On Tuesday, a jury acquitted Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst at a U.S. He had been accused of lying to the FBI during a meeting in which he presented the bureau’s top lawyer with information about Trump he thought should be investigated. After deliberating for just a few hours, a jury in May acquitted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Two other criminal cases, also narrow in nature, faltered. Notably, the case involved conduct uncovered in an earlier investigation by the inspector general, rather than by Durham’s team. Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to probation, rather than prison.
The year ended with just one criminal case - a guilty plea by an FBI lawyer who admitted doctoring an internal email related to the surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser. Months later, Barr told The Wall Street Journal that he did not believe there had been improper activity during the Russia investigation by the CIA, even though suspicions about the intelligence community had helped prompt Durham’s appointment in the first place. One of his top prosecutors resigned without explanation from the Justice Department.
In December 2019, a Justice Department inspector general report concluded that the Russia investigation was opened for a legitimate reason but identified numerous errors in how it was conducted - giving Trump and his supporters an avenue of attack and optimism over Durham.īut by the end of 2020, there were signs Durham’s investigation was losing momentum. The appointment was made shortly after the conclusion of an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, which found substantial contacts between Russians and Trump associates but did not allege a criminal conspiracy between them.
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