John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia hoax went hot recently with the indictment of Igor Danchenko, the chief source of the infamous Steele Dossier. As RedState reported, Danchenko was charged with multiple counts of lying to the FBI, representing the biggest escalation yet in Durham’s quest.
The FBI was not the only one to be implicated in Danchenko’s lies. The FBI and DOJ are also accused of being corrupt in that they chose to use a well-known liar as a weapon to attack political foes, Donald Trump. With Durham’s indictment, it is now confirmed that the DOJ assigned false credibility to Danchenko in a desperate attempt to validate the dossier.
As the Washington Examiner notes, John Demers, then an Assistant Attorney General to Jeff Sessions, proclaimed Danchenko was “truthful and cooperative” while pursuing what we now know was an illegal FISA warrant on Carter Page.
The efforts by the DOJ and the FBI to defend the credibility of Steele’s dossier and his source were notable in 2018, the year after Danchenko allegedly lied to the bureau, and in the midst of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Then-Assistant Attorney General John Demers told Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Rosemary Collyer in a July 2018 letter that Danchenko had been “truthful and cooperative” with the FBI. A DOJ official also supported the FISA applications that were flawed against Trump campaign associate Carter Page.
Demers told the FISA court: “The Government submits that the applications, read in light go this additional information, contain sufficient predication for the Court to have found probable cause that the target was an agent of a foreign power.”
But Durham’s indictment makes clear that Danchenko was not “truthful and cooperative,” and the DOJ was aware of that fact while they continued to use the Russian as a credible source to pursue FISA warrants on Trump associates. Worse, it appears likely that the DOJ and FBI were also aware of the Clinton campaign’s connections to the dossier and Danchenko.
All of this is combined and you get a Jeff Sessions-led DOJ, which was using someone they had previously lied about to further their political goals of taking down Donald Trump. This is how it happened. There’s no way around it. Sessions still has not resigned for his actions during this period. Maybe someone ought to ask him.
While it is encouraging that Christopher Steele’s primary source (who was being fed fake stories by a Hillary Clinton operative) is now going to face charges for his role, it is clear that the DOJ and FBI were knee-deep in the corruption as well. Individuals who supported this fraud from within federal government should face criminal charges. If they don’t, the indictments Durham has made will simply serve as a surface-level slap on the wrist. The trust that exists in our institutions’ core institutions cannot be ignored.
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