Revealing The Problems In America’s Justice System

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.

Just When I Thought John Durham’s Picture Belonged On A Milk Carton

The New York Post is reporting today that Igor Danchenko has been arrested and accused of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The article reports:

A Russian analyst who was the key source behind the shady “Steele dossier” about former President Donald Trump was arrested in Virginia on Thursday as part of an ongoing special counsel investigation, the Justice Department said.

Igor Danchenko, 43, is accused of lying to the FBI when questioned about his work compiling the wild allegations about Russia and Trump ahead of his victorious 2016 presidential election, according to a grand jury indictment unsealed Thursday.

The shady analyst is now the third person to face charges in special counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the Russia investigation, which Trump has long insisted was a witch hunt.

The problem is that many Americans believe the Steele dossier was factual and many mainstream media outlets have not yet admitted it wasn’t.

The article notes:

Many of his other allegations, such as the claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen visited Prague to meet Russian intel operatives, have been subsequently disproven.

According to the indictment, the FBI interviewed Danchenko several times between January and November 2017 to determine if information contained in the dossier was true.

Danchenko allegedly lied to federal investigators about his sources for the dubious intel on at least five different dates during that time, the court document states.

For instance, the feds say Danchenko falsely claimed never to have spoken to a certain unnamed PR executive — who was also a longtime Democratic party operative — about any of the allegations in the report. 

But Danchenko actually used the exec as an anonymous source for one or more of the claims contained in the dossier, according to the indictment.

It will be interesting to see how far this investigation goes before it is shut down for one reason or another. The people most in danger from the investigation are the Clintons, and the fact that Terry McAuliffe lost the election in Virginia this week may be a sign that the power the Clintons wield in the Democrat party is waning. I suspect that the Bidens have no love for the Clintons, but they may want to see the investigation shut down before it does serious damage to the Democrat party.

Stay tuned.