After the disappointing result in the trail of Michael Sussmann, all eyes have turned to John Durham’s next and probably last case against Igor Danchenko. Yesterday, Danchenko’s lawyers attempted to get the entire case against him dropped. The judge refused to do that but according to the judge himself it was a close call.
U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga ruled that Danchenko’s case must be weighed by a jury, clearing the way for his trial next month. But it was “an extremely close call,” Trenga said from the bench…
…the judge’s remark that the decision was difficult could be an ominous sign, as Durham still must convince jurors Danchenko is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The AP has more on the arguments made in court:
Danchenko’s lawyers argued Thursday that all the charges should be dismissed because Danchenko’s answers to the FBI were technically true, if not necessarily illuminating.
Specifically, Danchenko denied that he “talked” to Dolan about the allegations in the dossier. In reality, Danchenko had discussed the accusations in an email with Dolan, but never spoke with him in an oral conversation.
“It was a bad question,” said Danchenko’s lawyer, Stuart Sears. “That’s the special counsel’s problem. Not Mr. Danchenko’s. … He is not required to guess what the question actually means.”
The other counts deal with a statement to the FBI that Danchenko received other details in an anonymous phone call from someone he “believed” to be Sergei Millian, a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce.
Sears said Danchenko never said with any certainty that Millian was the source and that it can’t be a false statement if that was what Danchenko truly believed.
Danchenko’s claim that the information had come from Millian was big news in 2017. Here’s how the WSJ reported it at the time:
Some of the most explosive parts of a dossier containing unverified allegations that President Donald Trump had secret ties to Russian leaders originated from the Belarus-born head of a Russian-American business group, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Sergei Millian, a 38-year-old American citizen who has claimed he helped market Trump properties to Russian buyers, wasn’t a direct source for the 35-page dossier, this person said. Rather, his statements about the Trump-Russia relationship were relayed by at least one third party to the British ex-spy who prepared the dossier, the person said.
But it wasn’t true. Danchenko never spoke to Millian and now he’s claiming he really believed his own bogus claim at the time he made it so he wasn’t really lying. How appropriate that some of the splashiest lies in the Clinton-funded dossier came from a guy who is now parsing the truth like a true Clinton, i.e. it depends what the meaning of the word “is” is.
Whether Durham wins or loses this case, the real story here is that the professional left/major media had no business propping up this partisan fantasy month after month, always suggesting the proof was just around the corner. And once it turned out it wasn’t reliable, the people who’d pushed the dossier the hardest suddenly had nothing to say.
In case you’ve forgotten, here’s a list of responses when the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple asked left-wing journalists how they felt about the dossier in 2020:
- MSNBC’s Rachel “Maddow declined to comment on the record.”
- CNN’s Alisyn Camerota “Declined to comment on the record.”
- CNN’s John Berman “Declined to comment on the record.”
- Former State Department official Jonathan Winer (appearing on CNN) “did not return a request for comment.”
- Former federal prosecutor Paul Butler (appearing on MSNBC) offered “No response to a request for comment.”
- CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd…Wemple lists this as “Awaiting a reply.”
- Journalist Jacob Weisberg (appearing on MSNBC)…Wemple writes “Attempts to secure a comment from Weisberg have been unsuccessful.”
- Journalist Natasha Bertrand (appearing on MSNBC) “Bertrand did not respond to requests for comment.”
I don’t know if Durham can prove it in court but Danchenko looks like a liar to me. Lots of prominent reporters would probably reach the same conclusion if doing so wouldn’t be an embarrassment because of their own shoddy work on this topic.
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