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“Based on the instructions to the jury, this is not a surprise.”

Yup. I believe the judge said even if Sussmann knowingly lied that he was not guilty unless there was ‘maliscious intent’ behind his lying. Prosecution had him dead to rights as far as lying, had the lies in text messages in black and white, but the way the judge instructed the jury made it just about impossible to convict.

Some interesting points:
Roadrunner383 said,"I believe the judge said even if Sussmann knowingly lied that he was not guilty unless there was ‘malicious intent’ behind his lying."

There can't be malicious intent when the lie is to stop "literally Hitler"

Ann Archy points out:
Democrat Judge MARRIED to ATTORNEY for LISA PAGE!!

On twitter:
TURLEY: “I mean, he is facing a jury that has three Clinton donors, an AOC donor, and a woman whose daughter is on the same sports team with Sussmann’s daughter. With the exception of randomly selecting people out of the DNC headquarters, you could not come up with a worse jury”

He was not charged for the text message lie because Durham did not find out about the text message until after the five year statute of limitations. Sussmann was acquitted because Durham was incompetent and Baker was not a credible witness. Baker’s ‘memories’ were whatever was convenient for him and kept him from being charged. They also shifted over time.

Sussmann was charged with lying at the meeting the next day, not about lying in the text message since they didn’t know about it when they indicted him. Had Durham done his job and subpoenaed Baker’s records early on, Sussmann would have been convicted. He actually never subpoenaed his personal phone records - it was Baker that gave Durham the message.

The jury instructions actually favored the prosecution a bit since the judge did Durham two favors: Durham didn’t need to prove that the lie was material, only that it could have been material (how the FBI approached it had they known) and he changed the wording of whether they had to prove Sussmann hid Joffe and Clinton to Joffe and/or Clinton. Both of these were helpful to the prosecution based on the testimony at trial. It was also Durham who put AND in the indictment instead of and/or.