Here’s my latest published in yesterday’s The American Spectator. The subject is the recent federal grand jury indictment of Igor Danchenko and how it fits into Special Counsel John Durham’s ongoing unraveling of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
In upcoming articles, I plan to discuss the legal jeopardy facing National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, former Justice Department lawyer Bruce Ohr and his wife, Nellie.
For now, take a look at the below article which lays out how Durham has essentially gutted the infamous Steele Dossier.
Hope you enjoy it.
Igor Danchenko’s Wet Dream – The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
On January 6, 2017, FBI Director James Comey met privately with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower to purportedly give a “defensive briefing” regarding salacious allegations in the Steele Dossier about Trump and urinating prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room.
In his testimony before Congress, Comey stated that he briefed Trump about these allegations “because we had been told by the media it was about to launch. We didn’t want to be keeping that from him. He needed to know this was being said. I was very keen not to leave him with an impression that the bureau was trying to do something to him.”
Comey testified that he told Trump, “sir, we’re not personally investigating you.”
But that was a lie. As set forth in an August 2019 report by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), Comey’s private warning to Trump about the peeing prostitutes was calculated to elicit a telling reaction from Trump and have him reveal additional information about the alleged incident.
In his testimony before the OIG, Comey described his one-on-one meeting with Trump as follows:
… I then executed the session exactly as I had planned.… I said the Russians allegedly had tapes involving him and prostitutes at the Presidential Suite at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow from about 2013.… I said I wasn’t saying this was true, only that I wanted him to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands. I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook.
Comey’s briefing pertained to the Steele Dossier’s “Report 2016/080” dated June 20, 2016, that stated, in part, the following:
Former top Russian intelligence officer claims FSB [Russian security service] has compromised Trump through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him. According to several knowledgeable sources, his conduct in Moscow has included perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB…
However, there were other aspects to Trump’s engagement with the Russian authorities. One which had borne fruit for them was to exploit Trump’s personal obsessions and sexual perversion in order to obtain suitable ‘komprommat’ (compromising material) on him. According to Source D, where s/he had been present, Trump’s (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs Obama (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a “golden showers” (urination) show in front of him. The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones and concealed camaras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to. (Emphasis added)
The report described “Source D” as a “close associate of Trump.”
As with the rest of his dossier, former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele based this report primarily on the word of Russian national Igor Danchenko, a Georgetown University graduate who worked at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Steele compiled and wrote the dossier pursuant to his contract with FusionGPS which was being paid by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to conduct opposition research against Trump.
The Steele Dossier also contained the following undated report:
Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership. This was managed on the Trump side by the Republican candidate’s campaign manager [Paul Manafort]. Who was using foreign policy advisor [Carter Page] and others as intermediaries. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whom President Putin apparently both hated and feared.” (Emphasis added)
The Steele Dossier was at the core of the Clinton campaign’s smear of Trump as a Russian asset and was the basis for the FBI’s applications for FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.
In its December 2019 report on the FBI’s Carter Page FISA warrants, the OIG found that, shortly after the FBI filed the first FISA renewal, it conducted a series of interviews of Danchenko that “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting.”
In January 2017 — around the time of Comey’s fake “defensive briefing” of Trump — the FBI interviewed Danchenko over a three-day period. At that time, he told the FBI that he had not seen Steele’s reports until they became public and that Steele had “misstated or exaggerated [Danchenko’s] statements in multiple sections of the reporting. For example, [Danchenko] told the FBI that, while [Steele’s Report 2016/080] stated that Trump’s alleged sexual activities at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Moscow had been ‘confirmed’ by a senior, western staff member at the hotel, [Danchenko] explained that he reported to Steele that Trump’s alleged unorthodox sexual activity at the Ritz Carlton hotel was ‘rumor and speculation’ and that he had not been able to confirm the story.” (Emphasis added)
According to the OIG, Danchenko also advised the FBI that he “never expected” Steele to put Danchenko’s “statements in reports or present them as facts.” Danchenko said that he “made it clear to Steele that he had no proof to support the statements from his sub-sources and that ‘it was just talk.’”
Danchenko added that his information came from “word of mouth and hearsay” and conversation that he had with “friends over beers.” As for the allegations of Trump’s bizarre sexual activities, they were statements he heard made in “jest.”
