Steele-Dossier Source Igor Danchenko Acquitted, but Stain of FBI Conduct Remains

T he jury has acquitted Igor Danchenko on all four counts of lying to the FBI, in what is almost certainly the last prosecution that will be brought by Russiagate special counsel John Durham.

The jury spent about ten hours deliberating in the federal district court in Alexandria, Va., beginning at close to 2 p.m. on Monday and working until after 4 p.m. today.

As I’ve detailed, this was a very uphill case for the prosecution. Danchenko, the primary sub-source for the discredited Steele dossier, was accused in all four counts that went to verdict of fabricating a 2016 phone communication with Sergei Millian, who was loosely associated with the GOP’s then-candidate for president, Donald Trump. The prosecution alleges that the conversation never actually happened.

In addition to phone records that showed no such call, Durham produced a message from Millian supporting the inference that he neither knows nor ever communicated with Danchenko. Nevertheless, because Millian, a Belarusian-American, is somewhere overseas and beyond U.S. subpoena power, he did not have to testify and refused to do so — even though he submitted to phone interviews by Durham. (Denials that he ever communicated with Danchenko were thus hearsay, inadmissible at the trial.) That left the prosecution without a direct witness to the non-event: Millian declined to testify that it didn’t happen, and Danchenko’s counsel — correctly perceiving that the government’s case was weak without Millian’s testimony — kept the defendant off the witness stand, banking on convincing the jury that Durham could not prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt.

In addition, Danchenko sowed doubt to counter the phone records, pointing out that the conversation could have taken place over an Internet app rather than a terrestrial, cell, or satellite phone. To hedge Danchenko’s bets, his lawyers also argued that he never definitively told the FBI that he was sure the person with whom he spoke was Millian, only that he believed it was probably Millian.

The presiding judge, Bush-43 appointee Anthony Trenga, dismissed a fifth count against Danchenko at the close of the prosecution’s case. In that alleged lie, Danchenko was said to have concealed the fact that he got some (fairly trivial) information about Trump’s campaign from Charles Dolan, a longtime Clinton political ally. The charge was vaguely pled. Moreover, Judge Trenga reasoned that in denying that he’d “spoken” to Dolan about the matter, Danchenko should not be understood to be denying that they’d exchanged emails about it (which they had).

Danchenko’s acquittal is obviously a blow to Durham, but it is secondary in importance. From a public-interest standpoint, far more consequential was the prosecution’s proof of egregious misconduct on the part of the FBI in “Crossfire Hurricane” (the bureau’s codename for the Trump-Russia investigation). I discussed that in more detail here and here.

Clearly, Durham’s four-year investigation has concluded that the claim that Trump colluded with the Kremlin was a political smear concocted by the Hillary Clinton campaign, and that the FBI was a willing collaborator in peddling it, including to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in four sworn applications — between October 2016 and June 2017 — that were predicated in substantial part on the “dossier” compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, with Danchenko’s assistance.

Steele’s work was sponsored by the Clinton campaign through two intermediaries — Clinton’s lawyer Marc Elias hired the information firm Fusion GPS, which in turn retained Steele, who recruited Danchenko. The FBI knew that Steele was virulently anti-Trump, and that his faux intelligence reports were unverified political-opposition research. Bombshell evidence in the trial established that the bureau offered to pay Steele $1 million if he could prove his outlandish anti-Trump allegations, but he could not. Nevertheless, the FBI relied on Steele’s claims in applying under oath for surveillance warrants from the FISC.

It was not until after the FBI twice relied on the Steele dossier to obtain FISC surveillance warrants that the bureau finally interviewed Danchenko. Although he told the interviewing agents that Steele’s information was bogus, the FBI withheld the substance of Danchenko’s interview from the Department of Justice unit that oversees FISC applications, and from the FISC itself — in violation of federal rules that: (a) information must be verified before being brought to the FISC; and (b) if the FBI discovers that information it has provided is inaccurate or unreliable, it must promptly notify the FISC. To the contrary, the FBI relied on the Steele dossier in two additional sworn applications even after interviewing Danchenko.

We can expect that Durham will relate all of this in scathing detail when he produces his final report, probably late this year or early in 2023. While I expect the report’s findings will be supported by a great deal of evidence, they will surely be ignored by the media-Democrat complex. That is why there was such risk for Durham in the prosecutions of Danchenko and Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann, who last spring was also acquitted. Compared with the overall investigation, and particularly the government role in promoting the Trump-Russia slander, those prosecutions were of little significance. But the acquittals will give Durham’s critics all the ammunition they need to argue that findings in his report should be dismissed.

Durham won one conviction in his probe — that of FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pled guilty to misleading an FBI agent regarding information that he knew was critical to one of the FISC warrant applications. Nevertheless, Durham indulged Clinesmith’s claim that somehow, although he admitted lying, he didn’t actually mean to deceive anyone, particularly the court. As a result, Clinesmith was given a sentence merely of probation.

Between the acquittals and the slap-on-the-wrist sentence, critics have portrayed Durham’s investigation as a waste of time. Whether that assessment holds up will depend on the strength of his final report.