When the Department of Justice actually wants to do something, it can do so very quickly as an institution. When they decide they want to harass a bunch of innocent Trump supporters, the FBI gets on that in a hurry. They’ve got some boogie in their two-step when that happens, because they hate Trump supporters. But when it comes to carrying out actual justice against corrupt leaders in the FBI, or figuring out the motive of the Las Vegas shooter, well… it’s gonna be a while.

Some trial that John Durham is prosecuting in relation to the fake Russian potty dossier finally got under way today. And it’s only been seven years since the FBI first started spying on candidate Donald Trump! This is obviously one of those jobs that the Department of Justice didn’t want to do.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t learn some interesting things in the course of the trial. The trial, by the way, involves Igor Danchenko – a guy most Americans could not even pick out of a lineup, and one of the least exciting Russia collusion hoaxers imaginable. Out of all the people involved in the Russia hoax, Danchenko is extremely far down the totem pole. By finally putting him on trial, though, US Attorney John Durham can at least embarrass the FBI a tiny bit.

Here’s how deep the Russia collusion rabbit hole actually goes. Danchenko is some kind of anti-Putin Russian spy. That’s my best guess on him, anyway. He HATES Vladimir Putin. Yet in 2011, the FBI opened an espionage investigation of Igor Danchenko, because he told colleagues at the Brookings Institute (because OF COURSE the Russian spy worked at the Brookings Institute) that they could “make a lot of money” if they got government jobs and access to classified information.

The FBI, showing its typical competence and thoroughness, “mistakenly” believed that Danchenko fled the country in 2011. So, counterintelligence expert Peter Strzok closed the investigation into Danchenko. Even though Danchenko hadn’t gone anywhere and was still living in Virginia. Huh?

Anyway, that doesn’t have anything to do with Danchenko being on trial right now. It just gives some context that Danchenko was already known to the FBI when he fed the fake Russian potty dossier information to Christopher Steele in 2016, so the FBI could get FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page.

They never got around to indicting or arresting Danchenko for that whole recruiting-spies-for-the-Russian-government thing. But now they’re putting him on trial for a process crime – “lying to the FBI.” Danchenko literally offered cash to Americans who could steal classified information to sell to Russia, which the FBI ignored, and he is instead being charged with basically the same crime as Roger Stone.

That’s the worst crime that John Durham could apparently find after an investigation that now feels like it’s been going on since the last ice age. And Durham might not even get a conviction in the case.

Something hilarious did come out on the first day of the trial, however. Durham put FBI analyst Brian Auten on the stand this week. Auten admitted under oath that the FBI offered Christopher Steele a bonus payment of $1 million last year if he could finally provide any proof – any proof at all – that a single fact in the Russian potty dossier was actually true. That’s a lot of taxpayer cash that could have just fallen into Christopher Steele’s lap!

Hold your breath, liberals! If ever there was a time for British spy Christopher Steele to take that copy of the Russian potty tape out of the vault and present it to the world, this was it!

Except Christopher Steele didn’t have the Russian potty tape. Christopher Steele did not collect that $1 million bonus from the FBI last year. He could not corroborate a single fact in the 30-plus page dossier that he and Igor Danchenko made up out of thin air.

If the FBI was willing to pay a million bucks to Christopher Steele last year for any evidence that the dossier was real, what does that tell us? It tells us that the FBI definitely didn’t have any evidence that the dossier was real in 2016, when they lied to the FISA court. So, at least we got that much out of the trial.

I’m not real hopeful that Durham is going to get an indictment on his exciting process crime against this Russian spy. Just like I’m not real confident that the Department of Justice is actually going to indict Hunter Biden anytime soon.