There’s a page on the Justice Department’s website dedicated to Special Counsel John Durham’s 3½-year investigation into the origins of the FBI probe of ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government. 

Under “News,” it includes just two items, both announcing indictments of men accused of making false statements to the FBI. As of Tuesday, both cases have ended in acquittals.

The webpage is a reminder that the Durham investigation has not come close to delivering on the promises of Trump and his supporters that it would expose a “deep state” conspiracy that the FBI, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and others were working to ruin Trump politically through the Russia investigation. 

Durham has not pursued prosecution of any high-level officials or charged anyone with conspiracy. He has brought just two losing cases to trial. 

His lone achievement was securing a guilty plea by an FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to doctoring an email used to renew a court-approved wiretap of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Durham’s team negotiated a plea deal with Clinesmith that resulted in no jail time.

The Clinesmith case was not uncovered by Durham’s investigation, but rather by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

It now appears the Durham probe is drawing to a close with no resounding victories.

Durham’s office declined to answer questions from Spectrum News on Wednesday about what is next for the investigation.

The New York Times, citing three people familiar with the matter, reported last month that Durham had no plans to prosecute any other cases and that his team was working to complete a final report before the end of the year. Attorney General Merrick Garland will decide whether to make Durham’s findings public.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who claimed there was no basis for the Russia probe, assigned the investigation to Durham in May 2019 and designated him a special counsel in October 2020. 

In his closing arguments at the trial of Russian national Igor Danchenko on Monday, Durham defended his investigation and denied that it was politically motivated.

Durham noted to the jury that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia probe concluded that “there’s no evidence of collusion here or conspiracy. Is it the wrong question to ask, well, then how did this get started?”

Mueller’s team detailed “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign” but did not find sufficient evidence the campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election. The Mueller report also laid out several instances in which Trump may have obstructed justice, but Barr declined to bring charges.

In a glimpse of what his final report might include, Durham attacked the competence of FBI agents and analysts — who were the prosecution’s key witnesses — for failing to pursue leads when they vetted the sourcing of the dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele, that was at the center of the most recent case. 

Trump and his allies have repeatedly pointed to the discredited dossier — Democratic-funded opposition research that included salacious allegations that Russia had blackmail material on Trump — as the basis for the probe that was launched by the FBI in 2016 and later handed over to Mueller.

A 2019 DOJ watchdog report concluded that the FBI investigation was already underway before the Steele dossier surfaced. The probe, according to the inspector general, was launched after emails obtained by Russians who hacked the Democratic National Committee’s computers were published online and a foreign diplomat tipped off U.S. officials that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had bragged to him about Russia offering to help release damaging information on Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent.

The trial this week involved charges brought by Durham against Russian analyst Danchenko, who by his own admission provided 80% of the raw intelligence in the Steele dossier.

Prosecutors accused Danchenko of lying about the identity of his own sources for the material he gave to Steele. The specific charges allege that he essentially fabricated one of his sources when the FBI interviewed him to determine how he derived the material he provided for the dossier.

Trial testimony indicated that Danchenko was shocked and dismayed about how Steele presented the material and portrayed it as factual when Danchenko considered it more to be rumor and speculation.

Prosecutors said that if Danchenko had been more honest about his sources, the FBI might not have treated the dossier so credulously. As it turned out, the FBI used material from the dossier to support applications for the surveillance of Page, even though the FBI never was able to corroborate a single allegation in the dossier.

Still, special counsel Durham’s team fell so short of proving its case that U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga acquitted Danchenko of one of the five charges before it even reached the jury. Trenga nearly threw out all of the charges before the trial began, citing the legal strength of Danchenko’s defense, but he allowed the case to proceed in what he described as “an extremely close call.”

Durham declined comment after the trial, but he said in a statement issued through the Justice Department: “While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service. I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case.”

He issued an identical statement after the first trial ended in acquittal.

In the other case brought by Durham, a jury in May acquitted Michael Sussmann, an attorney for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Prosecutors accused Sussman of lying to the FBI when he shared concerns in 2016 about what he believed was suspicious internet server activity between the Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank and The Trump Organization. 

Durham’s team said Sussman wasn’t truthful when he said he was not working on behalf of any client; Sussman insisted he was merely raising concerns on his own behalf about a potential national security threat. 

Trump has long claimed Durham’s investigation would reveal “the single biggest political crime in the history of our country” — and he even pressed Durham to release his report ahead of the 2020 election.

On Wednesday, the former president posted on his Truth Social platform that the Danchenko verdict was a “very sad result for our Justice System, but so much has been exposed—far more than anyone thought possible.” He linked to a Fox News opinion piece that repeated claims Durham has not proved and blamed the special counsel’s court losses on the trials being held in cities dominated by Democrats.

His daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, told Fox News, where she is a contributor, on Wednesday morning that she believed the case against Danchenko was “proven at a certain point in this trial and yet found not guilty. I think it's very upsetting.”

She also voiced frustration that no one was being held accountable for the “Russia collusion hoax.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a staunch Trump ally, had a different take, telling Newsmax he doesn’t think Durham’s cases have been “sincere prosecutions” and that “they exist to try to whitewash the corrupt actions of the FBI.”

“Durham is not prosecuting these cases to obtain convictions,” Gaetz said. “I believe, the entire purpose of Durham's work is to cast the FBI as the victim rather than the perpetrator.”

On the Democratic side, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island summed up news of the Danchenko acquittal by tweeting, “An ignominious end to one of the Trumpier moments at the DOJ.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.