{"id":1501991,"date":"2022-06-03T09:16:40","date_gmt":"2022-06-03T13:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1501991"},"modified":"2022-06-03T09:17:47","modified_gmt":"2022-06-03T13:17:47","slug":"why-the-special-counsel-needs-to-fight-for-more-spygate-documents-stat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-the-special-counsel-needs-to-fight-for-more-spygate-documents-stat\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The Special Counsel Needs To Fight For More Spygate Documents, Stat"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhy-the-special-counsel-needs-to-fight-for-more-spygate-documents-stat%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1501991&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/johndurhamatcourt.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Special Counsel John Durham\u2019s prosecution of Igor Danchenko, the Russian national who served as Christopher Steele\u2019s primary sub-source, will soon heat up\u2014maybe as early as next week, if prosecutors are wise and return to the grand jury to obtain the documents the Hillary Clinton campaign wrongfully withheld based on attorney-client privilege. Those documents will likely reveal Fusion GPS peddled Danchenko\u2019s lies directly to reporters.<\/p>\n<p>The jury\u2019s acquittal of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann after less than a day of deliberations represented a setback to Durham\u2019s three-year investigation of the Russia collusion hoax. Americans nonetheless learned much from the prosecution, including that Hillary Clinton held <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/05\/31\/even-if-the-jury-doesnt-convict-michael-sussmann-the-special-counsel-has-won\/\">personal responsibility<\/a> for the peddling of the Alfa Bank conspiracy theory and that, post-Donald Trump, the <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/06\/01\/the-special-counsel-proved-the-fbi-belongs-to-the-swamp\/\">FBI<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/05\/31\/jury-acquits-clinton-campaign-attorney-but-prosecutors-prove-corporate-media-guilty\/\">legacy media<\/a> remain corrupt.<\/p>\n<p>The special counsel team also learned a valuable lesson from the court\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/05\/13\/court-agrees-to-let-spygate-cabal-hide-some-of-their-emails-from-the-grand-jury\/\">rulings<\/a> on the admissibility of documents withheld from the grand jury based on the Clinton campaign\u2019s assertion of attorney-client privilege: Don\u2019t wait until trial to challenge the improperly withheld documents.<\/p>\n<p>Given the breakneck speed of the Sussmann prosecution, it is to be expected that, following Tuesday\u2019s acquittal, the special counsel team regroups for a few days. But by Monday, their focus should turn to their prosecution of Danchenko.<\/p>\n<h2>Background on the Danchenko Case<\/h2>\n<p>In November 2021, the special counsel indicted Danchenko on five counts, <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/11\/12\/why-special-counsel-john-durham-is-investigating-the-brookings-institution\/\">charging<\/a> him \u201cwith lying to the FBI during the agents\u2019 questioning of him related to his role as Christopher Steele\u2019s \u2018Primary Sub-Source\u2019 for the notorious dossier that enabled Obama administration surveillance of the Trump campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over 39 pages, the speaking indictment revealed how Danchenko first met Steele in 2010. He was introduced to the former MI6 spy by Steele\u2019s longtime friend, Fiona Hill, who knew Danchenko from their work at the Brookings Institute. Since then, Steele\u2019s London-based firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, hired Danchenko for contract work related to Russia research.<\/p>\n<p>In 2016, the Clinton campaign, through its law firm Perkins Coie, hired the U.S.-based research firm Fusion GPS. In turn, Fusion GPS hired Orbis and Steele to investigate the Trump campaign and any connections to Russia. Steele then contacted Danchenko, a Russian national, eventually relying heavily on Danchenko\u2019s supposed \u201cintel\u201d in crafting the numerous memorandum that later became known as the Steele dossier, and referring to Danchenko throughout as \u201cPrimary Sub-Source 1.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>A Tissue of Lies<\/h2>\n<p>Danchenko, according to the special counsel\u2019s indictment, lied extensively when providing Steele his supposed intel. The indictment also says one of Danchenko\u2019s \u201csources,\u201d Charles Dolan, Jr., who has long-time connections to the Clintons and the Democrat Party, lied to Danchenko.<\/p>\n<p>Dolan was named in the indictment merely as \u201cPR Executive-1.\u201d According to the indictment, Dolan lied to Danchenko when he told Danchenko a \u201cGOP friend\u201d had told him that Paul Manafort had been forced to resign from the Trump campaign because of allegations connecting Manafort to Ukraine. While Dolan later admitted to the FBI that he had no such \u201cGOP friend\u201d and that he had instead gleaned this information from press reports, Dolan\u2019s fabrication appeared in the Steele dossier thanks to Danchenko\u2019s lies.