Republicans and conservative media outlets are turning their attention to John Durham’s impending report following his second high-profile court defeat, arguing the special counsel’s expected tome on his investigation of the Trump-Russia investigators will reveal further FBI malfeasance.
A jury found Russian national Igor Danchenko not guilty this week on four false statements charges, declining to convict him for the allegations that the main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele had lied to the FBI about his sourcing for the discredited and Clinton campaign-funded anti-Trump dossier.
“Bring on the Durham Report: The special counsel can now tell the story of the FBI and the Russia collusion probe,” the right-leaning Wall Street Journal editorial board declared this week. “He can knit together the information he’s been relaying piecemeal through court filings. Please bring it on, and don’t spare the details or any of the participants. His report should be devoted to educating the public about what really happened, and why.”
ANTI-TRUMP DOSSIER SOURCE FOUND NOT GUILTY IN RUSSIA INVESTIGATION TRIAL
If Danchenko is indeed Durham’s final case, then his report will come next. The special counsel is reportedly working on finishing a lengthy set of findings laying out his investigation’s conclusions, which will be handed over to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation said in its 2019 public report that it “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
The Wall Street Journal argued that Mueller’s report “failed to disclose the dirty details that Mr. Durham found.” They added that Durham “is the only reason America has had a glimpse of the FBI abuses” and that “any attempt to squelch his report would compound the scandal.”
Garland was grilled on this by Senate Republicans in October 2021.
“With respect to the report, I would like as much as possible to be made public,” Garland testified. “I have to be concerned about Privacy Act concerns and classification, but other than that, the commitment is to provide a public report, yes.”
Garland also vowed, “There will be no political or otherwise undue interference with the Durham investigation.”
Bill Barr, Trump’s former attorney general who made Mueller’s report largely public, though with some redactions, and who appointed Durham special counsel in 2020, argued this week that Durham’s report will be a big opportunity.
“The real public interest here was being served by exposing the full extent of the corruption that was involved in the Russiagate and the abuse by the FBI in that whole episode. And I think Durham is going to get a report out that is going to lay out all the facts,” Barr said on Fox News, adding that the report “will leave a very good foundation for pursuing it further on the Hill.”
The conservative National Review editorial board also predicted this week that Durham’s two court losses “will give Democrats and pundits who championed the Trump-Russia smear fodder to argue that Durham’s ultimate report should be ignored” but that “Durham has done a public service in exposing how imperative it is that the FBI be subjected to searching congressional investigation and reform.”
Matthew Miller, who was director of the Justice Department’s public affairs office from 2009 to 2011 under former President Barack Obama, argued this week that Garland, or another top official at the agency, should “pause” before making a decision on releasing its findings to the public.
“I think Merrick Garland will be under a lot of pressure from Republicans to release that report, but I have to say, this circumstance is very different from the Mueller investigation, where, obviously, the attorney general Bill Barr did release that report,” Miller said on Alex Wagner Tonight on MSNBC.
The Danchenko trial revealed that Danchenko was on the FBI’s payroll as a confidential human source from March 2017 to October 2020.
FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten revealed the FBI had offered Steele an incentive of up to $1 million if he could prove the allegations of collusion in his dossier, but the FBI analyst said the former MI6 agent was unable to corroborate the claims.
FBI agent Kevin Helson, who was the handling agent for Danchenko, testified that he made an October 2020 request to pay Danchenko a lump sum of $346,000, and his testimony revealed that would have brought the total amount the Russian lawyer had been paid by the bureau over a few years up to a total of $546,000. The lump sum payment request was denied.
A member of the FBI’s Human Intelligence Validation Unit also suggested that Danchenko may have been part of Russian intelligence services, according to court testimony.
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Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann had been charged in September 2021 by Durham after reportedly concealing his two clients, Neustar Chief Technology Officer Rodney Joffe and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, from FBI General Counsel James Baker when he pushed debunked allegations of a secret line of communication between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank during a September 2016 meeting.
But a jury found Sussmann not guilty of the false statement charge following a trial in the nation’s capital.
