On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about the verdict in the trial of Igor Danchenko.
The article reports:
A key source for the salacious and discredited Trump-Russia dossier was acquitted by a federal jury Tuesday, in a case that nevertheless produced several bombshells about the FBI’s handling of its probe into the 45th president’s 2016 campaign.
The Virginia panel cleared Igor Danchenko of four counts of lying to the bureau following approximately 10 hours of deliberation across two days after the case judge dropped a fifth count against him last week.
The verdict was the second acquittal at trial in a case brought by special counsel John Durham in connection with the conduct of the FBI counterintelligence probe nicknamed “Crossfire Hurricane.”
Despite Danchenko’s acquittal, the trial produced a series of revelations about the FBI — including testimony from a bureau analyst that it had offered Christopher Steele, the former MI6 spy who compiled the dossier, $1 million in October 2016 to make its outrageous claims against Trump stick.
Court documents filed by Durham last month also indicated the FBI employed Danchenko as a paid confidential source for more than three-and-a-half years — hiring him even as he was being investigated for his role in compiling the dossier.
If he was the source for dossier and the dossier was discredited, how is he not guilty of lying?
The article notes:
The trial also revealed that Helson and other agents did no due diligence on Danchenko’s background when a simple check would have revealed suspicions of his role in Steele’s project.
“Don’t feel bad for the FBI agents,” Durham told the jury on Monday during closing arguments. “There are things that they didn’t do that they quite clearly should have done.”
Trump White House veterans lamented the verdict, with former White House press secretary Sean Spicer calling it “unbelievably disappointing.”
“We’ve been waiting and waiting and told to hold our breath, there’s more coming — just be patient, be patient,” Spicer said on his Newsmax show “Spicer & Co.” “This is — I don’t even think disappointing does justice to how bad this is.”
Ric Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence, argued in a tweet that the verdict doesn’t exonerate the government officials who pushed falsehoods about alleged Trump-Russia collusion.
“Danchenko and the FBI both lied in and about the Steele dossier,” Grenell wrote. “They made outlandish claims that never materialized. A jury saying that Danchenko didn’t lie doesn’t clear up how the lies were pushed by our government.”
The article explains the charge and the acquittal:
The case against Danchenko turned on a phone call he claimed to receive from someone he believed was Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman, who was purportedly in touch with people connected to Trump and told Danchenko about a false conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Prosecutors said phone records showed no evidence of a call between Danchenko and Millian and that Danchenko had no reason to believe Millian, a Trump supporter he’d never met, was suddenly going to be willing to provide disparaging information about Trump to a stranger.
Is there anyone honest in Washington?
The Conservative Treehouse posted an article explaining why the Durham investigation is not going to find anyone guilty of anything–the investigation is simply there to cover for the previous misdeeds of the deep state.