<\/p>\n<p>Yet when the FBI questioned Danchenko on June 15, 2017, according to the indictment, Danchenko \u201cdenied to agents of the FBI that he had spoken with [Dolan] about any material contained in the [Steele dossier].\u201d That lie formed Count I of the special counsel\u2019s charges against Danchenko.<\/p>\n<p>The remaining four counts of the indictment concerned Danchenko\u2019s alleged lies about his supposed conversation with the then-Russian Chamber of Commerce President Sergei Millian. According to the indictment, Danchenko told FBI agents on multiple occasions\u2014thus the four counts\u2014that he believed Millian had provided him information during an anonymous phone call, including the \u201cintel,\u201d later included in the Steele dossier, that there was \u201ca well-developed \u2018conspiracy of cooperation\u2019 between the Trump Campaign and Russian officials.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Danchenko never spoke with Millian and Millian was not a source for Danchenko nor the Steele dossier, as Millian has long maintained. Millian will not comment further, telling The Federalist that Durham\u2019s team requested he \u201cnot talk to the press about details of the investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Get Those Subpoenas Enforced<\/h2>\n<p>Some of those details will likely be made public, however, when pre-trial filings begin to hit the docket in the case against Danchenko. With the October 11, 2022, trial date only about four months away, one could anticipate various filings to flow in soon. But following the court\u2019s ruling in <em>United States v. Sussmann<\/em> that the special counsel waited too long to challenge documents withheld from the grand jury based on the Clinton campaign\u2019s assertion of attorney-client privilege, Durham\u2019s team should move next week to enforce any subpoenas.<\/p>\n<p>In the <em>Sussmann <\/em>case, on April 6, 2022, the special counsel filed a Motion to Compel documents withheld from the grand jury to be produced to the court <em>in camera<\/em>. On May 4, 2022, presiding judge Christopher Cooper <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638\/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638.129.0_6.pdf\">ordered<\/a> Fusion GPS to provide the court 38 documents sought by the special counsel\u2019s office to allow the court to determine whether they were protected by attorney-client privilege. Then, on May 12, 2022, the court ruled that emails between Fusion GPS and the press \u201cas part of an affirmative media relations effort by the Clinton Campaign\u201d were not privileged and must be provided to prosecutors.<\/p>\n<p>The court, however, further ruled that because the special counsel waited \u201cuntil April 6, 2022, just over a month before trial was set to begin,\u201d to challenge the privilege, \u201callowing the Special Counsel to use these documents at trial would prejudice Mr. Sussmann\u2019s defense.\u201d Accordingly, while the special counsel\u2019s office obtained access to the documents, they could not use those documents during the prosecution of Sussmann.<\/p>\n<p>To ensure prosecutors both have access to all material documents and the ability to use any relevant documents during the Danchenko trial, the special counsel\u2019s office should move quickly to obtain any material previously withheld by Fusion GPS under the auspices of attorney-client privilege. In total, as the court explained in the Sussmann case, Fusion GPS withheld \u201capproximately 1500 documents\u201d from the grand jury, but the judge only considered privilege for 38 documents prosecutors sought access to in its case against the former Clinton campaign manager.<\/p>\n<h2>What\u2019s Inside Those Documents<\/h2>\n<p>The details contained in Danchenko\u2019s indictment, coupled with the content of various emails between Fusion GPS and reporters, suggest some of the 1,500 documents withheld will concern Danchenko\u2019s supposed intel, even though Danchenko was one step removed from Fusion GPS, having been brought into the Russia collusion smear project by Steele.<\/p>\n<p>The indictment, for instance, notes that on \u201cJuly 28, 2016, Danchenko sent a message to an acquaintance\u201d stating, \u201cThanks to my reporting in the past 36 hours, Steele and Steele\u2019s assistant are flying in tomorrow for a few days so I might be busy.\u201d That same <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grassley.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/CFH%20Timeline%20w%20Updates%2020201203%20(FINAL).pdf\">day<\/a> the FBI\u2019s New York Field Office received two of Steele\u2019s election reports.<\/p>\n<p>July 28, 2016, is also the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grassley.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/CFH%20Timeline%20w%20Updates%2020201203%20(FINAL).pdf\">date<\/a> the FBI received the \u201ctip\u201d from the Australian diplomat that George Papadopoulos \u201chad received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist . . . with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to [Hillary] Clinton.\u201d That \u201ctip\u201d purportedly formed the basis for opening Crossfire Hurricane.