USA 2020 Elections: Thread

[grarpamp]

> Leaks Suggest Durham Probe Is Making Progress

Another arrest in the Hiliary Clinton-Dems Russia Hoax and
four year assault of Media Lies against Trump... Lock Her Up.



Arrest Of Steele Dossier Source A "Seismic Development"

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/11/04/igor-danchenko-arrested-as-part-of-durham-investigation/

Shining further light on today's arrest of Igor Danchenko - the
primary source for the debunked Steele dossier - is constitutional
scholar Jonathan Turley, who calls it a "seismic development."

    ...Potential apex targets range from Steele himself to Clinton
general counsel Marc Elias to other campaign officials. It is not
clear that Durham has evidence against those figures but there is
every indication that he is not done by a long shot with his
investigation.
    — Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) November 4, 2021

More via Jonathanturley.org:

The office of Special Counsel John Durham has confirmed that Igor
Danchenko, a key source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele, has
been arrested. This is the third arrest by Durham who is moving toward
the prosecution stage of his investigation into the origins of the
Russian collusion scandal. Durham is variously described as either
painfully methodical or positively glacial as a prosecutor.  But he is
widely credited with being a dogged and absolutely apolitical
prosecutor. Danchenko’s arrest is a seismic development and confirmed
Durham is far from done with his investigation.

Washington was recently rocked by the indictment of Michael Sussman,
former counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and
the Democratic National Committee, for his alleged role in spreading a
false Russia conspiracy theory.

Now Danchenko is being charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.

Danchenko is widely referenced as the sub-source for former British
intelligence officer Christopher Steele for his controversial dossier.
That dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign, served as the basis for
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump
campaign aide Carter Page.

Danchenko told the FBI that the dossier was “unsubstantiated” and said
that Steele asked him to look for any “compromising” information on
Trump. Mr. Danchenko worked for the Brookings Institution, a liberal
Washington think-tank that often produced reports critical of Trump.

Danchenko is not someone who immediately comes across as an apex
defendant — the highest target in an investigation. He was a key
source used by others to advance false or unsubstantiated claims
against Trump. He is the type of defendant that prosecutors pressure
to flip against those who retained him or used him in this effort. In
other words, he strikes me as someone who can be used as a building
block to apex defendants.

Potential apex targets above him in investigation range from Steele
himself to Clinton general counsel Marc Elias to Clinton campaign
officials.

There is no indication if Durham has possible evidence of criminal
acts by those figures but there is every indication that he is not
done by a long shot with this investigation.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, Sergei Milan has announced that the indictment exonerates him:

    My full exoneration, folks‼️ pic.twitter.com/YFvNr2TPo9
    — M I L L I A N (@SergeiMillian) November 4, 2021

*  *  *

    Think about how remarkable this paragraph is considering where the
media coverage of the Russian collusion hoax started 5 years ago.

    The corporate media truly is the enemy of the people.
pic.twitter.com/T04WWB6xbr
    — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 4, 2021

    Not a single journo in the corporate Democrat media is embarrassed
that they maniacally pushed lies about Russia-Trump collusion to tear
down a president for 4 years

    Slander was always their purpose. They knew it was built on
vicious, crazy lies. https://t.co/JtrSCIfKf5
    — Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) November 4, 2021

*  *  *

Federal authorities on Tuesday arrested Igor "Iggy" Danchenko, a
Russian national who was the primary researcher for the so-called
Steele Dossier - a compendium of opposition research funded by the
2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and used to smear Donald
Trump as a Russian operative. It was also used as justification for an
FBI wiretap application targeting former Trump adviser Carter Page.

According to the New York Times, the arrest of Danchenko is part of
John Durham's special counsel investigation into wrongdoing connected
to the Obama administration's Russia investigation.

    Christopher Steele primary subsource Igor Danchenko indictment:

    He "fabricated" the allegation that he was given info by
@SergeiMillian via phone.

