Durham report: Steele dossier may have been ‘compromised by the Russians’ before FBI used it
Jerry Dunleavy
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Special Counsel John Durham’s new report warned Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier may have been infected by “Russian disinformation” before the FBI relied upon it.
While Durham’s yearslong investigation provided substantial evidence that many of the biggest Trump-Russia collusion claims could be traced back to the Clinton campaign and Democratic operatives, his new report also repeatedly raised the possibility that the dossier at the heart of the collusion claims contained Russian disinformation.
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“Russian intelligence knew of Steele’s election investigation for the Clinton campaign by no later than early July 2016,” Durham’s new report concluded. “Thus … Steele’s sources may have been compromised by the Russians at a time prior to the creation of the Steele Reports and throughout the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Durham warned that “the Russians were cognizant of Steele’s election-related reporting.”
Steele was working for Vladimir Putin-linked oligarch Oleg Deripaska before, during, and after his time targeting Trump (who was then a candidate), and the former MI6 agent was hired to put the dossier together by an opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, which was simultaneously working for Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya who attended the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting that was billed as a chance to offer dirt on the Clinton campaign. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, through Marc Elias, hired Fusion in 2016.
Steele’s main source, Russian national Igor Danchenko, allegedly relied upon a network of Russian contacts, undermined key collusion claims when interviewed by the FBI, and had previously been investigated as a possible threat to national security due to Russian intelligence contacts. And, according to Durham, Danchenko anonymously sourced a claim about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to longtime Hillary Clinton ally Chuck Dolan, who spent many years, including 2016, doing work for Russian businesses and the Russian government.
According to a DOJ review in 2020, declassified footnotes show that a 2017 report relayed information “outlining an inaccuracy in a limited subset of Steele’s reporting about the actions of Michael Cohen.” The redacted source of this information “stated that it did not have high confidence in the subset of Steele’s reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.”
Danchenko and Russian Intelligence
The FBI deployed the Steele dossier to successfully pursue Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page before they had even identified, let alone interviewed and vetted, Steele’s main source, Danchenko.
“The failure to identify the primary sub-source early in the investigation’s pursuit of FISA authority prevented the FBI from properly examining the possibility that some or much of the non-open source information contained in Steele’s reporting was Russian disinformation (that wittingly or unwittingly was passed along to Steele), or that the reporting was otherwise not credible,” Durham’s new report concluded.
Durham charged Danchenko with misleading about the sourcing for dossier claims, including those related to the baseless allegations of a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between then-candidate Trump and the Russians, which the special counsel said is false. Danchenko was also found not guilty last year.
The special counsel revealed that, even after the dossier fiasco, Danchenko was on the FBI’s payroll as a confidential human source from March 2017 to October 2020 before he was charged.
Durham discovered that Danchenko was investigated by the FBI as a possible “threat to national security,” according to documents declassified by then-Attorney General William Barr.
A declassified footnote from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report reads: “The Primary Sub-source was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation” from May 2009 to March 2011 that “assessed his/her documented contacts with suspected Russian intelligence officers.” The inquiry unearthed links between Danchenko and Russian intelligence officers.
Durham got Danchenko’s FBI handler Kevin Helson to admit he submitted paperwork in early 2017 on Danchenko that wrongly stated there was no derogatory information available on the Steele dossier source. In reality, it has been revealed that Danchenko was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation.
A member of the FBI’s Human Intelligence Validation Unit suspected Danchenko might have been linked to Russian intelligence and had urged Helson to take a series of steps to look into potential problems with Danchenko, but the FBI agent took little action to do so.
FBI notes of a January 2017 interview with Danchenko showed he told the bureau he “did not know the origins” of some of Steele’s claims. Horowitz said Danchenko “contradicted the allegations of a ‘well-developed conspiracy’ in” Steele’s dossier.
“Our review found no indication that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators ever attempted to resolve the prior Danchenko espionage matter before opening him as a paid confidential human source,” Durham’s report concluded. “Moreover, our investigation found no indication that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators disclosed the existence of Danchenko’s unresolved counterintelligence investigation to the Justice Department Department attorneys who were responsible for drafting the FISA renewal applications targeting Carter Page.”
Durham called it “important” that “in not resolving Danchenko’s status vis-a-vis the Russian intelligence services, it appears the FBI never gave appropriate consideration to the possibility that the intelligence Danchenko was providing to Steele — which, again, according to Danchenko himself, made up a significant majority of the information in the Steele Dossier reports — was, in whole or in part, Russian disinformation.”
Steele and Deripaska
Durham also pointed out that the Senate Intelligence Committee report noted that “sensitive reporting from June 2017 indicated that a [person affiliated] to Russian Oligarch 1,” Deripaska, “was [possibly aware] of Steele’s election investigation as of early July 2016.” Indeed, an early June 2017 U.S. intelligence community report “indicated that two persons affiliated with [Russian Intelligence Services] were aware of Steele’s election investigation in early July 2016.”
