The Durham investigation arrests one of Christopher Steele’s researchers. nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/… 
Here’s the Danchenko indictment—five counts of s. 1001 false statements. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
For his next trick, John Durham is going to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a guy never got an anonymous phone call from someone he believed to be a Russian-American Chamber of Commerce president.
The proffered proof is that the defendant acted like he hadn’t spoken with the claimed source in the weeks after the supposed date of the call.
It’s something, but it seems to me you could entertain a reasonable doubt as to whether these were efforts at source protection.
It’s something, but it seems to me you could entertain a reasonable doubt as to whether these were efforts at source protection.
So as I read this, Durham has charged two purported substantive lies as five separate counts. The first alleged lie is count one, and the second alleged lie is blown out into counts two through five because Danchenko allegedly repeated it in slightly different words.
The alleged lies Danchenko told the FBI are that:
(i) he knows some Democratic politico but that guy didn’t supply info for the dossier (Durham thinks he did), and
(ii) he had the aforementioned anonymous call he thought was from the chamber President (Durham thinks he didn’t).
(i) he knows some Democratic politico but that guy didn’t supply info for the dossier (Durham thinks he did), and
(ii) he had the aforementioned anonymous call he thought was from the chamber President (Durham thinks he didn’t).
For the second alleged lie, Durham makes some truly fine distinctions to generate multiple counts:
Count 2 - Danchenko said he believed the caller was probably the chamber president
Count 3 - Danchenko said he was “under the impression” the caller was the chamber president
Count 2 - Danchenko said he believed the caller was probably the chamber president
Count 3 - Danchenko said he was “under the impression” the caller was the chamber president
Count 4 - Danchenko said he believed he spoke to the chamber president anonymously on multiple occasions
Count 5 - Danchenko said he believed he’d spoken to the chamber president on the telephone
Count 5 - Danchenko said he believed he’d spoken to the chamber president on the telephone
This is across four different interview dates, so the charges are essentially that Danchenko stuck to his story on this point, but Durham doesn’t believe it.
Even with all that repetition, it seems to me that only half of the indictment at most is devoted to those five counts. The rest of the 39 pages are surplus allegations about uncharged conduct and the atmospherics of the dossier that don’t bear on the alleged lies. For example:
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