Durham’s FBI Indictment – WSJ

Mr. Danchenko pleaded not guilty, His trial—and prior to it Mr. Durham’s unsuccessful prosecution of Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann—has by now yielded a scandalous portrait of an FBI willing to take nearly any step—and cut any corner—to harm

Donald Trump

:

The FBI commenced its ugly path on July 31, 2016, when it opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia—based on uninformed hearsay from a low-level aide named

George Papadopoulos.

It also began receiving reports from British former spy Christopher Steele—a “dossier” containing allegations so surreal as to defy logic.

The FBI rushed to meet with Mr. Steele in early October 2016. It had undertaken no due diligence on its source and had been unable to verify a single dossier claim (and never would). At that meeting it nonetheless took the astonishing step of offering Mr. Steele “up to $1 million” in taxpayer dollars to legitimize his own information. (Usually, the FBI pays another party to verify a source report.)

Mr. Steele was still unable to verify anything; he initially even refused to tell the FBI the names of his sources. FBI Supervisory Analyst

Brian Auten

admitted to the court this week that while the bureau had zero confirmation of any dossier details, it made the document’s claims central to an Oct. 21, 2016, application for a secret surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign official

Carter Page.

It did so despite knowing that Mr. Steele was in the employ of opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, itself paid by the Clinton campaign—a fact so damning the FBI cloaked it in a convoluted footnote to its application. It proceeded despite suspecting (and later confirming) that Mr. Steele was blabbing to the press on behalf of the Clinton campaign—breaking FBI source rules. Early drafts of the Page application blamed a press leak on Mr. Steele, but the FBI ultimately stripped out that crucial info—even as it vouched that Mr. Steele was “reliable.” The FBI also omitted exculpatory evidence, including that Mr. Page worked as a contact for another U.S. intelligence agency for years. The Justice Department inspector general ultimately documented 17 significant omissions and inaccuracies in the application, most of which happened to work in the FBI’s favor.

The FBI didn’t bother to interview Mr. Steele’s primary source, Mr. Danchenko, until January 2017. Never mind that the bureau had itself opened a counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Danchenko in 2009 on concerns he was a national security threat (it was closed in 2011 when the FBI believed he’d left the country). Mr. Danchenko further undermined the dossier starting in January 2017. He said Mr. Steele had misstated or exaggerated many of his statements, that he had no proof of the claims, and that it was “hearsay,” the kind of conversation he “had with friends over beers,” according to the inspector general’s report.

The FBI kept quiet that its source had debunked his own work product—and instead used dossier info to renew the Page surveillance warrant three more times. It rewarded Mr. Danchenko in March 2017 by putting him on the payroll as a confidential human source, where he stayed until October of 2020.

While Mr. Durham presents evidence Mr. Danchenko lied to FBI handlers, there is as much evidence the FBI closed its eyes to glaring problems in his story. One example: According to a prosecution filing, Mr. Danchenko told the FBI that businessman

Sergei Millian

called him in late July 2016 to confirm a sensational claim about Mr. Trump and prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. Yet Mr. Danchenko reported this confirmation to Mr. Steele in June 2016—a month before the supposed call. Mr. Durham says he will present evidence that there never was such a call. Mr. Auten admitted this week that the FBI never checked Mr. Danchenko’s claims by reviewing call logs or travel records.

Even as its dossier went up in flames in early 2017, former FBI Director

James Comey

schemed for the media to publish the document. The FBI used what it knew was an evidence-free fog of collusion as an excuse to entrap national security adviser

Michael Flynn.

It sat mute as collusion claims pressured Attorney General

Jeff Sessions

to recuse himself and as Mr. Comey arranged for

Robert Mueller

to run a 22-month probe into bogus accusations—a probe that in retrospect looks to have been launched to whitewash the FBI’s actions.

Partisanship and incompetence aren’t crimes, so the FBI isn’t in the dock. But Mr. Durham is making the case for the public—and it’s as ugly as they come.

Write to kim@wsj.com.