The story of the
Christopher Steele dossier took its latest turn this week with
the acquittal of Igor Danchenko, an analyst who worked on the dossier and was accused of lying to the FBI about it. The case that John H. Durham brought against Danchenko was so weak that the judge threw out one of the charges before a jury could deliberate on it, and the jury spent only one day before it acquitted Danchenko of the charges against him.
This likely ends the quixotic quest of Durham to discredit the Mueller probe into former President Donald Trump’s Russia ties and lend credence to Trump’s claim that it was always
a hoax. History will look back on this week as another chapter in the saga of the
Steele dossier, which has always been over-hyped and used by both sides to advance their agendas.
First journalists treated the sensational dossier as proof of Donald Trump’s
Manchurian Candidate-style nomination for the U.S. presidency. Supporters of the former president believe he was the victim of a “
witch hunt” and that the dossier was a critical part of it.
For those of us in corporate investigations, it is neither.