In the USA, a Russian is tried who gave false evidence for the anti-Trump dossier - ForumDaily
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US judges Russian man who gave false evidence for anti-Trump dossier

In Alexandria (Virginia) began the trial of the Russian Igor Danchenko. He is considered the main source of data for the long-disputed dossier on the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump. It was called the Steele Dossier, after its compiler, former British spy Christopher Steele. The edition told in more detail with the BBC.

Photo: IStock

The 44-year-old defendant, who has Russian citizenship and an American green card, is accused of lying to the FBI, although he himself does not admit guilt and categorically denies everything.

If found guilty on each of the five counts, Danchenko faces up to five years in prison.

According to many observers, the defendant, who worked as a paid informant for the FBI for several years, has a good chance of ending the case in his favor.

"Crossfire Hurricane"

The case against Danchenko was opened in 2021 by Special Counsel John Dunham. He was assigned three years ago, under Trump, to investigate an FBI operation codenamed "Crossfire Hurricane." The operation began in the summer of 2016 to crack down on alleged collusion between Trump supporters and the Kremlin.

The operation lasted about three years, there was a lot of talk about it, but no evidence of collusion was found.

Trump and his supporters had high hopes for Dunham, expecting that the special prosecutor would uncover a secret conspiracy that the FBI and other American law enforcement agencies hatched against the then US president.

But Dunham disappointed Trump supporters. They believe that the special prosecutor looked at the security forces not as conspirators, but as victims of deception, and opened only three small cases, one of which has already ended in an acquittal.

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The first defendant involved by Dunham, former FBI lawyer Kevin Kleinsmith, did not wait for the trial - he pleaded guilty to forging an official e-mail and was sentenced to a year of probation. Even his lawyer's license has already been restored.

The second was lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was accused of trying to deceive the FBI with a false story about a secret communication channel between the Russian Alfa Bank and the Trump company. And in this case, the defendant was acquitted.

Presiding federal judge Anthony Trenga, at pre-trial hearings, took the standpoint of Danchenko's defense far more often than Special Counsel Dunham's team.

Twice lied

Danchenko is charged with only two lies told by him to the FBI investigators during the first interrogations, which took place in January 2017.

First, he argued that the source of the dossier's sensational allegations of Trump collusion with the Kremlin was Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-born and now US citizen, former president of the obscure Russian-American Chamber of Commerce.

According to Danchenko, he heard these allegations from a man who called him anonymously, but he assumed it was Millian. The FBI found out that Danchenko did not know Millian and had never spoken to him.

Danchenko's attorney, Danny Onorato, told jurors in his opening statement that his client was 100 percent truthful during interrogations - and, in particular, really believed that it was Millian who was calling him.

Secondly, the defendant, for some reason, allegedly hid from the FBI that the source of a number of other allegations of the “dossier” was Charles Dolan, an activist of the US Democratic Party and an experienced PR man who worked, among other things, for the authorities in Russia.

The accusatory document cites a part from Danchenko's interrogation protocol, in which the investigator asks him about Dolan, and Danchenko replies that he never spoke to him about the "dossier".

In his opening remarks, Danchenko's lawyer said that he again told the truth: he and Dolan really did not talk about this topic, but only exchanged SMS.

Brother from Perm

In Russia, Danchenko graduated from the law faculty of Perm University. When he moved to the US, he went to study in the political science department at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. Louisville is twinned with Perm, and in those years, "the whole of Perm hung around here," says Yelena Ivanova, a former Muscovite whose friend Danchenko studied with.

Danchenko worked for several years as an analyst at the liberal think tank Brookings Institution, whose colleague Fiona Hill, who subsequently testified against Trump in his first impeachment, introduced Danchenko to Dolan. She introduced Danchenko to Christopher Steele, who hired him to collect dirt on Trump.

Together with another Brookings Institution colleague, Cliff Gaddy, Danchenko obtained a 218-page copy of a previously inaccessible dissertation by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he defended in the 1970s at the St. Petersburg Mining University on the eve of joining the KGB.

Danchenko gained momentary notoriety among Putin scholars in March 2006, after he and Gaddy presented to the world samples of Putin's plagiarism they had uncovered in the dissertation of the future Russian president.

Counterintelligence target and FBI paid informant

From 2009 to 2011, Danchenko was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation by the FBI, which suspected him of links to Russian intelligence. This was known before, but a recently declassified special counsel's petition provides additional details of the investigation and indicates the reason why the FBI curtailed it.

According to Durham's petition, in 2008, when Danchenko was working as an analyst at the Brookings Institution, he asked two colleagues if one of them would agree to sell him classified information in the future. The co-worker, identified in court documents as "Employee #1," told the FBI that Danchenko expected him to get a position in the Obama administration where he would have access to classified information.

Specifically, Danchenko told Employee No. 1 that he knew people who would pay him for classified information. His interlocutor informed a familiar official about this, and he informed the FBI, which opened a “preliminary investigation” against Danchenko.

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It turned into a full-scale one after it was discovered that Danchenko was connected to two objects of FBI counterintelligence investigations and had contacts with the Russian embassy and two persons known to the agents of the Bureau as Russian intelligence officers.

Danchenko, among other things, told a certain Russian intelligence officer that he was interested in getting a job in the Russian diplomatic service, according to court documents.

The FBI closed this investigation, as it received erroneous information that Danchenko fled abroad.

From the same declassified prosecutor's petition, it became known that from March 2017 to December 2020, Danchenko was a paid informant for the FBI.

A million dollars to prove your own information

The first witness for the prosecution was senior FBI officer Brian Oten, who told the court that this agency lost faith in the “dossier” quite early, but, nevertheless, relied on him more than once asking the Washington court for warrants for covert surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Auten's most sensational revelation involved his trip to Britain, where he and colleagues met Steele in October 2016 and offered to pay him "up to a million dollars" if he could corroborate his dossier's claims. Steele didn't do it, so he didn't see the money.

Retired FBI Senior Investigator Bassem Yousef said that in his 30 years of service, he had never heard "anyone offer a source a million dollars to confirm his own information."

“Obviously the FBI was unable to confirm this information through some other source,” Yousef said. "So they went to the extent of offering a 'bribe' to Steele to confirm their own information, even though the FBI knew it was erroneous and unreliable."

According to Auten, the FBI contacted other US law enforcement agencies, but they also did not have confirmation of the dossier's fabrications.

Danchenko's trial is expected to last about a week. The prosecutor's office is going to interrogate the FBI officer who oversaw Danchenko, as well as Charles Dolan. The prosecution would very much like to summon Millian, but he has gone abroad and is beyond the reach of subpoenas.

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