Steele Dossier source Igor Danchenko was on the FBI payroll as a confidential human source (CHS) from March 2017 through October 2020, according to a motion in limine unsealed by Special Counsel John Durham on Tuesday.
Danchenko, a former Brookings Institution analyst, was charged in November of 2021 with five counts of making false statements to the FBI regarding his role in the Russia collusion hoax, including lying to investigators about Trump supporter Sergei Millian.
It is difficult to perceive a noncorrupt reason for the FBI to have made Danchenko a paid CHS in March of 2017 after he lied to them. As online legal analyst Techno Fog noted, the Bureau’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation “was plagued with problems from the outset,” and it should have been winding down after Trump was inaugurated, not ramping up.
The reasons for opening the investigation were bunk. Those problems continued as the investigation went on, with claims of Trump/Russia collusion proven unverified or outright false. (Thus the targeting of Flynn for a Logan Act violation.)
Those problems continued with the Carter Page FISA applications, first submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in October 2016, and which relied substantially on the Steele Dossiers (aka Steele Reports). The FISA applications were renewed three times – more on that later. Each application had its own problems, from FBI lawyers lying about Carter Page to the Court being generally misled.
As their misconduct continued to cascade out of control, the FBI decided to make Russian operator Igor Danchenko a paid informant.
Danchenko, a Russian national, is at least the 4th informant used by the FBI to run their Crossfire Hurricane op against President Trump, as the Federalist’s Margot Cleveland reported here. He joins former British spy and dirty dossier author Christopher Steele, Cambridge Professor Stefan Halper, and Neustar chief technology officer Rodney Joffe—all reportedly FBI paid assets during the Trump/Russia investigation.
The Bureau, under then-Director James Comey, hired Danchenko just before the third fraudulent FISA warrant was submitted in April 2017, allowing the Feds to work directly with the Russian operative in support of its “counter-intelligence” operation against President Donald Trump.
Danchenko’s CHS status also served another purpose,” Techno Fog noted: “It protected the Bureau and the Mueller Special Counsel from revealing their ‘sources and methods.’ How do you hide misconduct? Bury the witness.”
Go to Techno Fog’s Substack for a complete timeline of Danchenko’s interviews and other important events.
Some of the most explosive allegations in the Steele dossier—including the so-called “pee tape”—were fraudulently sourced to Sergei Millian, a hapless Belarusian-American businessman.
A review of Danchenko’s phone records and other evidence found that Millian never spread those rumors to Danchenko. Clinton campaign adviser Charles Dolan reportedly made it all up.
Christopher Steele was hired by an Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm, on behalf of Perkins Coie, the law firm for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded in December 2019 that the dossier played a “central and essential” role in the FISA Court’s approval of the FBI’s secret surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Millian was falsely described in the “dodgy dossier” as a “close associate” of Trump.
According to Durham’s indictment, the FBI’s interviews with Danchenko “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting” and concluded Danchenko “contradicted the allegations of a ‘well-developed conspiracy’ in” Steele’s dossier.
Durham stated in his motion that Dolan is expected to testify at the trial: “The Government anticipates that Mr. Dolan will testify that (1) it was he and Mr. Kupka who attended a lunch with the Ritz-Carlton general manager and other hotel staff during the June 2016 Moscow trip and that [Danchenko] was not present, and (2) neither Donald Trump nor his purported sexual practices were ever discussed at that lunch,” Durham said. “Further, the Government also anticipates that Mr. Dolan will testify that Ritz-Carlton hotel staff did, in fact, provide the aforementioned tour of the presidential suite as part of the June 2016 trip and that, again, Donald Trump and his purported sexual practices were not discussed during that tour.”
Millian will not testify at the trial—which is set for October—due to safety concerns.
Just the News’ John Solomon on Fox News Tuesday night discussed the latest shoe to drop in the regime’s Russia hoax.
“The FBI’s case against Russia collusion could not be any more embarrassing than what we now know,” Solomon said.