Deripaska paid Steele to investigate Manafort after accusing the Republican operative of stealing millions from him, and Steele sought help from Fusion in early 2016. The firm soon hired Steele to conduct anti-Trump research.
A D.C. mansion tied to Deripaska was raided by the FBI in 2021, and Deripaska himself was indicted in September for sanctions evasion related to his Basic Element Limited company, which was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2018 for operating on behalf of the Russian government.
Charles McGonigal, the former special agent in charge of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York, was charged by the Justice Department early this year with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and committing money laundering, in part to assist Deripaska with sanctions evasion.
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report in 2020 found “the Russian government coordinates with and directs Deripaska on many of his influence operations” around the world. The Senate report revealed Steele started working on behalf of Deripaska as early as 2012 through part of 2017. The investigation found “indications that Deripaska had early knowledge of Steele’s work,” and the report said Steele’s relationship with Deripaska “provided a potential direct channel for Russian influence on the dossier.”
An email from Steele in February 2016 claimed Deripaska “is also aware of the thrust of our new intel” and went on to suggest Deripaska “is not the leadership tool [of the Kremlin] some have alleged.” But the Senate report revealed investigators “found ample evidence to dispute Steele’s assessment.”
Steele worked for Deripaska in 2016, helping recover millions of dollars the Russian oligarch claimed Manafort had stolen from him.
The Senate report noted gaping holes in Steele’s dossier related to the Putin ally, writing that “Steele and his subsources appear to have neglected to include or missed in its entirety Paul Manafort’s business relationship with Deripaska.”
Danchenko and Dolan
One alleged lie Danchenko told was denying he spoke with Dolan about anything in the dossier, despite an admittedly fabricated claim from Dolan about Manafort making it into the dossier via Danchenko.
Foreign Agents Registration Act filings from November 2011 and May 2012 show Dolan was paid $78,000 and $79,000 for “out-of-pocket expenses” while working on behalf of the Russian Federation and the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom.
Durham said Dolan “interacted with senior Russian Federation leadership whose names would later appear in” the dossier and also “maintained relationships with” Russia’s ambassador to the United States and the head of the Russian Embassy’s Economic Section in Washington, D.C., both of whom appeared in the dossier.
Dolan allegedly asked Danchenko to assist with an October 2016 conference at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow, a location that would be the source of salacious claims about Trump, and Durham said Dolan attended meetings at the Russian Embassy in the U.S. in 2016.
Durham said Dolan described Danchenko in a June 2016 email as a potential former Russian spy, writing, “He is too young for KGB. But I think he worked for FSB.”
Dolan traveled to Moscow in June 2016 on a planning trip for the October conference, where he stayed in the Moscow hotel. Durham said Dolan had a meeting with the general manager of the Moscow hotel and a female hotel staff member to discuss the October conference and received a tour of the hotel, including the presidential suite.
Danchenko visited Dolan and others at the Moscow hotel, and Danchenko flew from Moscow to London to meet with Steele “to provide him with information that would later appear” in the dossier.
Danchenko also brokered a meeting between Dolan and his Russian friend, Olga Galkina, “to discuss a potential business relationship.” Galkina denies being a dossier source.
Fiona Hill, Ukraine-focused impeachment proceedings against Trump, has criticized Steele and said his dossier likely contained Russian disinformation. But she introduced Danchenko to both the former MI6 agent and allegedly to Dolan as well.
Fusion and Veselnitskaya
Veselnitskaya, a former prosecutor with ties to the Kremlin, hired the BakerHostetler law firm to help Cyprus-based, Russian-steered Prevezon Holdings in court, and the firm hired Fusion in 2014. Businessman Bill Browder had alleged Fusion acted as an agent for Russian interests when it helped go after him as Putin tried to combat the Magnitsky Act.
The Justice Department alleged Prevezon laundered fraudulent money, and the company later settled for $5.9 million in what the department called “a $230 million Russian tax refund fraud scheme involving corrupt Russian officials.” Prevezon was owned by Denis Katsyv, whose father, Pyotr Katsyv, is a Putin ally.
The DOJ unsealed an indictment against Veselnitskaya, now out of reach in Russia, alleging she had obstructed justice over her “secret cooperation with a senior Russian prosecutor.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee report said the information Veselnitskaya offered during the Trump Tower meeting “was focused on U.S. sanctions against Russia under the Magnitsky Act” and “was part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part, with elements of the Russian government.”
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The Senate report assessed that Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who accompanied her, both “have significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.”
Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson denied any foreknowledge of the Trump Tower meeting despite seeing Veselnitskaya the day before, the day of, and the day after.