{"id":94202,"date":"2021-11-04T10:36:09","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T14:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=94202"},"modified":"2021-11-04T10:36:09","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T14:36:09","slug":"does-this-steele-dossier-arrest-reflect-a-serious-durham-investigation-or-just-low-hanging-fruit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=94202","title":{"rendered":"Does this Steele Dossier arrest reflect a serious Durham investigation or just low hanging fruit?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Feds Arrest Primary Steele Dossier
\nSource As Durham Investigation
\nHeats Up<\/strong><\/h1>\n

ZeroHedge.com<\/p>\n

Federal authorities on Tuesday arrested\u00a0Igor “Iggy” Danchenko<\/strong>, a Russian national who was the primary researcher for the so-called Steele Dossier – a compendium of opposition research funded by the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and used to smear Donald Trump as a Russian operative. It was also used as justification for an FBI wiretap application targeting former Trump adviser Carter Page.<\/p>\n

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According to the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>, the arrest of Danchenko\u00a0is part of John Durham’s special counsel investigation<\/strong>\u00a0into wrongdoing connected to the Obama administration’s Russia investigation.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Details of the indictment against Danchenko are unknown, as the indictment has yet to be unsealed according to people familiar with the matter speaking on condition on anonymity.<\/p>\n

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Some claims from the Steele dosser made their way into an F.B.I. wiretap application targeting a former Trump campaign adviser in October 2016.\u00a0Other portions of it \u2014 particularly a salacious claim about a purported sex tape \u2014 caused a political and media firestorm when Buzzfeed published the materials in January 2017<\/strong>, shortly before Mr. Trump was sworn in.<\/em><\/p>\n

But\u00a0most of the important claims in the dossier\u00a0<\/strong>\u2014 which was written by Mr. Danchenko\u2019s employer, Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent \u2014\u00a0have not been proven<\/strong>, and some have been refuted. F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Danchenko in 2017 when they were seeking to run down the claims in the dossier. -NYT<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Danchenko, Steele’s (formerly) mysterious “Primary Subsource”, is a former Brookings Institution analyst.<\/p>\n

The 43-year-old Danchenko, who was hired by Steele in 2016 to deploy a network of sources to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was\u00a0arrested, jailed and convicted years earlier on multiple public drunkenness and disorderly conduct charges in the Washington area<\/strong>\u00a0and ordered to undergo substance-abuse and mental-health counseling, according to criminal records, according to\u00a0RealClearInvestigations<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Danchenko first ran into trouble with the law as he began working for Brookings – the preeminent Democratic think tank in Washington – where he\u00a0struck up a friendship with Fiona Hill, the White House adviser who testified against Trump<\/strong>\u00a0during 2019 impeachment hearings. Danchenko has described Hill as a mentor, while Hill has sung his praises as a “creative” researcher.<\/p>\n

As the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0notes further,\u00a0Danchenko had been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation<\/strong>\u00a0to determine whether he was a Russian agent.<\/p>\n

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In\u00a0an interview with The New York Times in 2020<\/a>, Mr. Danchenko defended the integrity of his work,\u00a0saying he had been tasked to gather \u201craw intelligence\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>and was simply passing it on to Mr. Steele. Mr. Danchenko \u2014 who made his name as a Russia analyst by exposing indications that the dissertation of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia\u00a0contained plagiarized material<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 also denied being a Russian agent.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never been a Russian agent,<\/strong>\u201d Mr. Danchenko said. \u201cIt is ridiculous to suggest that. This, I think, it\u2019s slander.\u201d -NYT<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of note, Danchenko also\u00a0met with a Russian energy official just four days before Steele produced the first of 17<\/strong>\u00a0memos which comprise his infamous opposition research<\/strong>\u00a0on the Trump campaign.<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0Daily Caller<\/em><\/a>, Danchenko met with Sergey Abyshev – who was a deputy-director in the energy ministry, as well as the editor-in-chief of a Russian finance website, Ivan Vorontsov. The meeting was documented in a Facebook post by Vorontsov, and confirmed by Abyshev.<\/p>\n

It is unclear what they talked about – but it occurred\u00a0as Danchenko was in the thick of his work with Christopher Steele<\/strong>, who the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign and the DNC paid to cook up opposition research on President Trump’s campaign. The dossier was a key component of several FISA warrants issued to spy on former campaign aide Carter Page and his contacts, and was widely distributed by US media outlets in a campaign to discredit Trump.<\/p>\n

Danchenko, a Russian national who lives in Washington, D.C.,\u00a0told the FBI in January 2017<\/a>\u00a0that Steele, a former MI6 officer, tasked him in June 2016 to dig up dirt on Trump. Steele was hired in May 2016 by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm working for the Clinton campaign and DNC.<\/p>\n

Vorontsov posted\u00a0a photo<\/a>\u00a0on June 16, 2016 from the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), an annual business conclave, saying he had met the prior evening with Danchenko and Abyshev.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe night before was so nice with Sergey Abyshev and Igor Danchenko<\/strong>,\u201d Vorontsov wrote. –Daily Caller<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Abyshev, the encounter with Danchenko was “an almost accidental meeting in the center of Moscow with three \u2018cheerful\u2019 guys,” adding “As a result, I had to listen to a lecture on investment opportunities for about 20 minutes.”<\/p>\n

Interestingly,\u00a0Danchenko may have been laundering information from a former Russian PR executive living in Cyprus<\/strong>, according to the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>last October.<\/p>\n

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Olga Galkina, image via Facebook<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

40-year old Olga Galkina\u00a0“stood as the dossier\u2019s most important contributor,”<\/strong>\u00a0WSJ reported, after she was tapped by her old school friend and Steele\u2019s employee, Igor Danchenko, to dig up dirt of Trump’s dealings in Russia using the “vast network of people”\u00a0from her various jobs in and out of the public sector.<\/p>\n

Described as a public-relations executive, she\u00a0“fed notes” to Danchenko for the dossier, including many of its most central claims. And of course behind all of this was\u00a0British spy Christopher Steele, himself\u00a0paid\u00a0by Fusion GPS, and behind this\u00a0the DNC itself.<\/p>\n

They knew each other since the 8th grade in Perm, as the\u00a0WSJ details<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Mr. Danchenko told the FBI that a school friend, referred to in heavily redacted FBI notes as “Source 3,”\u00a0had provided him with information for Mr. Steele\u00a0“across a wide range of topics,”\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0stood as the dossier\u2019s most important contributor<\/strong>. The former high-ranking U.S. national-security official told The Wall Street Journal that the source in question was Ms. Galkina.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was Galkina who claimed\u00a0Trump\u2019s former lawyer Michael Cohen secretly contacted Russian intelligence in Prague to establish compensation for DNC hackers in the summer of 2016.\u00a0Crucially she had fed Steele’s team the name of her own Cyprus-based employer Webzilla as being behind the hack<\/strong>\u00a0under company owner Aleksej Gubarev.<\/p>\n