Exiting from July 8's "FBI launches criminal investigations of John Brennan, James Comey over Trump-Russia probe: report" I mentioned:
A lot of the things that Brennan did have a five-year statute of limitations.
Lying to Congress in 2023 about the inclusion of the Steele Dossier as a predicate in various reports would be one of his actions worth investigating but that is sort of like nailing Al Capone on tax charges.
There is however, another consideration, the ongoing cover-up of the original conspiracy/cover-up. First up, Matt Taibbi at his Racket News substack, August 1:
No Doubt Left: Russiagate Was a Cover-Up
The most infuriatingly complex scandal of all time has just been reduced to a page or two, thanks to another declassified release
....Now, we know. With the help of the declassified Durham material, we can explain the whole affair in three brushstrokes.
One, Hillary Clinton and her team apparently hoped to deflect from her email scandal and other problems via a campaign tying Trump to Putin.
Two, American security services learned of these plans.
Three — and this is the most important part — instead of outing them, authorities used state resources to massively expand and amplify her scheme. The last stage required the enthusiastic cooperation and canine incuriosity of the entire commercial news business, which cheered as conspirators made an enforcement target of Trump, actually an irrelevant bystander.
I’ve tiptoed for years around what I believed to be true about this case, worrying some mitigating fact might emerge. Now, there’s no doubt. Hillary Clinton got in a jam, and the FBI, CIA, and the Obama White House got her out of it by setting Trump up. That’s it. It was a cover-up, plain and simple....
A conspiracy to cover up a conspiracy is itself part of the conspiracy and when the cover-up is ongoing it extends the statute of limitations.
From the DOJ's Criminal Resource Manual, CRM 500-999:
Conspiracy is a continuing offense. For statutes such as 18 U.S.C. § 371, which require an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, the statute of limitations begins to run on the date of the last overt act. See Fiswick v. United States, 329 U.S. 211 (1946); United States v. Butler, 792 F.2d 1528 (11th Cir. 1986). For conspiracy statutes which do not require proof of an overt act, such as RICO (18 U.S.C. § 1961) or 21 U.S.C. § 846, the government must allege and prove that the conspiracy continued into the limitations period. The crucial question in this regard is the scope of the conspiratorial agreement, and the conspiracy is deemed to continue until its purpose has been achieved or abandoned. See United States v. Northern Imp. Co., 814 F.2d 540 (8th Cir. 1987); United States v. Coia, 719 F.2d 1120 (11th Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 466 U.S. 973 (1984).
An individual's "withdrawal" from a conspiracy starts the statute of limitations running as to that individual. "Withdrawal" from a conspiracy for this purpose means that the conspirator must take affirmative action by making a clean breast to the authorities or communicating his or her disassociation to the other conspirators. See United States v. Gonzalez, 797 F.2d 915 (10th Cir. 1986).
[cited in Criminal Resource Manual 651; JM 9-18.000]
