The Danchenko misdirection in Russia scam

 Paul Sperry, via Sharyl Attkisson:

In January 2017, Igor Danchenko, a primary source for the Steele dossier, told FBI officials in a debriefing that one of his sources for derogatory information about Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia was merely an anonymous voice on the other end of a phone call that lasted 10-15 minutes.

The voice, Danchenko claimed, was someone he assumed to be Sergei Millian, an immigrant from Belarus, president and founder of an organization called the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. As thin as that sourcing sounds, the truth appears to be worse. According to a new criminal indictment, Danchenko lied to FBI agents: There was no voice and there was no phone call. The Russian national made it all up.

Still, the FBI continued to use Danchenko’s supposed source’s claims of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Russia and Trump to convince a secret federal court to allow investigators to electronically monitor at least one Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, whom the FBI accused of masterminding the conspiracy based on Danchenko's dubious claims. Agents swore in court documents reviewed by RealClearInvestigations that Danchenko was “truthful and cooperative,” even after discovering he misled them regarding his allegedly well-placed source.

The combination of Danchenko reporting a “conspiracy” and the FBI vouching for his credibility persuaded the powerful Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize wiretapping Page as a suspected Russian agent for almost a year. Page was never charged and is now suing the FBI and Justice Department for $75 million.

Special Counsel John Durham detailed the alleged dossier fiction in a grand jury indictment unsealed last week charging Danchenko with five felony counts of lying to the FBI — four of which relate to the invented phone call with Millian, a New York Realtor who was in reality a big fan of  Trump.

“Danchenko never received such a phone call or such information from any person he believed to be [Millian], and Danchenko never made any arrangements to meet [Millian],”  the indictment states. “Danchenko fabricated these facts."

...

There is much more.

This looks like a clever part of the scam trying to tie the hoax to a friend of Trump.  What other people who were in on the scam knew about this aspect of it?  What communications did Danchenko have with Clinton and her lawyers about this aspect of the story?  Did Steele bother to do any due diligence and contact people like Millian to verify the story?

See, also:

Dems' Russia-ruse exposed: The Durham indictments explained 
Understanding the Durham indictments: What you need to know

And: 

Discredited anti-Trump Steele dossier was embraced by liberal media: Here are five of the biggest offenders 
Dossier painted former-President Trump as a sexual deviant compromised by Russia

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more