Durham's case against Danchenko
John Durham's next big hurdle is his only remaining criminal case — the one against Igor Danchenko, British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s alleged main source for his infamous anti-Trump dossier.
Danchenko was charged “with five counts of making false statements to the FBI,” which Durham says he made about the information he provided to Steele for the dossier. The Department of Justice's watchdog said FBI interviews with Danchenko “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting” and concluded Danchenko undermined Steele’s unfounded claims of a “well-developed conspiracy” between former President Donald Trump and Russia.
Danchenko has pleaded not guilty and will face a Virginia jury in October. The Russia-born lawyer and researcher who has lived and worked in the Washington, D.C., area for many years was indicted in November for lying to the bureau. He allegedly relied on a network of Russian contacts but undermined key collusion claims when interviewed by the FBI. According to Durham’s false statements charges, he anonymously sourced a fabricated claim about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to longtime Hillary Clinton ally Chuck Dolan, who spent many years, including 2016, doing work for Russian businesses and the Russian government.
Danchenko visited Dolan and others at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow in June 2016 and also flew from Moscow to London to meet with Steele “to provide him with information that would later appear" in the dossier.
The Durham indictment also says the Steele source lied about Sergei Millian, an American citizen born in Belarus who moved to the United States in the early 2000s and founded a trade group called the Russian American Chamber of Commerce in the USA.
The prosecutor said Danchenko falsely told the FBI that in late July 2016, he had received a phone call from Millian wherein he claimed Millian told him about a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between Trump and Russians and further claimed that Millian had agreed to meet with him in New York. Durham said that in reality, “Danchenko never received such a phone call or such information” from Millian and that Millian never agreed to meet up with him, saying Danchenko had “fabricated” these claims.
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While this case is worthy of prosecution, I think he should also bring a case against Hillary Clinton who was a key player pushing this political fraud against Trump.
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