The biggest loser of the Durham indictments: James Comey's FBI

Special Counsel John Durham's latest criminal case is as much an indictment of James Comey's FBI as it is of the primary source of the Steele dossier, whom Durham accuses of repeatedly lying to agents.

The Steele dossier was the central evidence used by the FBI to win four consecutive FISA warrants targeting Trump’s campaign — and in 39 pages of painstaking detail the indictment lays out just how flawed and fake central elements of the dossier were

For some reason, Comey's FBI couldn't detect these serious flaws even though a group of civil lawyers was able to locate several Russians suspected of being Danchenko's sub-sources, interviewing each of them and securing declarations that the information attributed to them in the dossier was wrong or contrived.

"I believe that Mr. Danchenko framed me as Sub-Source 4 to add credibility to his low-quality work, which is not based on real information or in-depth analysis," said the witness declaration from Alexey Sergeyevich Dundich.

"My impression is that Mr. Danchenko fabricated the information published in the Dossier to make quick money," he added. "It is apparent to me that the Dossier is a deliberate fraud and a collection of idle rumors."

Danchenko, a Russian citizen living in the United States who once worked for the liberal think tank the Brookings Institution, is entitled to his day in court to defend himself and offer evidence in his defense.

In the meantime, experts see in Durham's indictment serious red flags for an FBI counterintelligence probe on Comey's and deputy Andrew McCabe's watch before they were fired, an investigation that stretched more than two years without finding any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

"The fact pattern that John Durham is methodically establishing shows what James Comey and Andrew McCabe likely knew from day one, that the Steele Dossier was politically-driven nonsense created at the behest of the Clinton campaign," said Kevin Brock, the FBI's former intelligence chief and one of the bureau's most respected retirees.

Already one former FBI lawyer has admitted he intentionally doctored a piece of evidence to mislead the FISA court.

"Whether through corruption or incompetence, the FBI's central role in facilitating and sustaining the Russian collusion hoax is a stain on its reputation that will be hard to erase," said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Brock, who retired from the FBI before Comey took over, said that lack of trust is one of the lasting impacts on the FBI from the bungled Russia probe.

"As Comey cashes his royalty checks from a book and a movie, where do everyday, working FBI agents go to get the Bureau's reputation back?" he asked. "The damage done by Comey, McCabe and others to the trust that Americans have traditionally placed in the FBI is incalculable." LINK