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Theres a growing realization among Democrats that their plans for a $3.5 trillion spending package to reshape the nations social safety net and to tackle climate change will have to be slimmed down because of anxious centrists worried about the 2022 midterms.

Democrats by and large feel confident that President BidenJoe BidenTrump endorses challenger in Michigan AG race On The Money: Democrats get to the hard part Health Care GOP attorneys general warn of legal battle over Biden's vaccine mandate MOREs ambitious human infrastructure agenda has strong public support and that a majority of Americans favor raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to help pay for it.

But theres also a recognition that moderate Democrats in swing states and districts need to show theyre shaping the emerging reconciliation package.

And a part of that process may be slimming down the package from the $3.5 trillion goal set last month by the Senate- and House-passed budget resolutions.

Most times when you face these situations there have to be some changes made in order to get the votes, especially when here in the [Senate] chamber its tied and only the vice president can break the tie, said former Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who presided over the budget reconciliation process in 2009 and 2010 when Democrats passed sweeping health care reform legislation.

You probably will have to shave this back some, he said of the $3.5 trillion proposal outlined in the budget resolutions passed earlier this summer.

I suspect there are going to have to be some changes in order to get the votes to pass it, he added. Biden has himself said that these things should be paid for. He said that very clearly and he said it repeatedly.

The closer you get to actually paying for it, the better the chance you have of getting the votes.

Some centrist Democratic strategists are already warning that the size of the human infrastructure bill needs to be substantially curtailed to avoid a political disaster in the 2022 midterm elections.

Youve got all these Democrats in the center who are quietly saying I dont want to support $3.5 trillion because who wants to run on that given the current climate? Have you seen some of the recent polls coming out of the states? said one strategist.

By battling with progressives over the size of the package, moderates can insulate themselves from Republican claims that their party has been taken over by the far left.

Another factor is Bidens declining approval rating.

A Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll Friday showed Biden with a 47 percent national approval rating and a 46 percent national disapproval rate.

A Civiqs tracking poll this week showed Bidens approval ratings in several battleground states Arizona, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina trailing his disapproval ratings by 10 points to 14 points.

Two of the toughest Democratic votes to corral in the Senate belong to Sens. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinBriahna Joy Gray: Push toward major social spending amid pandemic was 'short-lived' Overnight Energy & Environment Presented by Climate Power Emissions heading toward pre-pandemic levels Biden discusses agenda with Schumer, Pelosi ahead of pivotal week MORE (W.Va.) and Kyrsten SinemaKyrsten SinemaOvernight Energy & Environment Presented by Climate Power Emissions heading toward pre-pandemic levels Biden discusses agenda with Schumer, Pelosi ahead of pivotal week Biden goes after top 1 percent in defending tax hikes MORE (Ariz.), who have both said in recent weeks, they will not support a $3.5 trillion package.

Moderate Democrats in the House such as Rep. Stephanie MurphyStephanie MurphyDemocrats brace for toughest stretch yet with Biden agenda The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by National Industries for the Blind - What do Manchin and Sinema want? Democrats hope Biden can flip Manchin and Sinema MORE (D-Fla.) are also threatening to vote "no."

Former Rep. Ron Klink (Pa.), a centrist Democrat who represented a Republican-leaning district in western Pennsylvania, says there are other moderate Democratic lawmakers besides Manchin and Sinema who are balking at the $3.5 trillion price tag.

Theyre going to go back and forth, he predicted about the upcoming negotiations over the size of the package. There are other senators, too, that are just saying, wait, this is too much, this is too big.

Klink, however, is urging jittery Democrats not to run away from Bidens infrastructure agenda.

He warns that ducking for political cover was a fatal mistake made by moderates during the 2009 debate over the Affordable Care Act, which was followed by a landslide Republican victory in the 2010 midterm elections.

You have to sell your constituents on what it is that youre doing and why youre doing what youre doing, he said.

Faced with mounting Republican criticism over tax increases that will be part of the reconciliation package, the White House is emphasizing the benefits for the middle class, stressingits desire to enact tax cuts for daycare, health care and working families with children.

Klink said Democrats also need to make the case that floods, drought and fires that have devastated the nation show the pressing need for more infrastructure investment.

But Klink acknowledges its a safe bet the total size of the spending bill will fall below $3.5 trillion, though likely not as low as the $1.5 trillion or $2 trillion goal that Manchin has floated as alternatives.

