John Durham Goes to Court

Special Counsel John Durham steps into court Monday with the first trial of his probe into Democrats’ Russia-collusion hoax. That’s a formality. Mr. Durham has already won.

From the day the special counsel released the 27-page Sussmann indictment in September (and the follow-on charges against dossier contributor Igor Danchenko), it’s been clear he had ambitions that went far beyond a conviction for lying. Each of his filings follows the same, deliberate strategy—lengthy briefs and long exhibits full of names, emails and documents, all of which connect the dots and expose the web that enabled this hoax, and the lies that kept it hidden.

Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias isn’t charged, but he also no longer heads the elite political-law practice at Perkins Coie. The firm last August announced Mr. Elias, who’d been there 28 years, was leaving to start his own small practice. A few weeks later, the Sussmann indictment laid bare the role Mr. Elias, a longtime DNC and Clinton lawyer, played in ginning up and distributing the bogus Trump-Russia claims.

Christopher Steele, author of the infamous dossier, once lauded by the press as an international superspy, is now a man in search of a reputation. His dossier’s “intelligence,” Mr. Durham’s documents show, came primarily from a Brookings Institution employee, Mr. Danchenko, who was recycling salacious chatter from a Clinton associate. Whatever work Mr. Steele may find in future, it won’t include assisting the FBI or any other respectable agency.

The Durham prosecutions show how the opposition-research firm operates—not by producing real research, but by shopping seamy claims to law enforcement, then browbeating journalists into covering the “investigations” Fusion inspires. (Fusion in court filings says its job was to help Perkins Coie with legal advice—a claim the judge largely rejected Thursday.) The Washington press corps knows it got played—and how. A recent Durham filing released dozens of emails showing reporters at top outlets palling it up with their Fusion narrators, with one Slate writer even sending a draft October 2016 article for Fusion to review.

Mrs. Clinton won’t be in the courtroom, but the campaign’s claims it was in the dark about the Perkins Coie and Fusion work are in ashes. Mr. Durham’s evidence shows top Clinton aides—including campaign manager Robby Mook—were apprised of allegations and helped circulate them. Also among the circulators was current national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who faces calls to resign given his role.

One downside of the Durham “lying” strategy is that it requires prosecutors to present the FBI as dupes of the Clinton operation. Yet amusingly, this has lured the defense into providing evidence of FBI rot. Mr. Sussmann’s lawyers will argue at trial that their client can’t be found guilty of lying to the FBI, since “they have reviewed more than 300 emails that show the bureau understood Sussmann worked for Democratic campaign entities,” as the Washington Post reports.

The FBI knew all along and ran with unvetted political dirt, even if Mr. Sussmann’s alleged lie allowed it to pretend it was aboveboard. And as the Durham evidence shows, it went on pretending, failing to follow up on Mr. Steele, the dossier or its Clinton origins until long after the election (at which point special counsel Robert Mueller failed to follow up on the FBI for nearly two years more). Most of the FBI’s former leaders have been fired or left, its reputation is in tatters, and the GOP will dig further if it regains Congress this fall.

The narrow prosecution of the little-known Mr. Sussmann has allowed for a focus on the bigger story. Stay tuned for a flood of more information coming out of a trial that on its face is about one lawyer, but in reality is the continuing tale of one of the dirtiest tricks in modern U.S. history. LINK