(Emphasis added)
But who was “Source D” who purportedly witnessed the Moscow “golden shower” show? And who was “Source E” who purportedly told about the “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between Trump and the Kremlin? And what, if anything, did they actually tell Danchenko?
The answers to those questions are to be found in the recent 39-page indictment of Danchenko on five counts of making false statements to the FBI. The product of Special Counsel John Durham’s federal grand jury investigation, the indictment cites the undated report about the Trump-Russia conspiracy attributed to “Source E” which, according to the indictment, ultimately underpinned the Carter Page FISA applications.
The indictment describes Source E as “a New York-based real estate broker … [who] previously served as president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce” and had “occasion to work on real estate projects with Trump and staff at the Trump Organization.” This description fits in all respects one Sergei Millian, who is designated in the indictment as “Chamber President-1.”
The indictment avers that, when the FBI interviewed Danchenko in January 2017, he said that, “in or around July 2016, he received a phone call from an unidentified individual who he believed to be Chamber President-1 [Millian].” He told the FBI that they “spoke for approximately 10 to 15 minutes” during which the unidentified caller said that “there was communication between the Trump campaign and Russian officials” but there was “nothing bad” about it. He added that “the Kremlin might be of help to get Trump elected.”
Danchenko claimed that, as they spoke, he and the anonymous caller he believed to be Millian made arrangements to meet in New York.
According to the indictment, in September 2017, the FBI interviewed Christopher Steele for two days at which time he said that Danchenko had met “in-person with Chamber President-1 [Millian] on two or three separate occasions — at least once in New York and perhaps once in Charleston, South Carolina.”
Steele also told the FBI that “Source D,” who reportedly witnessed the Moscow pee show, “was Chamber President-1 [Millian].”
The indictment avers that in FBI interviews in March, May, October, and November 2017, Danchenko repeated his prior statements regarding the anonymous phone call and planned meeting in New York.
In his March interview, which was secretly recorded by the FBI, he said that he received the anonymous call from someone he believed was “probably” Millian and said that he had to determine whether Millian was “the person who contacted me … and I probably spoke with him, but I don’t know.”
In his May interview, which was also secretly recorded, an agent reminded Danchenko that he had previously told the FBI that he “got the call from up in New York that you thought was [Millian].” Danchenko replied, “I’m not sure if I, he called, but … I just don’t remember. But I, I was at the time I was under the impression it was him … and I assumed it would have been him.… He never showed up in New York.”
In his secretly recorded October interview, Danchenko changed his story when he stated “I believe I spoke to Millian on the phone a couple of times, at leastsomeone who I thought was him.” He added, “I scheduled a meet time and place in New York [and Millian] never showed.
And that’s it. According to Danchenko, his contact with Millian — the purported witness to the Moscow pee show and source of the Trump-Russia collusion story — was limited to one or possibly two mysterious, anonymous phone calls of no material substance with someone whose identity he never established.
But, as non-existent as that sourcing may be, it gets even worse.
The grand jury has charged Danchenko with lying to the FBI about the anonymous contact. Why? Because, according to the indictment, Danchenko’s contemporaneous emails conclusively establish that he never had any phone conversation with Millian. It was all a lie.
But let’s pause and look with wonder at what Danchenko managed to accomplish as Steele’s primary sub-source.
Taking Danchenko at his dubious word, the Steele Dossier’s information about the Moscow pee tapes and the purported collusion between Trump and the Russians were based on “rumor and speculation,” “word of mouth and hearsay,” “jest,” and his weird anonymous phone call or calls from somebody who he “assumed” or “thought” was “probably” Trump ally Sergei Millian.
So it was that the Steele Dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and based primarily on the word of Igor Danchenko, became the basis for the FBI’s investigation of Trump and the media jihad against him. It also helped to fuel congressional investigations and an impeachment or two, as well as bitterly divide the nation. All of this while Comey’s FBI kept under hermetic seal the truth that would have debunked the dossier, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team of Hillary Clinton sycophants averted their gaze from that truth while doing their best to snare Trump and his associates in perjury traps.
For setting all of that in motion, Igor Danchenko deserves a lifetime achievement award from the Democratic National Committee and a guest commentator spot on MSNBC.
More to come, so stay tuned.
George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor. He blogs at knowledgeisgood.net and can be reached by email at kignet@outlook.com.
Leave a Reply
Leave a reply.