who this week resided from his position as a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, represented the Democratic National Committee when Russia hacked its servers back in 2016.
Sussman now has a court date of September 22 for a status conference before D.C. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
Sussman's attorneys Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth of the law firm Latham & Watkins claimed that the prosecution was "baseless and politically-inspired."
'We are confident that if Mr Sussmann is charged he will prevail at trial and vindicate his good name.'
Sussmann's lawyers told the Justice Department that he originally organized the 2016 meeting because he and the cybersecurity researchers believed The New York Times was about to publish an article on the Alfa Bank data.
As reported by The Times, Sussmann wanted to give the FBI a heads-up before the paper ran the story which, in fact, they never did.
