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Counsel Needs To FightâŚ==
Part 2 of 3
The remaining four counts of the indictment concerned Danchenkoâs alleged lies about his supposed conversation with the then-President of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. According to the indictment, Danchenko told FBI agents on multiple occasionsâthus the four countsâthat he believed Millian had provided him information during an anonymous phone call, including the âintel,â later included in the Steele dossier, that there was âa well-developed âconspiracy of cooperationâ between the Trump Campaign and Russian officials.â
But Danchenko never spoke with Millian and Millian was not a source for Danchenko nor the Steele dossier, as Millian has long maintained. Millian will not comment further, telling The Federalist that Durhamâs team requested he ânot talk to the press about details of the investigation.â
Get Those Subpoenas Enforced
Some of those details will likely be made public, however, when pre-trial filings begin to hit the docket in the case against Danchenko. With the October 11, 2022, trial date only about four months away, one could anticipate various filings to flow in soon. But following the courtâs ruling in United States v. Sussmann that the special counsel waited too long to challenge documents withheld from the grand jury based on the Clinton campaignâs assertion of attorney-client privilege, Durhamâs team should move next week to enforce any subpoenas.
In the Sussmann case, on April 6, 2022, the special counsel filed a Motion to Compel documents withheld from the grand jury to be produced to the court in camera. On May 4, 2022, presiding judge Christopher Cooper ordered Fusion GPS to provide the court 38 documents sought by the special counselâs office to allow the court to determine whether they were protected by attorney-client privilege. Then, on May 12, 2022, the court ruled that emails between Fusion GPS and the press âas part of an affirmative media relations effort by the Clinton Campaignâ were not privileged and must be provided to prosecutors.
The court, however, further ruled that because the special counsel waited âuntil April 6, 2022, just over a month before trial was set to begin,â to challenge the privilege, âallowing the Special Counsel to use these documents at trial would prejudice Mr. Sussmannâs defense.â Accordingly, while the special counselâs office obtained access to the documents, they could not use those documents during the prosecution of Sussmann.
To ensure prosecutors both have access to all material documents and the ability to use any relevant documents during the Danchenko trial, the special counselâs office should move quickly to obtain any material previously withheld by Fusion GPS under the auspices of attorney-client privilege. In total, as the court explained in the Sussmann case, Fusion GPS withheld âapproximately 1500 documentsâ from the grand jury, but the judge only considered privilege for 38 documents prosecutors sought access to in its case against the former Clinton campaign manager.
Whatâs Inside Those Documents
The details contained in Danchenkoâs indictment, coupled with the content of various emails between Fusion GPS and reporters, suggest some of the 1,500 documents withheld will concern Danchenkoâs supposed intel, even though Danchenko was one step removed from Fusion GPS, having been brought into the Russia collusion smear project by Steele.
The indictment, for instance, notes that on âJuly 28, 2016, Danchenko sent a message to an acquaintanceâ stating, âThanks to my reporting in the past 36 hours, Steele and Steeleâs assistant are flying in tomorrow for a few days so I might be busy.â That same day the FBIâs New York Field Office received two of Steeleâs election reports.
July 28, 2016, is also the date the FBI received the âtipâ from the Australian diplomat that George Papadopoulos âhad received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist . . . with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to [Hillary] Clinton.â That âtipâ purportedly formed the basis for opening Crossfire Hurricane.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/03/why-the-special-counsel-needs-to-fight-for-more-spygate-documents-stat/