Special counsel John Durham means business by requesting 30 subpoenas for testimony in the trial against the man believed to be a key source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele's anti-Trump dossier, according to a leading Russiagate investigator.
Kash Patel, a former top House Intelligence Committee aide and Trump administration official, said in a recent interview that the request in federal court indicates a wide scope in a case that bears a number of connections, including to Hillary Clinton.
"You're telling the judge, 'I've got 30 witnesses that I'm going fly in from all over the country and the world to prosecute this case,' [and it] shows you how seriously John Durham is moving on this matter because this is the fulcrum of the case," Patel told former Rep. Devin Nunes, who now is now CEO of Truth Social, former President Donald Trump's social media app.
Igor Danchenko, a Russian-born lawyer and researcher who has lived and worked in the Washington, D.C., area for many years, was charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI related to the dossier. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty, and his trial in Virginia is scheduled for October.
Potential witnesses are not named in the filing by Durham on Wednesday. Durham, who is investigating the origins and conduct of the FBI's Russia inquiry, lost his case against Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann in May. Durham has obtained a single guilty plea, which came from former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to altering an email about a Trump campaign aide under government surveillance. Critics of Durham's investigation have pegged it as being tainted by politics, but Trump and his allies have hailed the special counsel as a means to rid agencies such as the FBI of corrupt officials and uncover the role Clinton played in ginning up Trump-Russia collusion concerns, including in the media sphere.
Robby Mook, Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign manager, said in 2017 he authorized Marc Elias, a now-former Perkins Coie attorney who served as general counsel for the Clinton campaign, to hire an outside firm to dig up dirt on Trump’s connections with Russia in 2016. This led to the dossier, composed of allegations put together at the behest of opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which Steele has defended.
Durham sought to expand on what his team called a "joint venture" aimed to hurt Trump politically during the Sussmann trial, although the judge placed limits on presenting such evidence. Clinton dismissed what she said were "conspiracy theories" and a "fake scandal" earlier this year as Durham dug around her 2016 campaign.
Patel said the Danchenko case "intersects the Clinton campaign, their dirty deeds, their fake money, Christopher Steele and the likes of Fusion GPS." Danchenko, he added, "was caught, and these 30 subpoenas are going to shed information at the heart of this matter by real people testifying in federal court."
This article was originally published on The Washington Examiner on July 18, 2022.
