In delivering the prosecution’s rebuttal summation in the Danchenko trial this morning, special counsel John Durham labeled the FBI “the elephant in the room.”

Durham was emphatic that in prosecuting Igor Danchenko for alleged lies about his sources for information that ended up in the bogus “Steele dossier,” the special counsel’s office was not defending the bureau. As reported by the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy, who is covering the trial, Durham concluded that “the FBI failed here,” observing that it “mishandled the investigation” and that its agents “didn’t do what they should have done.” Durham added that the explanation for the bureau’s appalling performance could be that it is “simply incompetent” or possibly that it was “working in coordination.” He does not appear to have stated with whom the FBI might have worked in coordination; the implication points to the Clinton campaign, which sponsored the dossier — opposition research based on which Hillary Clinton argued that Trump was a Putin puppet.

The case, which started with jury selection in federal district court in Alexandria, Va., just last Tuesday, is now in the jury’s hands.