John Durham Taking the Reins As Trial Against Steele Dossier Source Draws Near

John Durham is taking the reins as the trial against the main source for Christopher Steele’s dossier draws near after the special counsel’s investigation was dealt a blow with a “not guilty” verdict earlier this year.

Russian national Igor Danchenko was charged last year with five counts of making false statements to the FBI. Durham says the comments were about the information Danchenko provided to British ex-spy Steele for the dossier.

The Department of Justice’s watchdog concluded that Danchenko undermined Steele’s unfounded claims of a “well-developed conspiracy” between former President Donald Trump and Russia.

The October trial against Danchenko comes after Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was found not guilty in May, a blow to Durham’s investigation.

Sussmann had been charged with allegedly concealing two clients — technology executive Rodney Joffe and Hillary Clinton’s presidential 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.

Durham did the talking for the prosecution on Monday during a brief Danchenko hearing, and he filed a short notice with the federal court, saying, “I appear in this case as counsel for the United States of America.”

While the special counsel was often present in the courtroom during the Sussmann trial, he never spoke, so Monday’s actions were a marked departure.

STEELE DOSSIER SOURCE RAISES SPECTER OF ANTI-RUSSIAN BIAS BY JURY

The status conference minutes filed with the court said the “counsel for government” also included Michael Keilty, who assisted with the Sussmann case, and Adam Small, who appears to be a new addition to the team.

Small is listed by the DOJ as part of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga, who is handling the Danchenko case, was nominated by former President George W. Bush in 2008 and has also been on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court since 2020.

Durham told the judge the trial was expected to last five or six days. A court filing by Durham last month requested that the court issue 30 subpoenas for possible witness testimony for the trial starting Oct. 11.

The special counsel said Monday the prosecution is on track with producing discovery for the defense, and there is another status conference in September. Durham’s team said in May it had produced to the defense over 5,000 documents in classified discovery.

Danchenko was interviewed by the FBI in January, March, and May 2017. Horowitz said Danchenko’s January 2017 interview with FBI officials “raised doubts about the reliability of Steele’s descriptions of information.”

The Russia-born lawyer has lived and worked in the Washington, D.C., area for many years, allegedly relying on a network of Russian contacts. But he has been accused of undermining key collusion claims when interviewed by the FBI.

According to Durham, Danchenko anonymously sourced a fabricated claim about Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort to Hillary Clinton ally Chuck Dolan, who spent many years, including 2016, doing work for Russian businesses and the Russian government.

Durham’s indictment also says Danchenko lied about Sergei Millian, an American citizen born in Belarus who moved to the U.S. in the early 2000s and founded a trade group called the Russian American Chamber of Commerce in the USA. The prosecutor said Danchenko falsely told the FBI that in late July 2016, he had received a phone call from Millian in which he told him about a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between Trump and Russians.

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Danchenko’s attorney raised the issue of potential anti-Russian bias tainting the northern Virginia jury pool during the Monday hearing. The lawyer backed up the claim by noting there are a number of Ukrainian flags around Alexandria, where the trial will be held, because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.