Durham report: Special counsel names Hillary Clinton ally as likely source of infamous Trump rumor
Rachel Schilke
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Special counsel John Durham identified an ally of Hillary Clinton as the source for the infamous “golden showers” rumors that circulated around then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.
Durham wrote in his long-awaited report on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump and Russia on Tuesday that Charles Dolan, a public relations expert who advised former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, visited the Ritz Carlton in Moscow in 2016 shortly before the salacious rumor was released.
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The Moscow hotel was the site of allegations that Trump paid prostitutes back in 2013 to urinate on a bed in the hotel’s presidential suite that former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama had stayed in in 2009. The rumor became a key component of the Steele dossier research file funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016 when she ran against Trump.
However, in a section of Durham’s report titled “Trump’s alleged salacious activity at the Ritz Carlton Moscow,” he wrote that Trump never stayed in the presidential suite, but he did not specify which room or suite Trump did stay in.
He then pointed to Dolan’s June 2016 “Planning Trip” and an email to an acquaintance in Moscow that said, “I’m in Russia making plans to be adopted in the event this mad man [Trump] gets elected.”
On June 18, 2016, Durham arrived back in Washington, D.C., and on June 20, the “golden showers” rumor appeared in the Steele dossier, according to Durham’s report.
Igor Danchenko, who was the primary source for the Steele dossier, did not stay at the Ritz Carlton during the June 2016 trip, “a fact that was confirmed by hotel records.” He had flown from Moscow to London to meet with Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier, on June 17 — with the rumor entering the research three days later.
Durham’s report identified Dolan as a “sub-source” of information for Danchenko and the one who likely provided Danchenko with the “golden showers” rumor, instead of it coming from Danchenko directly.
“TRUMP”s (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton, where he knew President and Mrs OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia,” according to the Steele dossier.
The report said that “Source D” described prostitutes “defiling” the bed in the infamous “golden showers” incident.
Durham wrote that he interviewed Dolan and Danchenko and found similarities in their correspondences. Danchenko “forwarded” information to Steele to help compile the dossier, and in April 2016, Dolan referenced “meetings with the Kremlin” and meeting “intelligence guys” in emails.
Dolan’s recollection of the events was “inconsistent” and “vacillated,” Durham reported, with Dolan saying that he had no “specific recollection” about telling Danchenko about Trump and the presidential suite.
Hotel records from the Ritz Carlton also indicated that “Trump was a guest at the hotel in 2013, but did not stay in the Presidential Suite then or at any other time.”
In the end, Durham reported that Dolan was “the only person who met with both Danchenko and the Ritz Carlton general manager (and other managers) during the June Planning Trip.”
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“Our investigation … revealed that it was Dolan, not Danchenko, who actually interacted with the hotel staff identified in the Steele Reports, so between the two, Dolan appears the more likely source of the allegations,” the report said.
Durham’s report found the Department of Justice had no proper basis for launching the investigation and that neither the FBI nor DOJ “appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion” at the end of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.