Igor Danchenko, a Russian national, was charged by Special Counsel John Durham with giving false statements to the FBI, but on one of the five counts brought against him, U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga found him not guilty, Fox News informed.
Following a typical Rule 29 hearing in which the defense submits a move to dismiss the case on the grounds that the prosecution has not presented enough evidence to establish it, Trenga dismissed one of the five counts of making a false statement to the FBI.
On Friday, Durham’s team finished setting up the proof.
On Friday, Trenga and Danchenko’s defense team reached an agreement to dismiss Count One.
Counts two through five will be considered by the jury.
Danchenko is accused of lying to FBI Special Agent Kevin Helson in Count One by claiming that he had not “spoken” to longtime Democratic operative and PR manager Charles Dolan about information that was included in the Steele Dossier.
The responsibility of pinning down the witness is on the questioner, according to Trenga, who also found that the criminal provisions on false statement accusations “are not to be liberally construed.”
The transcript of that interview reveals that Helson questioned Danchenko about whether he had discussed the dossier with Dolan.
In response, Danchenko says, “No… nothing specific.”
The evidence used in this week’s trial demonstrates that data Dolan submitted to Danchenko via email eventually ended up in the dossier.
In the report, Danchenko credits “an American political person affiliated with Donald Trump” with providing the information.
However, Dolan said this week that he lied to Danchenko in 2016 when he claimed to have inside knowledge about Paul Manafort’s departure from the Trump campaign via a GOP source. In reality, Dolan had discovered this information from open source reporting.
The Durham team “has not offered any proof that Danchenko understood ‘speak’ to signify more,” according to Trenga on Friday.
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