ALEXANDRIA, VA — A federal judge has thrown out one of the five charges brought by special counsel John Durham against Igor Danchenko, who is accused of lying to the FBI about the sourcing for Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier.
Judge Anthony Trenga’s decision to dismiss one of the criminal counts came down to what the definition of the word “talked” is.
Durham’s indictment against the Russian-born Danchenko argued that he “stated falsely that he had never communicated with” longtime Clinton ally Charles Dolan “about any allegations contained” in the dossier, while “in truth and in fact, and as Danchenko well knew, Danchenko sourced one or more specific allegations” in the dossier anonymously to Dolan.
MUELLER DECLINED TO INVESTIGATE CLINTON ALLY LINKED TO DANCHENKO
During an interview with the FBI, Danchenko’s handling agent, Kevin Helson, had asked Danchenko: “But you had never talked to [Dolan] about anything that showed up in the dossier right?”
The defendant had replied, “No.” The agent followed up, “You don’t think so?” Danchenko replied, “No. We talked about, you know, related issues perhaps but no, no, no, nothing specific.”
Danchenko’s defense attorneys have argued that their client’s answer was “literally true.”
The judge agreed.
Danchenko had emailed Dolan in August 2016 to solicit any “thought, rumor, or allegation” about Manafort while informing Dolan he was working on a “project against Trump.”
Dolan wrote back, “I had a drink with a GOP friend of mine,” and made claims about Paul Manafort’s reasons for departing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The claim quickly made its way into a Steele dossier report. Dolan testified he never met with a “GOP friend” in relation to this information that he passed to Danchenko but had pulled the claim from cable news.
But the judge said because the email exchange was written, rather than verbal, it did not meet the standard definition of the word “talked.”
“That the FBI wanted to obtain as much information as possible doesn’t change the meaning of the words used,” Trenga ruled Friday. “Here the government has not presented any evidence that Mr. Danchenko understood the word ‘talk’ to mean more than the standard accepted meaning.”
Trenga said that “the standard definition of talk means spoken speech,” and it is “literally true” that sending an email does not meet the definition of talking, and so “criminal liability” cannot apply here.
Durham’s indictment also hit Danchenko with four additional counts for lying to the FBI about a phone call he claims he received from Sergei Millian, a Belarus-born U.S. citizen and businessman whom the Steele source had said told him about a conspiracy of cooperation between Trump and the Russians — which the special counsel says is false.
The judge said he would reserve his judgment on that until after the jury reaches its verdict.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Closing arguments by the prosecution and the defense will happen Monday.