<\/p>\n<h2>Massaging the Media<\/h2>\n<p>That July 28, 2016 message from Danchenko proves significant in context of the flurry of emails from Fusion GPS\u2019s co-founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, to reporters that were made public during the Sussmann prosecution. During this same timeframe, Simpson and Fritsch were peddling to the media claims that Millian and Carter Page were part of the supposed Trump-Russia collusion. As with Millian, Danchenko had fabricated supposed intel about Page, providing it to Steele. Steele included it in the dossier, which he then handed off to the FBI.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, on July 24, 2016, Simpson emailed the Washington Post\u2019s Tom Hamburger with the subject line \u201cmillian,\u201d providing Hamburger two email addresses for Millian. The next day, Mark Hosenball from Reuters emailed Simpson, asking him to \u201cplease remember to send me stuff on Sergei the Millian-aire.\u201d Hosenball also asked Simpson for any \u201cstuff on the Carter Page guy, including his most recent Russian excursions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On July 26, 2016, an email thread between Fritsch and Jay Solomon from the Wall Street Journal shows Fritsch saying, off the record, that an \u201ceasy scoop waiting for confirmation: that dude carter page met with igor sechin when he went to moscow earlier this month.\u201d Fritsch also told Solomon that Page \u201cmet with a senior kremlin official called divyekin, who told page they have good kompromat on hillary and offered to help. He also warned page they have good kompromat on the donald.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fusion GPS also pushed Millian as a Russian stooge to ABC News\u2019 Matthew Mosk in an email thread from July 28, 2016. Yet another email thread, between Simpson and the Washington Post\u2019s Hamburger dated July 29, 2016, also confirms that Fusion GPS pushed the fiction that Page met with Sechin and Ivanov in Russia to the Post reporter. Hamburger told Simpson that he had checked with one of their Moscow sources, who called the claim of a meeting \u201cbullshit\u201d and \u201cimpossible.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Feeding Fabrications to the FBI<\/h2>\n<p>The Danchenko indictment includes a second allegation that proves key when read with Fusion GPS\u2019s emails to the media. According to the indictment, on September 18, 2016, Danchenko sent another message to the same acquaintance, stating that he had \u201cwork to do for Steele who\u2019s probably coming to DC on Wednesday.\u201d The indictment further noted that Steele then traveled to Washington D.C. on September 21, 2016.<\/p>\n<p>While in D.C. on September 21, 2016, \u201cat the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grassley.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/CFH%20Timeline%20w%20Updates%2020201203%20(FINAL).pdf\">direction<\/a> of Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele brief[ed] the <em>N.Y. Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Yahoo! News, <\/em>and <em>CNN.<\/em>\u201d According to a Yahoo! News reporter <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grassley.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/CFH%20Timeline%20w%20Updates%2020201203%20(FINAL).pdf\">present<\/a> at that briefing, \u201cSteele told him at the meeting that he had provided his election reporting to the FBI and that there were \u2018people in the [FBI] taking this very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The day after Danchenko mentioned the work he had to do for Steele, Fusion GPS\u2019s Jake Berkowitz sent his boss Simpson and Mosk an email further painting Millian as a Russian asset. A thread between The New York Times\u2019 Eric Lichtblau and Fritsch dating from September 24 and September 27, 2016 likewise focused on Millian, with Fusion GPS providing the Times reporter Millian\u2019s IP address and screengrabs indicating it was registered in Moscow.<\/p>\n<p>The timing and content of these emails suggest Danchenko\u2019s lies went from Steele to Fusion GPS and then straight to the media. What the emails don\u2019t disclose, however, are the conversations between Steele and Fusion GPS, internally at Fusion GPS, and between Fusion GPS and Marc Elias of Perkins Coie.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the approximate 1,500 emails Fusion GPS withheld from the special counsel likely include discussions of the \u201cintel\u201d Steele obtained from Danchenko. It is well past time for Durham to fight for those documents.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Margot Cleveland is The Federalist&#8217;s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. <\/p>\n<p>Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize\u2014the law school\u2019s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. <\/p>\n<p>As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Special Counsel John Durham\u2019s prosecution of Igor Danchenko, the Russian national who served as Christopher Steele\u2019s primary sub-source, will soon heat up\u2014maybe as early as next week, if prosecutors are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1501991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1501991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1501991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1501991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1501991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}