I dont think it will be $3.5 trillion but I think it will be much closer to that than $1.5 trillion, he said.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard NealRichard Edmund NealWant a clean energy future? Look to the tax code Democrats brace for toughest stretch yet with Biden agenda The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by National Industries for the Blind - What do Manchin and Sinema want? MORE (D-Mass.) made an important disclosure Thursday evening when he told reporters that the revenue-raising package coming out his committee will raise well less than what is needed to fully offset Democratic leaders official $3.5 trillion spending goal.

Asked if his package of revenue raisers would reach $3.5 trillion, Neal quickly replied: Oh, no, no. No, thats not at the moment what were talking about.

Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiOn The Money: Democrats get to the hard part Biden discusses agenda with Schumer, Pelosi ahead of pivotal week Stefanik in ad says Democrats want 'permanent election insurrection' MORE (D-Calif.) on Wednesday tacitly acknowledged the final package is likely to come in under $3.5 trillion by characterizing that number as a ceiling.

I dont know what the number will be. We are marking at $3.5 trillion. Were not going above that, she told reporters.

Some Democrats now say it was inevitable that the $3.5 trillion number was going to slip, even though it already represents a major concession by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie SandersBernie SandersBriahna Joy Gray: Push toward major social spending amid pandemic was 'short-lived' Sanders 'disappointed' in House panel's vote on drug prices Manchin keeps Washington guessing on what he wants MORE (I-Vt.) and other progressives, who initially pushed for a $6 trillion budget reconciliation spending target.

I dont know what the final numbers going to be. I always felt it was going to be less than $3.5 [trillion,] said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, and a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Charles SchumerChuck SchumerBiden discusses agenda with Schumer, Pelosi ahead of pivotal week CEOs urge Congress to raise debt limit or risk 'avoidable crisis' If .5 trillion 'infrastructure' bill fails, it's bye-bye for an increasingly unpopular Biden MORE (D-N.Y.).

But Kessler argued that the top-line revenue number that Neal says he will unveil this weekend wont necessarily constrain the size of the reconciliation package.

The budget reconciliation instructions, the budget resolution, basically says Ways and Means has to raise enough money to pay for what Ways and Means is going to spend, he said, pointing out that offsets can come from other committees.

Even so, the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee are Congresss two tax-writing committees and are expected to come up with the bulk ofwaysto pay for items in the reconciliation package.

Frank Clemente, the executive director for Americans for Tax Fairness, raised concerns earlier this week that the House tax reform bill will wind up raising far less than whats needed to offset the $3.5 trillion spending goal.

Based on my back of the envelope estimates of what's been reported that House Democratsare considering, their revenue target is much too conservative, he told The Hill.

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Democrats see $3.5T spending goal is slipping away | TheHill - The Hill

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, warned Wednesday that his party needs to "lean in" on COVID-19 prevention, despite hardline opposition. Speaking with CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett less than 24 hours after he overwhelmingly survived a recall challenge, Newsom said he views the victory as a sign that his constituents approve of his handling of the pandemic.

"So, what I'm saying here is, be affirmative," Newsom said he would tell national Democrats. "Don't be timid. Lean in. Because at the end of the day, it's not just about formal authority of setting the tone and tenor on masks on vaccines and masks. But it's the moral authority that we have: that we're on the right side of history and we're doing the right thing to save people's lives."

Newsom acknowledged that the recall effort was launched "in no small degree because of our approach to this pandemic."

California has been one of the hardest-hit states during the pandemic, prompting Newsom to adopt some of the strictest COVID-19measures in the country. Conservative talk show host Larry Elder, who emerged as the frontrunner in the crowded field looking to supplant Newsom, made opposition to vaccine and mask mandates a cornerstone of his campaign. Several other Republicans vying to replace Newsom also voiced opposition to COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates.

But Newsom told CBS News that Democrats need to "stiffen our spines and lean in to keeping people safe and healthy," adding that he feels the "off the charts" turnout proved that people were "motivated, because they understood what was at stake."

Although Newsom has faced six prior recall attempts, this was the first to garner enough signatures to make it to the ballot. The effort gained momentum after Newsom was photographed at the upscale Napa Valleyrestaurant The French Laundry dining indoors with dozens of others while his indoor dining shutdowns were still in effect.

For more of Major Garrett's interview with Governor Gavin Newsom, watch "CBS Mornings" on Thursday, September 16.

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Governor Gavin Newsom to national Democrats: "Don't be timid" on COVID-19 response - CBS News

Democrats are proposing a number of tax reforms related to retirement accounts, including the elimination of backdoor Roth IRA conversions for the wealthiest Americans.

