Earlier this month, a third criminal indictment was made resulting from Special Counsel John Durham's investigation into the so-called "Steele Dossier." Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe believes that more indictments are coming:
“Many of the documents that John Durham is using are documents that I gave him. So I declassified the documents that we’ve talked about, but I gave John Durham over 1,000 other documents that have not yet been declassified that I know, including intelligence that goes specifically to this criminal activity that would be the basis for further indictments,” the ex-spy chief said. . .
“I continue to think there will be many indictments based on the intelligence that I gave to John Durham and that I have seen,” he continued.
Others like Andy McCarthy believe that Durham is building towards a final report without ruling out the possibility of more indictments.
All signs are that Durham will end his investigation with a narrative report. It has looked that way for a long time. There are reasons why then-attorney general Bill Barr appointed then-Connecticut U.S. attorney Durham as a special counsel shortly before the Trump administration ended.
Unlike ordinary federal prosecutors, who either file charges or close investigations without comment, special counsels are required by regulation to write a report for the attorney general. As we saw with special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in 2019, there is typically great outside pressure on the AG to make such reports public (though doing so is not required). Barr obviously knew enough about Durham’s investigation to grasp that there was unlikely to be a grand, overarching criminal-conspiracy case; there had, however, been rampant malfeasance and abuse of power that might never come to light absent a comprehensive investigative report.
Durham’s indictment of Danchenko and his mid-September indictment of Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann appear to confirm that he is building toward a final report, not wide-ranging criminal charges.
As Mollie Hemingway points out, many once-outspoken Democrats have unsurprisingly been silent on the Igor Danchenko indictment. This includes Congressman Adam Schiff who was confronted by former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortegas on "The View" last week:
"You defended, promoted and even read into the Congressional Record the Steele dossier," Ortagus told Schiff on "The View." "We know last week the main source of the dossier was indicted by the FBI for lying about most of the key claims in that dossier. Do you have any reflections on your role in promoting this to the American people?"
Schiff avoided directly answering the question and instead said that "whoever lied" to Steele or the FBI should be prosecuted.
To learn more, join RNLA this Friday at 2:00 p.m. ET for a webinar featuring National Review's Andy McCarthy and The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway detailing the latest developments coming from the Durham Investigation.