U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga ruled Thursday that Danchenko’s case must be tried by a jury, clearing the way for his trial next month. But it was “an extremely close call,” Trenga said from the bench. The ruling is a victory, albeit a temporary one, for Durham — who was tapped by former Attorney General William P. Barr in 2019, during the Trump administration, to investigate the FBI’s 2016 Russia probe. of Durham focused heavily on the FBI’s use of the so-called “Steele dossier,” a collection of allegations about Trump compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. But the judge’s remark that the decision was difficult could be an ominous sign, as Durham still needs to convince jurors Danchenko is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The special counsel’s investigation suffered a setback in May when another person accused of lying to the FBI, cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, was acquitted by a jury in D.C. federal court. Danchenko’s trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 11 in federal court in Alexandria, Va. Durham personally argued the case at Thursday’s hearing. Jurors will be asked to weigh statements by Danchenko, who has pleaded not guilty, made during FBI interviews in 2017 of a longtime Democratic-aligned Washington public relations official, Charles Dolan Jr., and the former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, Sergey Milian. Igor Danchenko was arrested, accused of lying to the FBI about information in the Steele dossier Key to the case is whether those statements by Danchenko to the FBI were deliberate deceptions that had a material effect on the government’s efforts to verify the allegations in the dossier, a series of Steele reports based on information from Danchenko and others. Steele was hired to produce the reports by the research firm Fusion GPS, which was hired by a law firm representing Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee. Danchenko’s defense team asked the judge to dismiss the five-count indictment in a legal brief filed Sept. 2, arguing that Danchenko made “ambiguous and speculative statements” to the FBI about “subjective” beliefs. Danchenko’s prosecution, they said, was “a case of extraordinary government overreach.” “The law only criminalizes unequivocally false statements that are material to a particular government decision,” Danchenko’s lawyers Stuart A. Sears and Danny Onorato wrote, adding that the FBI’s questions at issue “were fundamentally ambiguous, Mr. Danchenko’s answers were literally true. , non-responsive or ambiguous and the statements were not relevant to a specific government decision.” “If Rudy Giuliani says he believes the 2020 election was rigged, that doesn’t make it a false statement,” Sears argued in court Thursday. “He believes so.” Durham’s team responded that the FBI’s questions were clear and that, in any event, settling disputes over disputed facts is work reserved for a jury. An FBI agent asked Danchenko a “decisively simple” question about Dolan during a June 15, 2017 interview, Durham’s team argued in a brief filed Sept. 16. “But you never spoke to Chuck Dolan about anything in the file, did you?” the agent asked, according to court records. “No,” Danchenko replied. “You don’t think so?” asked the agent. “No. We talked about, you know, related issues maybe, but no, no, no, nothing specific,” Danchenko said. The special counsel said the context in which the interview took place should have made it clear that Danchenko was being asked about the sources behind the allegations in the Steele dossier. The indictment alleges that at least one allegation in the Steele dossier “reflected information that Danchenko collected directly” from Dolan — despite Danchenko’s denial that they had discussed anything “specific” in it. Danchenko asked Dolan via email about Paul Manafort’s resignation as Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, and Dolan responded with information that closely matched what was contained in an Aug. 22 report from Steele, the indictment says. But Danchenko’s lawyers argued: “The most logical reading of this question is whether Mr. Danchenko and [Dolan] talked about the Company Reports themselves after they were published.” “Mr. Danchenko’s answer to this question was literally true because he never spoke [Dolan] about the specific allegations contained in the Company Reports themselves, but spoke about matters that were ‘related’ to the allegations later published in those reports,” Danchenko’s lawyers wrote. They added that the FBI agent’s question was imprecisely worded because an email exchange between Danchenko and Dolan was not the same as “talking,” which is the word the FBI agent used during the interview. “Speech refers to communication through spoken words, not writing,” the lawyers argued. At Thursday’s hearing, Durham argued that “in today’s lexicon, ‘speak’ has different meanings.” “He knew exactly what the FBI was looking for. he knew the context of what he was being asked,” Durham said, adding that Danchenko did not produce the email exchange about Manafort to investigators as he turned over other materials. Danchenko’s lawyers said in court that the information in the disputed Steele dossier actually came “from public news sources,” not Dolan. Danchenko’s lawyers also argued that his statements to the FBI in 2017 — that he “believed” Millian had contacted him anonymously in a phone call and shared information about Trump and Russia — were “literally true” and could not be considered criminal lie. . Durham said an email showed Danchenko had never spoken to Millian since Aug. 8, 2016. Danchenko had claimed the anonymous caller contacted him weeks before that date, prosecutors allege. “He knows that didn’t happen, that it wasn’t Millian who called him,” Durham said. The special counsel’s team had previously revealed that Millian had not been located. Danchenko’s lawyers argued separately Thursday that several emails from Millian to a Russian journalist related to Danchenko should not be admitted as evidence in the trial “without allowing Mr. Danchenko an opportunity to cross-examine Millian.”