Congressional Democrats want to slam shut a tax loophole known as the backdoor Roth IRA. In one of several proposed changes that target the retirement accounts of wealthy Americans, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee want to prohibit people who make more than $400,000 per year from converting pre-tax retirement savings accounts into a Roth IRA. The proposed reforms are part of the Democratic push to raise taxes on the wealthiest to fund a $3.5 trillion spending plan.

A financial advisor can help you make sense of potential law changes in Washington and how they might affect you. Find an advisor now.

Backdoor Roth IRA Conversions Definition and Elimination Proposals

Democrats are proposing a number of tax reforms related to retirement accounts, including the elimination of backdoor Roth IRA conversions for the wealthiest Americans.

Under current tax law, individuals making more $140,000 per year are barred from contributing to a Roth IRA, where retirement savings grow tax-free. However, since 2010, workers who exceed this income threshold have been permitted to convert their pre-tax contributions into a Roth IRA. After paying income taxes on the initial contributions and gains, their retirement savings grow tax-free and will no longer be subject to required minimum distributions (RMDs).

These backdoor Roth conversions, which have grown in popularity, allow high-income earners to sidestep the income requirements on Roth IRAs and capitalize on the tax-free growth these types of accounts offer.

But the use of this strategy could be coming to an end. Democrats on the House Ways and Means proposal, want to prohibit Roth conversions for people making more than $400,000 per year. If approved, the rule change would apply to distributions, transfers, and contributions made in taxable years beginning after Dec. 31, 2031.

The proposed legislation also seeks to eliminate mega backdoor Roths, a sophisticated strategy that allows people enrolled in certain retirement plans to save up to $38,500 in extra after-tax contributions for retirement. If approved, the provision that targets mega backdoor Roth conversions would take effect after Dec. 31, 2021.

Story continues

New Limitations on IRA Contributions

Democrats also want to prohibit high-income taxpayers from amassing tax-deferred fortunes inside retirement accounts. To do so, they plan to restrict people above specific income thresholds from continuing to contribute to Roth and traditional IRAs if they already have $10 million saved in IRAs or other defined contribution retirement accounts. Under current law, taxpayers can contribute to IRAs regardless of how much they already have saved.

The proposed limit on contributions would apply to single or married taxpayers who file separately and make more than $400,000, married taxpayers filing jointly with taxable income greater than $450,000 and heads of households who make more than $425,000.

The proposed crackdown comes as the retirement accounts of the wealthiest Americans continue to swell. According to the Government Accountability Office, 9,000 taxpayers had at least $5 million saved in IRAs in 2011. Eight years later, that number had more than tripled to over 28,000, data from the Joint Committee on Taxation shows.

Under this leg of the Democratic proposal, employer-sponsored defined contribution plans would also be required to report balances of over $2.5 million to both the Internal Revenue Service and to the plan participant whose balance exceeds $2.5 million.

Minimum Distribution Required for Accounts Exceeding $10 Million

Democrats are proposing a number of tax reforms related to retirement accounts, including the elimination of backdoor Roth IRA conversions for the wealthiest Americans.

Democrats also propose that high-income earners with more than $10 million saved in retirement accounts must take minimum distributions from those accounts.

If an individuals combined traditional IRA, Roth IRA and defined contribution retirement account balances generally exceed $10 million at the end of a taxable year, a minimum distribution would be required for the following year, the proposal reads.

Under the legislation, the IRS would require high-income earners with more than $10 million saved in retirement accounts to take a distribution equal to 50% of their savings that exceed the $10 million threshold. For example, if Joan has $12 million in her 401(k) and various IRAs, she would be required to take a $1 million distribution the following year.

The income thresholds would be identical to those from the proposal aiming to curb IRA contributions for the wealthy. If approved, both provisions would take effect after Dec. 31, 2021.

Bottom Line

Big changes could be coming to the retirement accounts of wealthy Americans. Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee want to eliminate backdoor Roth IRA conversions, prohibit high-income earners with over $10 million in retirement accounts from contributing to their IRAs and mandate that certain high-income earners with massive retirement savings take annual distributions.

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The post Democrats Want to End This Lucrative Retirement Account Loophole appeared first on SmartAsset Blog.

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Democrats Want to End This Lucrative Retirement Account Loophole - Yahoo Finance

Cross-posted at The Intercept and The Daily Poster. Additional reporting from Austin Ahlman, Walker Bragman, David Dayen, Ryan Grim, David Sirota, and Joel Warner.