    He lied about sources - one being a Democrat party operative/PR
exec. pic.twitter.com/GZjqi3y2tj
    — Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) November 4, 2021asdf

    Bombshell stuff. Igor Danchenko received info from a Democratic PR
executive that he then passed along to Chris Steele. He withheld that
from the FBI. Danchenko also lied about receiving a phone call from
Sergei Millian. pic.twitter.com/sFwHkCuiNb
    — Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) November 4, 2021

    Some claims from the Steele dosser made their way into an F.B.I.
wiretap application targeting a former Trump campaign adviser in
October 2016. Other portions of it — particularly a salacious claim
about a purported sex tape — caused a political and media firestorm
when Buzzfeed published the materials in January 2017, shortly before
Mr. Trump was sworn in.

    But most of the important claims in the dossier — which was
written by Mr. Danchenko’s employer, Christopher Steele, a former
British intelligence agent — have not been proven, and some have been
refuted. F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Danchenko in 2017 when they
were seeking to run down the claims in the dossier. -NYT

Danchenko, Steele's (formerly) mysterious "Primary Subsource", is a
former Brookings Institution analyst.

    According to new Durham indictment, the Steele dossier is even
more partisan & corrupt than previously known.

    We knew that Steele worked for Clinton campaign/DNC. Now we learn
that not only did Dems fund Steele's dossier, but dossier used a
Democratic operative as a key source: pic.twitter.com/XJ7OxFmuYF
    — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) November 4, 2021

    Shouldn't be too hard to figure out who this PR exec is, though no
names are springing to mind yet pic.twitter.com/TACkhAp1AQ
    — Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) November 4, 2021

    I think I've found a match for "PR Executive 1": Charles Dolan.
pic.twitter.com/4bW5C2qbA7
    — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) November 4, 2021

The 43-year-old Danchenko, who was hired by Steele in 2016 to deploy a
network of sources to dig up dirt on Trump and Russia for the Hillary
Clinton campaign, was arrested, jailed and convicted years earlier on
multiple public drunkenness and disorderly conduct charges in the
Washington area and ordered to undergo substance-abuse and
mental-health counseling, according to criminal records, according to
RealClearInvestigations.

Danchenko first ran into trouble with the law as he began working for
Brookings - the preeminent Democratic think tank in Washington - where
he struck up a friendship with Fiona Hill, the White House adviser who
testified against Trump during 2019 impeachment hearings. Danchenko
has described Hill as a mentor, while Hill has sung his praises as a
"creative" researcher.

As the Times notes further, Danchenko had been the subject of a
counterintelligence investigation to determine whether he was a
Russian agent.

    In an interview with The New York Times in 2020, Mr. Danchenko
defended the integrity of his work, saying he had been tasked to
gather “raw intelligence” and was simply passing it on to Mr. Steele.
Mr. Danchenko — who made his name as a Russia analyst by exposing
indications that the dissertation of President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia contained plagiarized material — also denied being a Russian
agent.

    “I’ve never been a Russian agent,” Mr. Danchenko said. “It is
ridiculous to suggest that. This, I think, it’s slander.” -NYT

Of note, Danchenko also met with a Russian energy official just four
days before Steele produced the first of 17 memos which comprise his
infamous opposition research on the Trump campaign.

    They gave themselves PULITZERS for pushing the lie that Trump
stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia.
https://t.co/qem5tQiseq
    — Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 4, 2021

    So, the only Russian actually arrested in connection with
disinformation in the 2016 election is the one who fed stories to the
DNC, Clinton campaign, and media allies through the Steele dossier—and
then allegedly lied about it to the FBI.
    — Jason Foster (@JsnFostr) November 4, 2021

According to the Daily Caller, Danchenko met with Sergey Abyshev - who
was a deputy-director in the energy ministry, as well as the
editor-in-chief of a Russian finance website, Ivan Vorontsov. The
meeting was documented in a Facebook post by Vorontsov, and confirmed
by Abyshev.

