![]() “Who knows, what if it’s not particularly accurate? Is it just a rumor or is there more to it?” “Even raw intelligence from credible sources, I take it with a grain of salt,” Danchenko told The New York Times last year. Danchenko - who was not identified by name in the watchdog report - had told FBI investigators during a 2017 interview about the dossier’s origins and veracity that there were “potentially serious problems with Steele’s descriptions of information in his reports.”īut those qualms from Danchenko were omitted from the final three surveillance applications, making the dossier appear more credible than even one of its own sources thought it was, according to the report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz.ĭanchenko has himself suggested that the information he offered to Steele was not meant to be portrayed as indisputable fact. The Justice Department’s inspector general has faulted the FBI and the Justice Department for their handling of the dossier. Democrats have lambasted the Durham probe as politically motivated, but the Biden administration has not stopped it. Special counsel Robert Mueller ultimately found questionable ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, but not sufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges. Trump pointed to the dossier, much of which the indictment says the FBI was unable to corroborate, as evidence of a tainted probe driven by Democrats.īut the dossier had no part in launching the Trump-Russia investigation. Trump’s Justice Department appointed Durham as Trump claimed the investigation of campaign ties to Russia was a witch hunt. The indictment says Danchenko fabricated his account and never actually received such a phone call.īoth the dossier and the Durham probe are politically charged. That person, according to the dossier and Danchenko’s account to the FBI, told him about a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and Russia. The indictment also accuses Danchenko of lying to the FBI about a July 2016 phone call he says he had with someone he believed to be the president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. It says that had the FBI known that the Democrat was a source for Danchenko, the bureau could have interviewed him about the Moscow trip and whether they had discussed Trump’s own stay there. The unnamed Clinton ally had stayed at the same hotel in June 2016 and had attended meetings with Danchenko, according to the indictment. The indictment says Danchenko told the FBI he had collected information about Trump’s activities at the hotel from multiple sources but didn’t himself know if the sexual allegations were true. The former president hopes to run out the clock on investigations and raise money off his legal difficulties. Politics Column: Why is Trump running for president again? To stay out of jail That dossier, the target of intense derision from Trump, was ultimately provided to the FBI and used by federal authorities as they applied for and received surveillance warrants targeting a former Trump campaign aide.Īccording to the indictment, Danchenko repeatedly lied to the FBI about his sources of information and that deception mattered because the FBI “devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations” in the dossier and had “relied in large part” on that research in obtaining the surveillance warrants. The five-count indictment accuses Danchenko of making multiple false statements to the FBI when interviewed in 2017 about his role in collecting information for Christopher Steele, a former British spy who was paid by Democrats to investigate connections between Trump and Russia.ĭanchenko, a U.S.-based Russian who’d specialized in Russian and Eurasian matters as an analyst at the Brookings Institution think-tank, was a significant source for Steele as Steele compiled his dossier of research. But it does endorse a longstanding concern about the Russia probe: that opposition research the FBI relied on was marred by unsupported, uncorroborated claims. The case does not undercut investigators’ findings that the Kremlin aided the Trump campaign - findings that were not based on the dossier.
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