As the House of Representatives begins debating Democrats landmark budget reconciliation package, only 16 Democratic lawmakers have publicly committed to keeping the legislation tied to the bipartisan infrastructure bill, according to an unofficial whip count conducted by The Daily Poster, The Intercept, and The American Prospect.

The whip count of legislators statements on the issue can be viewed hereand this document will be updated to reflect the changing positions of lawmakers.

If there are not enough progressive Democrats willing to oppose an anticipated late-September vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill and keep the two bills together, then business-aligned Democratic lawmakers could be empowered to pass the infrastructure bill and kill the much larger reconciliation bill that corporate lobbyists are frantically trying to stop.

The progressive strategy, which has been endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden, has been to pair the bipartisan infrastructure bill with the larger reconciliation packageeither both pass or neither does. In August, a group led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) backed by the dark-money group No Labels successfully split the two packages apart by winning a promise of a vote on the bipartisan bill on September 27. In order to keep the two together, progressives must either complete work on their larger bill by that date, or defeat or stall the bipartisan bill on September 27. Gottheimer was offered a vote, not passage, after all.

The math is straightforward: Democrats have a four-seat majority, so adding 12 Republicans gives a cushion of 16 votes.

Backers of the bipartisan bill say they expect Republican support to be in the low double digitsRep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) pegged it at 10 to 12 in August, though that number may have fallen as Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and former President Trump have been discouraging Republicans from giving Democrats a win.

The math is straightforward: Democrats have a four-seat majority, so adding 12 Republicans gives a cushion of 16 votesmeaning progressives have just enough committed no votes for a razor-thin margin. Dozens of Democrats did not immediately respond to our request for comment, so the figure of 16 may undershoot the count, and this article will be updated as new responses come in. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) has previously said that it has the private commitments of a majority of its 95 members for the two-track strategy.

There are a lot more but not everyone is ready to be public, said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the CPC. We had the majority of our caucus in our previous whip counts and we expect the same now. We will release names later if we have to. But I feel confident of our numbers.

The reconciliation bill, called the Build Back Better Act, includes trillions of dollars to address poverty; runaway costs for health care, child care, and education; and climate change, as well as new taxes on the wealthy and corporations. It needs only a simple majority in both the House and the Senate to pass, because the filibuster doesnt apply to the reconciliation process.

Some conservative Democrats bankrolled by pharmaceutical companies, private equity barons, and fossil fuel giants have been threatening to vote against the reconciliation bill. This is why strategists believe the only way to get their much-needed votes for the package is for other Democrats to withhold enough votes for the infrastructure bill to block its passage unless the reconciliation bill also passes.

Over the weekend, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced that he intends to vote against the reconciliation bill when it comes to the Senate for a vote. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) responded, making his position clear: No infrastructure bill without the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, he said in a tweet.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill has already passed the Senate. The question now is whether enough Democrats in the House are willing to make their support for the legislation contingent on reconciliations passage to block it from passing the House, even with Republican support, without their votes.

The Daily Poster, The Intercept, and The American Prospect reached out to every voting Democrats office in the House of Representatives and asked whether they would publicly commit to this strategy. Every House Democrat was asked: Will you commit to the two-track strategy and vote to block a bipartisan infrastructure bill if it comes to the floor before a reconciliation bill has been agreed to by a majority of the House?

The following representatives said they would, or have issued public statements saying they would: Reps. Jamaal Bowman, Brendan Boyle, Cori Bush, Veronica Escobar, Pramila Jayapal, Mondaire Jones, Ro Khanna, Andy Levin, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ed Perlmutter, Mark Pocan, Katie Porter, Ayanna Pressley, Jan Schakowsky, Rashida Tlaib, and Bonnie Watson Coleman.

I am absolutely firm that we are yoking these two bills together, Levin said at a press event on Monday. He declined to get into the minutiae of process.

Similarly, Ocasio-Cortez stated publicly in a live-streaming session, Nothing would give me more pleasure than to tank a billionaire, dark money, fossil fuel, Exxon lobbyist-drafted energy infrastructure bill if they come after our child care and climate priorities.

UPDATE: After publication, Rep. Ed Perlmutters office said his statement supporting a two-track strategy was not a yes or no answer on whether he is committing to vote down the infrastructure bill if it is delinked from the reconciliation bill. This story has been updated to reflect that.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), of which 95 representatives are members, announced the two-track strategy in an August 10 letter to leadership. According to the letter, signed by Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Katie Porter, and Ilhan Omar, a majority of CPC members intend to withhold their votes on the infrastructure bill until the Senate [adopts] a robust reconciliation package.

