A US federal court judge Wednesday declined to dismiss a case against a Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer who is accused of a single count of making a false statement to the FBI.

The case stems from a 2016 meeting Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann had with the FBI’s then-general counsel James Baker. Sussmann requested the meeting in order to present evidence he said supported reports of a secret communications channel between the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and a Russian bank. Sussmann allegedly told Baker that he was not meeting him on behalf of any client, when in fact he was supplying the information on behalf of two clients, Rodney Joffe, a technology industry executive, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

The indictment claims that by concealing this information, Sussmann violated 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2), which holds that anyone who “makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” regarding a matter within U.S. government jurisdiction is subject to a fine and imprisonment. Sussmann’s motion to dismiss the charge claimed that even taking it as true that his statement to the FBI was false, it was not material as a matter of law.

The standard for materiality under § 1001 is whether the statement has a natural tendency to influence a discrete decision of the government, and Sussmann argued that his statement that he was not meeting Baker on behalf of a client could not have influenced the decision to investigate Trump. Special Counsel John Durham, arguing for the government, contended that if the FBI had known that Sussmann was providing information on behalf of clients, they might have asked many questions relevant to whether or not to open an investigation.

In denying the motion to dismiss, US District Judge Christopher Cooper, ruling in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, wrote “The battle lines thus are drawn, but the Court cannot resolve this standoff prior to trial.” Because materiality is an element of the offense, “it is a question that generally must be answered by a jury.” The court, according to Cooper, cannot make a determination on the issue prior to hearing the government’s evidence, which must therefore wait until trial.