That faint whimper you may hear is the end of the much overhyped Durham Investigation that was supposed to reveal how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and the Deep State and the Democrats all colluded to pick on poor Donald Trump and level false charges against him about his collusion with Russia.
A little over a month ago we learned that Durham’s grand jury’s time was up, and he wasn’t calling another one.
As of November 2021 Durham had issued single-count indictments against two Americans for making a false statement, and a five-count false statement indictment against a Russian national. One of the Americans was acquitted at trial; the other, an FBI lawyer, entered into a plea agreement with no jail time for doctoring an email used in preparation for a wiretap renewal application.
The Russian national, Igor Danchenko, goes on trial next month. The Right is feverishly looking forward to the Danchenko testimony that will discredit the evil Steele Dossier. The problem, of course, is that (one) the Steele Dossier has already been pretty much discredited; (two) the Steele Dossier wasn’t nearly as big a part of the evidence against Trump that the Right claims it to be. In fact, when the FBI began its investigation it didn’t yet know the dossier existed.
Well, folks, today Igor Danchenko was acquitted of all charges. And that’s the end of the Durham investigation.
Durham tried to prove that Danchenko had lied about the dossier, and those lies led to an FBI wiretap of a Trump adviser. But the jury decided otherwise.
Mr. Trump and his supporters have falsely sought to conflate the dossier with the official investigation into Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, but the F.B.I. did not open the inquiry based on the dossier and the final report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, did not cite anything in it as evidence. …
,,, Mr. Steele hired Mr. Danchenko to canvass contacts in Russia and Europe about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in Russia.
Mr. Danchenko conveyed rumors that Mr. Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia, and that Russia had a blackmail tape of Mr. Trump with prostitutes in a hotel room in Moscow. But during an interview with the F.B.I., Mr. Danchenko said that he had first seen the dossier when BuzzFeed published it and that Mr. Steele had exaggerated his statements, portraying uncorroborated gossip as fact.
So that’s that.