Igor Danchenko

John Durham has officially requested that a federal court send out 30 subpoenas for testimony in the approaching trial against research analyst Igor Danchenko. Danchenko is the alleged primary source of the now-debunked “Steele dossier”, an opposition research report designed to attack former President Donald Trump. 

The MSM was quick to label John Durham’s investigation a “failure” after Michael Sussman was found not guilty in a Washington DC court. The media rushed to call the verdict a “significant blow.” However, many onlookers, including former federal prosecutor and public defender Kash Patel, held little hope for an honest trial in the District of Columbia. Patel went so far as to call the verdict a “miscarriage of justice”.

Despite the establishment media’s attempts to make the Sussman verdict ring out as indicative of how Durham’s future endeavors will go, much was learned and put on the record, including the testimony of Robby Mook, the political strategist for the Clinton Campaign, who claimed that Hillary “agreed” to leak allegations that the Trump Organization had a secret communications channel with Russia’s Alfa Bank.

The Danchenko trial will be tried in a different Jurisdiction in Northern Virginia, where Patel claims the jury pool will be “dramatically different”.

Durhams Team said in a June 13 filing that “It is respectfully requested that the Clerk of said Court issue subpoenas as indicated below for appearance of said Court in Alexandria, Virginia … to testify on behalf of the United States” on Oct. 11.

The Judge who will be presiding over this case is U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush back in the late 2000s.

Danchenko has pleaded “not guilty” to the charge of lying to the FBI. The Special Counsel alleges that Danchenko made at least five false statements to the FBI in regards to information he provided to Christopher Steele, the former UK spy who was employed by an opposition research company at the behest of Perkins Coie, the law firm working for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

 

Durham’s indictment indicates that Danchenko’s alleged fabrications “were material to the FBI because… the FBI’s investigation of the Trump Campaign relied” on the dossier to obtain secretive warrants to spy on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

“The FBI ultimately devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations contained in” the dossier, including whether Danchenko’s sub-sources were reliable, the indictment states. The dossier and information provided by Danchenko “played a role in the FBI’s investigative decisions and in sworn representations that the FBI made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court throughout the relevant time period,” according to last year’s complaint.

The Steele dossier, a collection of memos that Christopher Steele compiled, claimed that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to ensure a victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump has categorically denied these allegations, suggesting they’re part of an ongoing Democrat-created narrative specifically designed to attack his credibility.

Over the years, many of the allegations from the dossier were proven to be false, leading to criminal, congressional, and even inspector general investigations into the origins of the Steele dossier.

John Durham has said that Danchenko completely made up a conversation that he claimed was the source of some of the more sordid claims contained in the memos. The phony dossier also alleged that Russian intelligence officials were blackmailing Trump, something the former president has also denied.

Igor Danchenko is now the third individual to be charged by Durham and his team. As he appeared at the federal court in Alexandria last year, Danchenko’s former lawyer, Mark Schamel, issued a statement saying that his client’s work as a researcher is “above reproach.”

“For the past five years, those with an agenda have sought to expose Mr. Danchenko’s identity and tarnish his reputation while undermining U.S. National Security,” Schamel said. 

There’s been scuttlebutt and conjecture claiming that these trials aren’t so much about convictions as building a roadmap of conspiracy that may eventually lead to Clinton herself. Unlike the trial in DC, a failure to convict here will be a blow severe to morale for those who hope to see bad actors from Clinton world finally brought to some kind of justice.