BLUF:[AFF] The lawyer, Michael Sussmann, is a partner at Perkins Coie, which has represented the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee and which reportedly hired Fusion GPS, the firm responsible for compiling the Steele dossier.
The Washington Examiner’s editorial board provides more context for why this means more than it appears to mean:
Sussmann, who had worked with the FBI during its investigation into the Russian hack of DNC servers, told the FBI he had information showing a link between Trump and a Russian bank. During the meeting, Sussmann insisted to the FBI that he was turning the information over simply as a concerned citizen and that he was not working on behalf of any client. He further claimed that cybersecurity experts had approached him about a possible link between Trump and a Russian bank, but he never mentioned the true source of the data, Tech Executive-1.
This was a monstrous lie, and now, it has been exposed. Sussmann had been billing Hillary Clinton’s campaign for his collusion with Tech Executive-1 the whole time. That is, he was working for her. If the FBI had known that Sussmann approached it on behalf of the Clinton campaign merely so he could dish dirt on her political rival, it might never have opened an investigation. But since Sussmann lied about his motives and an investigation was opened.