The judge ruled that Danchenko was technically telling the truth, because the evidence established that Danchenko and Dolan only emailed about the dossier but never “talked” about it.
In 2017, when the FBI was scrambling to corroborate the dossier, an FBI agent asked Danchenko if he ever “talked” with Dolan about “anything that showed up in the dossier.” Danchenko said no, which Durham claimed was an illegal lie. Dolan testified Thursday that he had lied to Danchenko about meeting with a “GOP friend,” and really just sent Danchenko what he had heard on cable news. When Durham charged Danchenko last year, the indictment revealed that this gossip item originated from Dolan, even though it has been described in the dossier as coming from a Trump insider.Įmails show that Dolan misled Danchenko about where he got the information, by attributing it to a “GOP friend” who was “a close associate of Trump,” when it really came from press clippings. But it also featured a relatively mundane item about infighting within the notoriously tumultuous Trump campaign. The largely discredited dossier, which was indirectly funded by Clinton’s campaign, contained explosive claims about Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia. While not a high-level Democratic operative in recent years, Dolan previously held positions in Bill Clinton’s campaign and volunteered for Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful campaign against Trump in 2016. The charge against Danchenko that was dropped on Friday pertained to whether he lied about discussing specific dossier material with Charles Dolan, a public relations executive with expertise in Russian affairs and decades of political ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
#10 hour trump dossier testimony trial#
Roughly 85% of federal defendants that receive a jury trial are found guilty, according to official statistics analyzed by the Pew Research Center. Prosecutors typically fare well in the federal system, where acquittals are extremely rare.
Durham’s only other prosecution has been against a Hillary Clinton campaign attorney, who was swiftly acquitted by a jury of lying to a senior FBI official during a 2016 meeting about Trump’s possible ties to Russia. In three-plus years, Durham has only secured one criminal conviction – the guilty plea of a low-level FBI lawyer, who was sentenced to probation. The final act of Durham’s probe will be his report, which he’ll submit to Attorney General Merrick Garland for review. CNN has reported that the special counsel probe is winding down, and that the Danchenko case is Durham’s last expected trial. Trump has repeatedly cheered on the investigation, claiming that Durham will uncover a massive conspiracy by “deep state” partisans to derail his political career.īut Durham hasn’t delivered anything resembling the Watergate-level bombshells that Trump says are coming. Lawyers for Danchenko, a Russian expat and former think-tank analyst, said they won’t be calling any witnesses.Ī Trump-era holdover, Durham was tapped in 2019 by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to “investigate the investigators,” and look for government misconduct in the Trump-Russia probe. The trial will continue on Monday with closing arguments and jury deliberations. Those remaining charges pertain to Danchenko’s alleged false statements about whether he got a phone call in July 2016 from a Belarusian-American businessman who had been in touch with people in candidate Donald Trump’s orbit and was a possible dossier source. He personally urged Trenga to uphold the charge, before Trenga ruled against him.ĭanchenko still faces four additional counts of lying to the FBI, which is a felony. The ruling was a blow to Durham, who has personally handled many of the arguments and witness questioning throughout the weeklong trial. it’s a major victory for Danchenko, who has maintained that he was honest with the FBI agents who were trying to corroborate the dossier in 2017. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty.ĭistrict Judge Anthony Trenga said in court Friday that Danchenko’s answer to the FBI interviewer “was literally true” and that Durham’s case on that specific charge was too weak to send to the jury. The judge dropped one of the five false-statement charges, specifically pertaining to the allegation that Danchenko lied to the FBI about speaking with a Democratic operative about the anti-Trump dossier. A federal judge on Friday threw out one of five charges against Igor Danchenko, the primary source for the infamous Trump-Russia dossier, in a major setback for special counsel John Durham’s investigation.
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