Primary source for Trump-Russia dossier acquitted, handing special counsel Durham another trial loss

Igor Danchenko, the primary source for the infamous Trump-Russia dossier, was acquitted Tuesday of four counts of lying to the FBI in an embarrassing defeat for special counsel John Durham.

Durham has taken two cases to trial, and both have ended in acquittals. After more than three years looking for misconduct in the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, Durham has only secured one conviction: the guilty plea of a low-level FBI lawyer, who got probation.

The jury returned not guilty verdicts on all charges against Danchenko, a Russian expat and think tank analyst who provided the bulk of the material for the anti-Trump dossier. Durham initially charged Danchenko with five counts of lying to the FBI, but a judge threw out one of the charges on Friday.

The verdict means jurors weren’t persuaded by Durham’s allegations that Danchenko lied to the FBI about his contacts with a Belarusian-American businessman who was a possible source for the dossier. The largely discredited dossier was a collection of unverified and salacious allegations compiled by retired British spy Christopher Steele, whose dirt-digging was indirectly funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.