John Durham pushed back on attempts to dismiss his case against Igor Danchenko, arguing his alleged lies about Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier mattered and that the falsehoods affected the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.
Danchenko, a Russian-born, U.S.-based lawyer, has been charged by Durham with five counts tied to alleged lies he told the bureau about the Trump dossier, and he has pleaded not guilty.
Danchenko is seeking to dismiss the charges, in part by implying that Robert Mueller’s failure to unearth those alleged lies is proof that they weren’t lies, while also arguing they don’t matter.
Danchenko anonymously sourced a fabricated claim about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to Hillary Clinton ally Chuck Dolan, who spent years, including 2016, doing work for Russian businesses and the Russian government, according to Durham’s indictment.
“The defendant’s lie was material because, as the Indictment plainly lays out, had the FBI known that Charles Dolan was a source for the Steele Reports, it is more likely that they would have (or should have) also interviewed Dolan, given Dolan’s (1) relationship to several key players who appear in the Steele Reports and (2) proximity to the defendant at the time the defendant was allegedly gathering information that would later appear in the Steele Reports,” Durham wrote on Friday.
DURHAM WANTS TO USE FBI MESSAGES FROM ANALYST EMBROILED IN HUNTER BIDEN SAGA
The special counsel said Dolan “had relationships with several Russian government officials.”
“Dolan was present with the defendant in June 2016 at the Ritz Carlton Moscow when the defendant allegedly personally gathered information on Donald Trump’s purported salacious sexual activity at that hotel,” Durham added. “Again, had the FBI known that Dolan was a source for the Steele Reports — in addition to his ties to some of the key protagonists — the FBI logically would have interviewed Dolan.”
Durham wants to call Bernd Kuhlen, the German-born then-general manager of the Ritz-Carlton, Moscow, who would undermine the unfounded and infamous “pee tape” allegations.
The special counsel wrote: “It also is of no help to the defendant that — as will become clear through Dolan’s testimony at trial — Dolan fabricated the genesis of this information.”
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that Danchenko undermined Steele’s unfounded claims of a “well-developed conspiracy” between Trump and Russia.
Durham quoted the Supreme Court to argue that a lie is material if it has “a natural tendency to influence, or [be] capable of influencing” an agency function or decision. Durham added that “materiality is not dependent upon whether a particular government agency was actually influenced by a defendant’s false statements.”
Durham’s indictment also said Danchenko lied to the FBI about the existence of a phone call he claims he received from Sergei Millian, an American citizen born in Belarus, who the Steele source had said told him about a conspiracy of cooperation between Trump and the Russians.
“The defendant’s false statements with respect to Sergei Millian are also plainly material,” Durham wrote Friday.
Durham noted Danchenko’s lawyers had claimed the false statements could not be material because none of the statements could have affected the government’s decision to obtain FISA warrants against Carter Page in October 2016 and January 2017 because Danchenko’s statements were made months later, beginning in October 2017.
“Two of the defendant’s false statements (March 16, 2017 and May 18, 2017) were made during the pendency of the FISA surveillance against Carter Page,” Durham countered. “Notwithstanding when the false statements were made, had the defendant been truthful about his purported interactions with Sergei Millian, the FBI and DOJ would have been under an affirmative obligation to inform the FISC — at any time during the pendency of the surveillance of Page or thereafter — about information that would have undermined the statements it had made in its four FISA applications regarding the information allegedly provided by Millian.”
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Durham said that if the FISA Court had known about these misrepresentations, then “it could have terminated the surveillance of Carter Page and/or ordered the FBI and DOJ to destroy the information it had already collected.”
The FBI made Danchenko a paid confidential informant starting in March 2017 through October 2020 despite him allegedly lying to the bureau during that time frame.
