Jury finds Danchenko 'not guilty' of lying to FBI in Trump-Russia ties case

A Russian researcher, who contributed explosive details to the "Steele dossier", which alleged ties between former president Donald Trump's campaign and Russia, has been acquitted on charges he lied to the FBI about the sources of his intelligence.

Tuesday's acquittal of Igor Danchenko represents yet another blow to Special Counsel John Durham, who was appointed in 2019 by Trump-era attorney general William Barr to probe the FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into whether Trump's 2016 presidential campaign had colluded with Russia.

Danchenko's wife wiped away tears after the fourth and final "not guilty" was read by the clerk.

"While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury's decision and thank them for their service," Durham said in a statement. 

The decision marks the second defeat for Durham and his team of prosecutors. 

Earlier this year, a jury in Washington, DC, acquitted Michael Sussmann, an attorney for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, of charges he lied to the FBI when he passed along a later discredited tip about possible communications between Trump's business and a Russian bank.

Despite hopes by Trump supporters that the prosecutor would uncover a sweeping conspiracy within the FBI and other agencies to derail his candidacy, and then his presidency, the investigation over the course of more than three years failed to produce evidence that met those expectations. 

The sole conviction — an FBI agent admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of a former Trump aide — was for conduct uncovered not by Durham but by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and the two cases that Durham took to trials ended in across-the-board acquittals.

READ MORE: Trump sues Clinton, Democrats over Russia collusion allegations

'Steele dossier'

The Danchenko case was the first of the three to delve deeply into the origins of the "Steele dossier," a compendium of allegations that Trump's 2016 presidential campaign was colluding with the Kremlin.

Most famously, it alleged that the Russians could have blackmail material on Trump for his supposed interactions with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. Trump derided the dossier as fake news and a political witch hunt when it became public in 2017.

Danchenko, by his own admission, was responsible for 80 percent of the raw intelligence in the dossier and half of the accompanying analysis, though trial testimony indicated that Danchenko was shocked and dismayed about how Christopher Steele presented the material and portrayed it as factual when Danchenko considered it more to be rumor and speculation.

Danchenko had reportedly worked with former British MI6 spy Christopher Steele on the dossier.

Prosecutors said that if Danchenko had been more honest about his sources, the FBI might not have treated the dossier so credulously.

As it turned out, the FBI used material from the dossier to support applications for warrantless surveillance of a Trump campaign official, Carter Page, even though the FBI never was able to corroborate a single allegation in the dossier.

Prosecutors said Danchenko lied about the identity of his own sources for the material he gave to Steele. The specific charges against Danchenko allege that he essentially fabricated one of his sources when the FBI interviewed him to determine how he derived the material he provided for the dossier.

Danchenko told the FBI that some of the material came when he received an anonymous call from a man he believed to be Sergei Millian, a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce.

Prosecutors said Danchenko's story made no sense. They said that phone records show no evidence of a call and that Danchenko had no reason to believe Millian, a Trump supporter he had never met, was suddenly going to be willing to provide disparaging information about Trump to a stranger.

READ MORE: Analyst who worked on Trump-Russia dossier arrested for lying to FBI