(CNN)Special counsel John Durham's prosecutors laid out their case against Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann during opening statements Tuesday, accusing him of scheming "to inject the FBI into a presidential election" by peddling a tip about former President Donald Trump's Russian ties to the FBI's top lawyer in 2016.

       "The defendant's lie was all part of a bigger plan. ... It was a plan to create an October surprise on the eve of the election ... to use and manipulate the FBI," prosecutor Brittain Shaw said.

       She later said Sussmann was a "high-powered DC lawyer" who "lied to direct the power and resources of the FBI to his own ends, and to serve the agendas of his clients," who were the Clinton campaign and a tech executive.

       Sussmann has been charged with one count of lying to the FBI, and the case was brought as part of Durham's investigation into potential misconduct related to the FBI's Trump-Russia probe. The indictment accuses Sussmann of falsely telling the FBI he wasn't representing any clients when he provided the Trump-Russia tip in September 2016. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.

       Prosecutors appealed to the jurors to set politics aside and convict Sussmann because, they say, he abused the trust of senior FBI officials to try to help Clinton win the 2016 presidential election. Jurors' political affiliations, contributions and volunteer work for candidates, including Clinton, repeatedly came up during the jury selection process.

       Read More

       "Whether we hate Donald Trump or like him, we have to agree that some things have to be above politics. One of those things is our law enforcement agencies, and the other is truth," Shaw said.

       Who's who in the Michael Sussmann trial

       In opening statements, Sussmann said the case against him was "an injustice" and vehemently denied that he was part of any scheme to deceive the FBI.

       His lawyer, Michael Bosworth, argued that all his client wanted to do was get information to the press about Trump's ties to Russia and to warn the FBI that a story was coming.

       "The meeting with the FBI is the exact opposite of what the Clinton campaign would've wanted," Bosworth said, explaining that the FBI quashed the news story after learning about it from Sussmann. "The FBI meeting is something they didn't authorize, they didn't direct him to do, and they didn't want him to do."

       Bosworth lambasted Durham's central theory of the case, telling jurors it is "nonsensical" that Sussmann was trying to conceal his ties to the Clinton campaign. For one, Sussmann's partisan ties were well-known to the FBI at the time, largely because he was the Democratic National Committee's lawyer after they were hacked by the Russians in 2016.

       "His partisan affiliations, they were out and about, loud and clear for everyone to see," Bosworth said.

       Bosworth added: "If he was trying to dupe the FBI, why give them the data that they could evaluate for themselves? ... He had a genuine interest in national security and doing the right thing."

       The FBI looked into the internet data that Sussmann provided and concluded that there wasn't improper cyberactivity between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, which is the largest private bank in Russia.

       The case, playing out in DC federal court, is expected to last about two weeks.