During a fateful fiscal period for his investigation, special counsel John Durham’s office billed taxpayers more than $2 million to build cases that ultimately crumbled, according to newly released disclosures.
Durham’s five-page statement of expenditures spans from April 1 to Sept. 30 of this year. The case of Hillary Clinton-affiliated lawyer Michael Sussmann ended in an embarrassing acquittal within this time frame. Another case against Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko met the same fate shortly after that.
More than three and a half years since his May 2019 appointment, Durham has brought few cases, and only one has produced a guilty plea on a charge unrelated to the Russia probe’s origins. Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinsemith admitted to altering an email used to justify a FISA warrant for ex-Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, who already had left that position at the time of his surveillance.
Two of Durham’s cases that went to trial this year fell apart in rapid succession.
There was no allegation that Sussmann lied about that “secret communications channel,” knowingly or not.
In October, days after the fiscal period at issue ended, a separate federal jury heard Danchenko’s case, which also accused the defendant of lying to federal authorities. The judge dismissed one of the five counts before they even reached the jury.