A federal judge on Thursday rejected a request to dismiss special counsel John Durham’s case against Igor Danchenko, an analyst who was a key source for a 2016 dossier of allegations about Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia , and who was later accused of lying to the FBI. about the information he used to support his claims.
U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga ruled Thursday that Danchenko’s case must be weighed by a jury, clearing the way for his trial next month. But it was “a very close call,” Trenga said from the bench.
The ruling is a victory, if only a temporary one, for Durham, who was asked by former Attorney General William P. Barr in 2019, during the Trump administration, to investigate the FBI’s 2016 Russia probe. Durham’s investigation focused largely on the FBI’s use of the so-called “Steele dossier,” a collection of statements about Trump compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
But the judge’s observation that the decision was difficult could be an ominous sign, as Durham has yet to convince jurors that Danchenko is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The special counsel’s investigation suffered a setback in May when another person accused of lying to the FBI, cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, was acquitted by a jury in D.C. federal court. Danchenko’s trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 11 in federal court in Alexandria, Va. Durham argued the case in person at the hearing Thursday.
The jury will be asked to weigh statements from Danchenko, who has pleaded not guilty, conducted during FBI interviews in 2017 of a longtime Democratic-aligned Washington PR executive, Charles Dolan Jr., and a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, Sergei Millian.
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The key to the case is whether these statements by Danchenko to the FBI were deliberate deceptions that had a material effect on the government’s efforts to verify the claims in the dossier, a series of Steele reports, based on information from Danchenko and others. Steele had been hired to produce the reports by the investigative firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired by a law firm representing Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee.
Danchenko’s defense team asked the judge to dismiss the five-count indictment in a court brief filed Sept. 2, arguing that Danchenko made “misleading and speculative statements” to the FBI about “subjective” beliefs.
Danchenko’s prosecution, they said, was “an extraordinary case of government overreach.”
“The law only criminalizes unequivocally false statements that are material to a specific government decision,” wrote Danchenko’s attorneys, Stuart A. Sears and Danny Onorato, adding that the FBI questions at issue “were fundamentally ambiguous, Mr. Danchenko’s answers were literally true.” , unresponsive or ambiguous, and the statements were not material to a specific government decision.”
“If Rudy Giuliani says he believes the 2020 election was fraudulent, that doesn’t make it a false statement,” Sears argued in court Thursday. “He believes it.”
Durham’s team responded that the FBI’s questions were clear and that, in any event, resolving disputes over contested facts is a job reserved for a jury.
An FBI agent asked Danchenko a “really simple” question about Dolan during a June 15, 2017, interview, Durham’s team claimed in a brief filed Sept. 16.
“But you never talked to Chuck Dolan about anything in the dossier, did you?” the officer asked, according to court documents.
“No,” Danchenko replied.
“You don’t think so?” asked the agent.
“No. We talked about, you know, related issues maybe, but no, no, no, nothing specific,” Danchenko said.
The special counsel said the context in which the interview was being conducted should have made it clear that Danchenko was questioning the sources behind the Steele dossier claims. The indictment alleges that at least one complaint in the Steele dossier “reflected information that Danchenko gathered directly” from Dolan, despite Danchenko’s denial that he discussed anything “specific.”
Danchenko asked Dolan via email about Paul Manafort’s resignation as Trump campaign chairman in 2016, and Dolan responded with information that closely matched that contained in an Aug. 22 Steele report, says the indictment.
But Danchenko’s lawyers argued: “The most reasonable reading of this question is whether Mr. Danchenko and [Dolan] they talked about the company’s own reports after they were published.”
“Mr. Danchenko’s answer to this question was literally true because he never spoke [Dolan] about the specific allegations contained in the company’s reports themselves, but they did discuss matters ‘related’ to the allegations subsequently published in those reports,” Danchenko’s lawyers wrote.
They added that the FBI agent’s question was worded imprecisely because an email exchange between Danchenko and Dolan was not the same as “talk,” which is the word the FBI agent used. FBI during the interview.
“Speaking refers to communication through spoken words, not writing,” the lawyers argued.
At Thursday’s hearing, Durham argued that “in today’s lexicon, ‘talk’ has different meanings.”
“He knew exactly what the FBI was looking for; he knew the context of what he was being asked,” Durham said, adding that Danchenko did not produce the email exchange about Manafort to investigators while turning over other materials. Danchenko’s attorneys said in a court filing that the information of the Steele dossier in question actually came “from public news sources,” not Dolan.
Danchenko’s lawyers also argued that his statements to the FBI in 2017 — that he “believed” Millian had contacted him anonymously in a phone call and shared information about Trump and Russia — were ” literally true” and could not be considered a criminal lie. .
Durham said an email showed Danchenko had never spoken to Millian on Aug. 8, 2016. Danchenko had claimed the anonymous person contacted him weeks before that date, prosecutors allege .
“He knows that didn’t happen, that it wasn’t Millian who called him,” Durham said.
The special counsel’s team previously disclosed that Millian had not been located. Danchenko’s lawyers argued separately Thursday that several emails from Millian to a Russian journalist related to Danchenko should not be admitted into evidence at trial “without allowing Mr. Danchenko an opportunity to cross-examine Millian.” .