Igor Danchenko, the Russian national behind many of the allegations that Donald Trump had deep ties to the Russian government, was acquitted today by a Virginia jury in a case that accused him of lying to the FBI.
The unanimous verdict was a severe blow to John Durham, the U.S. attorney who had been handpicked by former Attorney General William Barr to lead the investigation into how and why the FBI began examining the 2016 Trump campaign.
Danchenko’s case was the final trial in Durham’s probe, which yielded only one conviction of a low-level FBI employee. Today’s loss means Durham failed to establish the existence of any corrupt, concerted effort by the FBI to wage an illegal war against Trump.
The jury’s verdict was also a rebuke to Trump himself who repeatedly predicted that Durham would turn up big results in his efforts.
“It looks like this is just the beginning,” the disgraced one-term president said, referring to Durham’s probe in a February interview with Fox. “You’re going to see a lot of other things happening, having to do with what really just is a continuation of the crime of the century.”
Durham’s investigation has been at the center of a sprawling and often incoherent narrative concocted by far-right Republicans who have falsely accused the FBI of lying about Trump World’s involvement with Russia to justify spying on him in 2016.
In reality, however, multiple congressional and law enforcement investigations have found that Trump and his allies had many ties to Russian government officials before he became president in 2017, including a secret attempt to build a hotel and office building in Moscow. There is also zero evidence that law enforcement officials spied on Trump or any of his 2016 campaign officials.
But Trump, who has long sought to invert damaging and true allegations against himself into false ones against people he dislikes, has long insisted otherwise.
“It’s coming out, and it is coming out at a level — Durham has come out with things that are absolutely amazing,” Trump said in a 2021 Fox interview. “We all sort of knew that happened, and now we have facts, and I think they’re only going to get deeper and deeper — and it all leads back to the Democrats, Hillary [Clinton] and the dirty lawyers.”
From its very beginning in 2019, Durham’s investigation seemed unlikely to support the wild allegations made by Trump and his supporters. Around the same time that Barr had appointed Durham, a Department of Justice inspector general released a lengthy report which found that the FBI had acted legally when it began examining possible connections between Trump and some of his associates with various Russian actors.
Durham, who had been appointed as the U.S. attorney for the state of Connecticut by Trump in 2017, gave an indication of his own bias when he issued an unprecedented public statement blasting the inspector general report shortly after its release.
In court, Durham’s case against Danchenko looked weak after he began the trial by attacking the credibility of his own witness, an FBI official who had testified to the inspector general that Danchenko had been “truthful” as the FBI was investigating the mostly uncorroborated claims in the infamous “Steele dossier” that Democrats had privately circulated in 2016.
The pro-Trump special counsel suffered another high-profile court loss in May after a Washington, DC, jury unanimously acquitted Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann on a similar charge of lying to the FBI.
“I told the truth to the FBI,” Sussman told reporters after the verdict was announced. “Despite being falsely accused, I am relieved that justice ultimately prevailed in this case.”
Trump took the news of Sussman’s acquittal poorly, raging on his personal social network that “Our Country is going to HELL and Michael Sussman is not guilty. How’s everything else doing? Enjoy your day!!!”
The Danchenko case was the last of Durham’s indictments. His three years of investigating the investigators yielded only one win in court. The special counsel is expected to issue a final report on his findings. Republican congressional leaders have said they intend to have him testify about the investigations should they win majorities in next month’s elections.