investigation itself to try to prove the whole thing was a hoax like trump said all along, to try to prove that it was criminal to investigate the russia matter, that special prosecutor, john durham, has just issued his second indictment. the man he arrested and charged today was a primary source for christopher steele s intelligence reports in 2016. now, durham s most recent indictment before this one was in my opinion a little weird, problematic. that one concerned a democratic lawyer and cybersecurity expert who was in possession of research that purported to show a possible surreptitious communication channel between the trump organization and a kremlin-linked bank. special counsel john durham charged this lawyer with making a false statement because when he brought this evidence to the fbi, he allegedly was inconsistent in his statements to them about whether he was bringing this information to the fbi on his own behalf or on behalf of his firm s democratic clients or another clie
today by john durham, by the special counsel who bill barr appointed under trump, who was left at the justice department, left behind at the justice department after barr resigned and after trump left office. they left special counsel john durham in place at the justice department in the wake of the trump administration doing an open-ended investigation into everybody who took part in the russia investigation. the trump administration and bill barr in particular viewed the russia investigation as itself a scandal. they assigned john durham to go investigate and try to find crimes among people who were involved in the investigation, and that s what he has been doing ever since. special counsel john durham unsealed an indictment a few weeks ago against a lawyer who brought the fbi allegations about the trump organization having some sort of surreptitious contact with a kremlin-connected bank during the 2016 election. brthsortt ing obe allegation ann never really caught that much public a
case. it didn t take long for them to hand down those first indictments. by july 1st they handed down those first indictments after they convened in late may.ntt but they were convened for a period of six months, and now it is six months on from that. we learned today in the washington post they have convened a second grand jury. and that second special grand jury is already seated, it s already in place, they re already hearing evidence in new york including, according to the washington post hearing evidence today.ed s ial the post reports that while the first grand jury in the r trump organization case handed i down those multi-part, multiple-defendant felony charges alleging millions of dollars in tax fraud, the secont grand jury that has just been put in place now, according to t the post they re looking at different allegations. they re looking at other different types of fraud allegations related to the valuation of various trump properties. now, that type of allegation a
doing and the importance of what he has done today with this indictment. what do you think people should understand about it? well, i think the primary thing people need to understand are that the people that he s indicted to date and charged to date, whether that s michael sussmann, whether it s kevin klein smith, and today igor danchenko, let me be clear, lying to the fbi is a significant, significant crime. it s a crime if the national security advisor does it. it s a crime if as alleged mr. danchenko did it. i have some concerns with the indictment of michael sussman. i m concerned about whether or not that s a good use of government resources to charge him. but at the end of the day it is a crime to lie to the fbi. but what isn t true is the backdrop to all this. you know, next saturday john durham will have been going on for two and a half years. now compare that to robert mueller who lasted less than two years and in that time charged and convicted people like trump s national
beyond those specific charges. it, like the other indictment from john durham, seems designed to try to further this project of making the russia investigation itself seem like a scandal. we re going to get into it, we ve got more on that coming in in just a few minutes with a former fbi senior counterintelligence official. but where i want to start tonight is with a story that i think isn t getting nearly enough attention. i think this story is lightning in a bottle. it has broken this week, but not broken nearly widely enough.ghth in the last midterm elections, the elections we had in 2018, you ll recall that was a really good election for democrats. the so-called blue wave election right in the middle of president trump s term. trump and all the republicans got elected in 2016. 2018 the democrats came back, swept to power in the u.s. house.01 there were hopes at the time something similar might happen in the senate. republicans had just a narrow majority heading into the 2018 midt