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With the left eye focusing solely on the January 6th committee and the the right eye concentrating firmly on the Mar-A-Lago raid business, there would seem to the typical observer that there might not be too much going on in the world of political discussion. It could easily, and thus unforgivably, be forgotten that there has been a staggering prosecution case going on in the midst of all this. Several words to resuscitate anybody’s memory might be… “dossier”. “Clinton”, and “Durham”. That ought to do it.
It is now being reported that:
A top prosecutor for special counsel John Durham has withdrawn from the criminal case against Igor Danchenko, who was a source for the dodgy Steele dossier, just two months before the trial is to begin. Danchenko’s trial is scheduled to start Oct. 16.
USA v. DANCHENKO
— Just Human (@realjusthuman) August 22, 2022
Looks like Assistant Special Counsel Andrew DeFilippis is being taken off this case.
A good reason for that would be: he's moving to new case.
A bad reason for that would be: he's been fired by Durham.
I'll assume the former until I see evidence of latter. pic.twitter.com/tyoxkJyEix
Assistant special counsel Andrew DeFilippis withdrew from the case, according to a filing late Sunday by Mr. Durham. The filing did not say why DeFilippis abruptly withdrew from this case and the Justice Department is not talking.
DeFilippis oversaw the failed prosecution of former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was charged with lying to the FBI but acquitted in court.
Mr. DeFilippis was also a key prosecutor in Mr. Durham’s case against Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to falsifying evidence for a FISA warrant that allowed the bogus continued surveillance of Carter Page.
Page was an adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign but did work for Trump’s administration.
According to The Washington Examiner:
The status conference minutes filed with the court said the “counsel for government” included Michael Keilty, who also assisted with the Sussmann case, and Adam Small, who appeared to be a new addition to the team this month.
DeFilippis was not with the special counsel team at the Alexandria courthouse where the trial will be held.
The October trial against Danchenko comes after Sussmann was found not guilty in May, a blow to Durham’s investigation.
Sussmann had been charged with allegedly concealing two clients — technology executive Rodney Joffe and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — from FBI General Counsel James Baker when Sussmann pushed debunked allegations of a secret line of communication between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank.
DeFilippis was the most prominent prosecutor in the Sussmann case, including doing the questioning of the government’s main witness — Baker — as well as grilling Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias, who in 2016 had hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn hired Steele to pen and push his anti-Trump dossier.
DeFilippis also delivered the ultimately unsuccessful closing arguments for Durham’s team at the end of the trial in May.
So, along with Mar-A-Lago and the January 6th committee, here is another political quagmire shrouded in the mists of confusion. On the point of Durham and the investigation, we reported around the middle of last month that the political bias of the Department of Justice that seems to be getting more and more noticeable was called into question yet again on the matter of the Durham probe.
This was called into question along with the Hunter Biden and the infamous laptop saga which hasn’t seemed to materialize into much of anything. There does seem to be massive attempt to weaponize the Department Of Justice the purposes of consolidating political power. This must be resisted where we find it.