The CPC did not release names at that time. The whip count indicates that some members are as yet unwilling to put their names on the record.

One caveat, which may threaten the entire strategy, is that the CPC has not specified the size of the reconciliation package that will meet the standard of robustness, nor any nonnegotiable provisions for the bill. That leaves open the possibility that they might vote for a pared-back reconciliation bill that has been gutted by conservative Democratic legislators.

Some lawmakers have drawn their own lines in the sand. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, for example, tweeted last week, $3.5T is the floor.

Regardless of the size of the bill, the most important line in the sand is whether the two bills stay together.

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Whip Count: The Democrats Who Support the Progressive Reconciliation Strategy - The American Prospect

WASHINGTON John H. Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to scrutinize the Russia investigation, has told the Justice Department that he will ask a grand jury to indict a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on a charge of making a false statement to the F.B.I., people familiar with the matter said.

Any indictment of the lawyer Michael Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, and who represented the Democratic National Committee on issues related to Russias 2016 hacking of its servers is likely to attract significant political attention.

Donald J. Trump and his supporters have long accused Democrats and Perkins Coie whose political law group, a division separate from Mr. Sussmanns, represented the party and the Hillary Clinton campaign of seeking to stoke unfair suspicions about Mr. Trumps purported ties to Russia.

The case against Mr. Sussmann centers on the question of who his client was when he conveyed certain suspicions about Mr. Trump and Russia to the F.B.I. in September 2016. Among other things, investigators have examined whether Mr. Sussmann was secretly working for the Clinton campaign which he denies.

An indictment is not a certainty: On rare occasions, grand juries decline prosecutors requests. But Mr. Sussmanns lawyers, Sean M. Berkowitz and Michael S. Bosworth of Latham & Watkins, acknowledged on Wednesday that they expected him to be indicted, while denying he made any false statement.

Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime, they said. Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work. We are confident that if Mr. Sussmann is charged, he will prevail at trial and vindicate his good name.

A spokesman for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who has the authority to overrule Mr. Durham but is said to have declined to, did not comment. Nor did a spokesman for Mr. Durham.

The accusation against Mr. Sussmann focuses on a meeting he had on Sept. 19, 2016, with James A. Baker, who was the F.B.I.s top lawyer at the time, according to the people familiar with the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity.

Because of a five-year statute of limitations for such cases, Mr. Durham has a deadline of this weekend to bring a charge over activity from that date.

At the meeting, Mr. Sussmann relayed data and analysis from cybersecurity researchers who thought that odd internet data might be evidence of a covert communications channel between computer servers associated with the Trump Organization and with Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked Russian financial institution.

The F.B.I. eventually decided those concerns had no merit. The special counsel who later took over the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, ignored the matter in his final report.

Mr. Sussmanns lawyers have told the Justice Department that he sought the meeting because he and the cybersecurity researchers believed that The New York Times was on the verge of publishing an article about the Alfa Bank data and he wanted to give the F.B.I. a heads-up. (In fact, The Times was not ready to run that article, but published one mentioning Alfa Bank six weeks later.)

Mr. Durham has been using a grand jury to examine the Alfa Bank episode and appeared to be hunting for any evidence that the data had been cherry-picked or the analysis of it knowingly skewed, The New Yorker and other outlets have reported. To date, there has been no public sign that he has found any such evidence.

But Mr. Durham did apparently find an inconsistency: Mr. Baker, the former F.B.I. lawyer, is said to have told investigators that he recalled Mr. Sussmann saying that he was not meeting him on behalf of any client. But in a deposition before Congress in 2017, Mr. Sussmann testified that he sought the meeting on behalf of an unnamed client who was a cybersecurity expert and had helped analyze the data.

Moreover, internal billing records Mr. Durham is said to have obtained from Perkins Coie are said to show that when Mr. Sussmann logged certain hours as working on the Alfa Bank matter though not the meeting with Mr. Baker he billed the time to Mrs. Clintons 2016 campaign.

Another partner at Perkins Coie, Marc Elias, was then serving as the general counsel for the Clinton campaign. Mr. Elias, who did not respond to inquiries, left Perkins Coie last month.

In their attempt to head off any indictment, Mr. Sussmanns lawyers are said to have insisted that their client was representing the cybersecurity expert he mentioned to Congress and was not there on behalf of or at the direction of the Clinton campaign.

