John Durham’s special investigation into the origins of the Russia-collusion hoax has now resulted in the indictment of a third conspirator, Russian-born Igor Danchenko, for lying to the FBI. We now learn that Danchenko was ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s “primary sub-source” for his bogus anti-Trump dossier.

Danchenko is charged with five counts of lying to the FBI, and each count carries a potential maximum five-year prison sentence. Durham’s indictment alleges that some of the information Danchenko sourced for Steele came almost entirely from Democrat Party operative Chuck Dolan, who was also an adviser to the Clintons. Furthermore, Danchenko is alleged to have flat-out lied to the FBI regarding his claim to having sourced information from a Russian-American business group that he had never contacted.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board offers this key observation about the FBI:

This Durham indictment reads like a story with more to come, but some lessons are already clear. One question is why the country is only now learning these facts. The Durham indictments treat the FBI as the duped party, but the record shows former FBI director James Comey and his investigators knew from the summer of 2016 that Clinton campaign fingerprints were all over the dossier.

A transcript in the Danchenko indictment suggests that FBI officials knew Mr. Danchenko was lying in the 2017 interviews. But they did nothing to blow the whistle, nor to tell the public or Congress everything they had learned about the origins of the Russia collusion tale.

Danchenko’s indictment is the most significant yet of the Durham investigation and portends bigger ones yet to come. As legal scholar Jonathan Turley explains: “Danchenko is not someone who immediately comes across as an apex defendant — the highest target in an investigation. He was a key source used by others to advance false or unsubstantiated claims against Trump. He is the type of defendant that prosecutors pressure to flip against those who retained him or used him in this effort. In other words, he strikes me as someone who can be used as a building block to apex defendants.”

Indeed, we’ve always argued that the big players used cutouts to do the dirty work and keep their own hands as clean as possible. Now, it appears that Durham is drawing in the net, perhaps with higher profile bigger fish soon to be caught. As Turley observes, Durham is likely using Danchenko to catch these bigger fish. The question is, who are these bigger fish? From Christopher Steele to Hillary Clinton’s general counsel Marc Elias all the way up to Hillary Clinton herself? Who’s next on Durham’s list may give a clearer glimpse into how far up he has connected the dots.

In Mark Alexander’s assessment: “A month after Durham’s indictment of Hillary Clinton-connected lawyer Michael Sussmann, the latest indictment of Igor Danchenko is creating a lot of heart burn for Clinton and Barack Obama, and by extension, Joe Biden. Reading between the lines, I conclude this indictment and the footnotes related to the investigation indicate Durham already knows the roles Clinton and Obama played in 2016, setting up Donald Trump for their fake Russia collusion accusations. Durham knows what the conspiracy organizational chart looks like.”

Alexander concludes, “This astounding political deception orchestrated with the assistance of rogue deep-state collaborators may be exposed after all.”

The conspiracy by the Hillary Clinton campaign and members of Barack Obama’s deep state to prevent the election of Donald Trump was followed by the subsequent attempt to oust him from office via a fake Russian-collusion plot. That is a bigger political scandal than Watergate ever was.

As Durham tightens the net, we can only hope he’s able to work past the cutouts and get the primary players at the top of this vast left-wing conspiracy.

And a final note regarding how Democrat Party principals and their Leftmedia propagandists relentlessly promoted the “Russia collusion” hoax. According to The Washington Post, the Danchenko “allegations cast new uncertainty on some past reporting on the dossier by news organizations, including The Washington Post.” That is a colossal understatement.

As political analyst Becket Adams notes, “Maybe it’s time the Washington Post and The New York Times return those Russian collusion Pulitzers.”

(Updated.)