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Russian analyst Igor Danchenko walks to the Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse in Alexandria, Va., Oct. 11.
Photo:
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The press corps is barely covering special counsel
John Durham’s
latest trial related to his investigation of the FBI’s probe of
Donald Trump’s
2016 presidential campaign. But the case is underway in Washington, and it has already turned up a million-dollar nugget.
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Mr. Durham is prosecuting
Igor Danchenko,
who has pleaded not guilty to five counts of lying to the FBI. Mr. Danchenko was the primary source for the infamous dossier compiled by
Christopher Steele
that alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mr. Steele worked on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and fed his allegations to the FBI in 2016.
Mr. Durham’s witness Tuesday was FBI supervisory analyst
Brian Auten,
who interviewed Mr. Steele in early October 2016 with other agents. Mr. Auten admitted that at that meeting the FBI offered Mr. Steele “up to $1 million” to prove his explosive claims.
But Mr. Auten says Mr. Steele never received the cash because Mr. Steele couldn’t “prove the allegations.” Mr. Steele also initially refused to identify his sources. In a September court filing, Mr. Durham disclosed that the FBI was never “able to confirm or corroborate most of [the dossier’s] substantive allegations.”
The failure of the million-dollar offer should have ended FBI confidence in the dossier. Yet on Oct. 21, 2016, the bureau made the dossier’s allegations part of its application for a secret surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign official
Carter Page.
It did the same in its three subsequent warrant applications against Mr. Page with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
FBI interviews of Mr. Danchenko in January 2017 cast further doubt on the dossier. Yet the FBI stayed mute about its failure to corroborate its claims—even as news about the dossier exploded into public view and disrupted the Trump Presidency. Special Counsel
Robert Mueller
was also clearly aware of all this, yet he included none of it in his supposedly definitive 2019 report on the Russia tale. He essentially helped cover up the FBI’s malfeasance in the collusion probe.
Mr. Durham is using these prosecutions to disclose to the public what really happened. It’s a disgraceful episode in FBI history that rivals the worst of the
J. Edgar Hoover
era. Win or lose in court, the special counsel is doing a public service.
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the October 13, 2022, print edition.
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