They are also said to have argued that the billing records are misleading because Mr. Sussmann was not charging his client for work on the Alfa Bank matter, but needed to show internally that he was working on something. He was discussing the matter with Mr. Elias and the campaign paid a flat monthly retainer to the firm, so Mr. Sussmanns hours did not result in any additional charges, they said.

Last October, as Mr. Durham zeroed in the Alfa Bank matter, the researcher who brought those concerns to Mr. Sussmann hired a new lawyer, Steven A. Tyrrell.

Speaking on the condition that The New York Times not name his client in this article, citing a fear of harassment, Mr. Tyrrell said his client thought Mr. Sussmann was representing him at the meeting with Mr. Baker.

My client is an apolitical cybersecurity expert with a history of public service who felt duty bound to share with law enforcement sensitive information provided to him by D.N.S. experts, Mr. Tyrrell said, referring to Domain Name System, a part of how the internet works and which generated the data that was the basis of the Alfa Bank concerns.

Mr. Tyrrell added: He sought legal advice from Michael Sussmann who had advised him on unrelated matters in the past and Mr. Sussmann shared that information with the F.B.I. on his behalf. He did not know Mr. Sussmanns law firm had a relationship with the Clinton campaign and was simply doing the right thing.

Supporters of Mr. Trump have long been suspicious of Perkins Coie. On behalf of Democrats, Mr. Elias commissioned a research firm, Fusion GPS, to look into Mr. Trumps ties to Russia. That resulted in the so-called Steele dossier, a notorious compendium of rumors about Trump-Russia ties. The F.B.I. cited some information from the dossier in botched wiretap applications.

Some of the questions that Mr. Durhams team has been asking in recent months including of witnesses it subpoenaed before a grand jury, according to people familiar with some of the sessions suggest he has been pursuing a theory that the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie to submit dubious information to the F.B.I. about Russia and Mr. Trump in an effort to gin up investigative activity to hurt his 2016 campaign.

Mr. Durham has also apparently weighed bringing some sort of action against Perkins Coie as an organization. Outside lawyers for the firm recently met with the special counsels team and went over the evidence, according to other people familiar with their discussions, arguing that it was insufficient for any legal sanction.

The lawyers for Perkins Coie and the firms managing partner did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment.

Mr. Sussmann, 57, grew up in New Jersey, attending Rutgers University and then Brooklyn Law School. He spent 12 years as a prosecutor at the Justice Department, where he came to specialize in computer crimes. He has since worked for Perkins Coie for about 16 years and is a partner in its privacy and cybersecurity practice.

Mr. Sussmann and his firm have been particular targets for Mr. Trump and his supporters.

In October 2018, a Wall Street Journal columnist attacked Mr. Sussmann, calling him the point man for the firms D.N.C. and Clinton campaign accounts, apparently conflating him with Mr. Elias. Perkins Coie responded with a letter to the editor saying that was not Mr. Sussmanns role and that the unnamed client on whose behalf he spoke to the F.B.I. had no connections to either the Clinton campaign, the D.N.C. or any other political law group client.

Four months later, Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Sussmann by name in a slightly garbled pair of Twitter posts, trying to tie him to the Clinton campaign and to the Steele dossier.

Raising the specter of politicization in the Durham inquiry, lawyers for Mr. Sussmann are said to have argued to the Justice Department that Mr. Bakers recollection was wrong, immaterial and too weak a basis for a false-statements charge. There were no other witnesses to the conversation, the people familiar with the matter said.

In a deposition to Congress in 2018, Mr. Baker said he did not remember Mr. Sussmann specifically saying that he was acting on behalf of a particular client, but also said Mr. Sussmann had told him he had cyberexperts that had obtained some information that they thought should get into the hands of the F.B.I.

However, Mr. Durhams team is said to have found handwritten notes made by another senior F.B.I. official at the time, whom Mr. Baker briefed about the conversation with Mr. Sussmann, that support the notion that Mr. Sussmann said he was not there on behalf of a client. It is not clear whether such notes would be admissible at trial under the so-called hearsay rule.

A lawyer for Mr. Baker declined to comment.

Mr. Durham has been under pressure to deliver some results from his long-running investigation, which began when then-Attorney General William P. Barr assigned him in 2019 to investigate the Russia inquiry. Out of office and exiled from Twitter, Mr. Trump has issued statements fuming, Wheres Durham?

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Durham Is Said to Seek Indictment of Lawyer at Firm With Democratic Ties - The New York Times