John Durham and the Olympics of Umbrage

To understand the crisis facing American jurisprudence in 2022, look no further than the response from resistance Democrats to last week’s acquittal of Igor Danchenko, the primary source behind the infamous dossier that alleged Donald Trump had conspired with Russia to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.The special counsel, John Durham, a famed federal prosecutor from Connecticut, indicted Mr. Danchenko on five counts of misleading the FBI. The judge in the case threw out one of those counts, and the jury acquitted Mr. Danchenko on the four remaining charges.Mr. Durham’s case was weak because the totality of his evidence showed far more misconduct from the FBI and prosecutors investigating Mr. Trump than a bit player like Mr. Danchenko. Nonetheless, Mr. Danchenko’s acquittal prompted a veritable Chutzpah Olympics from people exposed by Mr. Durham’s probe.Let’s start with Christopher Steele. He is the former British spy who was hired by a research firm on behalf of Secretary Clinton’s campaign to dig into Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia. Mr. Steele hired Mr. Danchenko to collect the hearsay, rumor, and tall tales that became the Dossier. Mr. Danchenko originally — in January 2017 — told the FBI that the allegations in the dossier were overstated and based on hearsay. Mr. Durham disclosed at trial that, in October 2016, the FBI offered Mr. Steele $1 million to corroborate the dossier in October 2016. He could not.Mr. Steele now claims that the offer was for sources to relocate to America and testify, though this was not what FBI witnesses claimed in court. One might expect Mr. Steele to offer contrition for setting off the Russia collusion goose chase in the first place. The expectation would prove to be in vain.Instead, Mr. Steele tweeted that “Mr. Danchenko’s unmasking and indictment is one of the most disgraceful episodes in U.S. judicial history.” He went on to say that the “only beneficiaries” of Mr. Durham’s prosecution were the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s Federal Security Service.That chutzpah would normally earn the gold medal, but Mr. Steele has stiff competition. Andrew Weissmann, a senior attorney on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team that investigated Trump-Russia, tweeted, “Durham lost both trials he brought. Mueller won all the trial he brought.”Mr. Weissmann then went on to tweet that Mr. Durham should be subject to an ethics probe in part because he stated that Mr. Mueller did not find evidence of collusion. Mr. Weissmann’s chutzpah is more subtle. The cases that Mr. Mueller’s team won notably had nothing to do with any actual conspiracy between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia.Instead they were either process crimes, such as misleading the FBI, or unrelated violations of lobbying law and tax evasion. The actual report from Mr. Mueller says the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”Mr. Mueller’s team also had to drop some of the charges against the Russian hackers and entities responsible for the 2016 election interference. That was in 2020, after two of the defendants, Concord Management and Concord Consulting, showed up in court to challenge the case.Fearing a jury trial would expose U.S. sources and methods, the justice department dismissed the charges. Mr. Durham — in one of the most shocking developments — also showed that Mr. Mueller’s team and senior FBI officials wanted to believe Mr. Steele’s tall tales about Mr. Trump.At trial, FBI analysts testified, for example, that they wanted to investigate a Democratic operative, Charles Dolan, who was a source for the dossier, but the request to open that investigation was blocked by Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors.Not to be outdone, a former FBI agent, Peter Strzok, is also making a play in the Chutzpah Olympics. Mr. Strzok was kicked off of Mr. Mueller’s team in 2017 after a series of texts with another FBI lawyer disclosed an animus against Mr. Trump, though he oversaw the investigations into both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton in 2016.Mr. Strzok’s team relied on the Steele Dossier to obtain a surveillance warrant against Carter Page, a low-level adviser to the Trump campaign. That was rebuked by Mr. Durham, the DOJ’s inspector general, and the current FBI director. On MSNBC last week, Mr. Strzok likened Mr. Durham’s decision to pursue a minor player like Mr. Danchenko to the act of a totalitarian state.Really? Mr. Strzok is the same guy who recommended that Mr. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, be investigated for violating the Logan Act, a constitutionally dubious statute that would make it illegal for an incoming administration to contact foreign officials during the presidential transition.The unearned umbrage taken by Mr. Durham’s critics does not get the special counsel entirely off the hook. Mr. Durham’s investigation has amassed significant evidence against the integrity and honesty of FBI senior leaders, Mr. Steele, and Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors, and yet none of them were prosecuted.The theory of the two jury trials Mr. Durham lost was that the FBI was the victim of deceptions from Mr. Danchenko and a lawyer for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, Michael Sussmann. It turns out that for the last three years, Mr. Durham built a case that the American people and the 45th president were the victims of deceptions from the FBI and the 2016 Clinton campaign. That was the story that Mr. Durham’s evidence told in the courtroom. He lost both trials because the real culprits were never indicted.

John Durham and the Olympics of Umbrage

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