It is unclear what they talked about - but it occurred as Danchenko
was in the thick of his work with Christopher Steele, who the Hillary
Clinton 2016 campaign and the DNC paid to cook up opposition research
on President Trump's campaign. The dossier was a key component of
several FISA warrants issued to spy on former campaign aide Carter
Page and his contacts, and was widely distributed by US media outlets
in a campaign to discredit Trump.

    Danchenko, a Russian national who lives in Washington, D.C., told
the FBI in January 2017 that Steele, a former MI6 officer, tasked him
in June 2016 to dig up dirt on Trump. Steele was hired in May 2016 by
Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm working for the Clinton
campaign and DNC.

    Vorontsov posted a photo on June 16, 2016 from the St. Petersburg
International Economic Forum (SPIEF), an annual business conclave,
saying he had met the prior evening with Danchenko and Abyshev.

    “The night before was so nice with Sergey Abyshev and Igor
Danchenko,” Vorontsov wrote. -Daily Caller

According to Abyshev, the encounter with Danchenko was "an almost
accidental meeting in the center of Moscow with three ‘cheerful’
guys," adding "As a result, I had to listen to a lecture on investment
opportunities for about 20 minutes."

Interestingly, Danchenko may have been laundering information from a
former Russian PR executive living in Cyprus, according to the Wall
Street Journal last October.
Olga Galkina, image via Facebook

40-year old Olga Galkina "stood as the dossier’s most important
contributor," WSJ reported, after she was tapped by her old school
friend and Steele’s employee, Igor Danchenko, to dig up dirt of
Trump's dealings in Russia using the "vast network of people" from her
various jobs in and out of the public sector.

Described as a public-relations executive, she "fed notes" to
Danchenko for the dossier, including many of its most central claims.
And of course behind all of this was British spy Christopher Steele,
himself paid by Fusion GPS, and behind this the DNC itself.

They knew each other since the 8th grade in Perm, as the WSJ details:

    Mr. Danchenko told the FBI that a school friend, referred to in
heavily redacted FBI notes as "Source 3," had provided him with
information for Mr. Steele "across a wide range of topics," and stood
as the dossier’s most important contributor. The former high-ranking
U.S. national-security official told The Wall Street Journal that the
source in question was Ms. Galkina.

It was Galkina who claimed Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen
secretly contacted Russian intelligence in Prague to establish
compensation for DNC hackers in the summer of 2016. Crucially she had
fed Steele's team the name of her own Cyprus-based employer Webzilla
as being behind the hack under company owner Aleksej Gubarev.

    So the Steele Dossier that kicked off 4 years of Russiagate
hysteria among the US ruling class was cooked up by two Russian
alcoholics from Perm. “Gogolesque” does not begin to describe the
grotesque credulity & stupidity of the American
elites.https://t.co/LynUT8KLWx
    — Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) October 28, 2020

The charges against Danchenko come after the September indictment of
Hillary Clinton-linked cybersecurity lawyer, Michael Sussmann, who
allegedly made false statements during the 2016 presidential campaign
to slander then-candidate Trump.

    Sussmann, the indictment charges, “lied about the capacity in
which he was providing ... allegations to the FBI” of potential cyber
links between a Russian bank and a company owned by former president
Donald Trump.

    ...

    Durham is pursuing a prosecutorial theory that Sussmann was
secretly representing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, which
was a client of Sussmann’s firm, these people said. -Washington Post

Notably, this is far from over as Special Counsel Durham's office
pointed out in the statement that the investigation is "ongoing."

https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/status/1456300102000250889
https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/status/1456300973849202695
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-arrests-steele-dossier-sub-source-durham-investigation
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/08/16/beware-the-eephus-washington-on-edge-as-durham-prepares-possible-indictments-and-report/
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/09/20/clinton-lawyers-indictment-reveals-bag-of-tricks/
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/08/23/clinton-lawyer-featured-in-steele-dossier-scandal-opens-firm-with-focus-on-ethics-and-campaign-disclosures/
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