The Igor Danchenko Indictment: Structure
I’m going to do a series of posts on John Durham’s indictment of Igor Danchenko. Because the indictment is an organizational shit-show and because the order Durham adopts obscures real problems with the indictment, I’m going to do the posts out of order. But I want to start by laying out the organization he uses, which will serve as a means to link the series I will do and explain the import. (I’ll do running updates on this post.)
Here’s the organization; I’ve bolded the parts of the indictment that pertain to actually charged crimes, I’ve italicized those that don’t relate to the charges, and underlined one that includes other dodgy claims:
I. Introduction and Overview
A. Igor Danchenko
B. Orbis and Its Role in the 2016 Presidential Election Campaign
C. Charles Dolan
D. Danchenko’s Relationship with Dolan
F. Danchenko Introduces Galkina to Dolan
G. Sergei Millian
H. Danchenko’s US Election Reporting
II. Danchenko’s False Statements Involving Dolan
A. Dolan Provides Information Regarding Paul Manafort
B. Danchenko’s Statements to the FBI Regarding Dolan
III. The Materiality of Danchenko’s [Alleged] Lies Regarding Dolan
A. Danchenko’s Allegations Regarding Salacious Sexual Activity
-
- Dolan and Organizer-1 Receive a Tour of the Ritz Presidential Suite
- Danchenko’s Statements to the FBI Regarding the Ritz
B. Danchenko’s Allegations Regarding Russian Diplomat-1
-
- Danchenko’s Statements to the FBI Regarding Russian Diplomat-1
C. Danchenko’s Allegation Regarding Russian Chief of Staff-1
-
- Danchenko’s Statements to the FBI Regarding Chief of Staff-1
IV. Danchenko’s False Statement Regarding Disclosure of His Relationship with Steele and Orbis
V. Danchenko’s False Statements Regarding Allegations Sourced to Sergei Millian
A. Danchenko’s Alleged Phone Call with Millian
B. Danchenko’s False Statement Regarding His Alleged Phone Call with Millian
VI. The Materiality of Danchenko’s [Alleged] Lies Regarding Millian
Charges
- On or about June 15, 2017, Danchenko denied to agents of the FBI that he had spoken with Dolan about any material contained in the Company Reports, when in truth and in fact, Dolan was the source for an allegation contained in a Company Report dated August 22, 2016 and was otherwise involved in the events and information described in the reports. [my emphasis]
- On or about March 16, 2017, Danchenko stated to agents of the FBI that he received a late July 2016 telephone call from an individual who DANCHENKO believed was “probably” Chamber President-1, when in truth and in fact, and as the defendant well knew. Chamber President-1 never called DANCHENKO.
- On or about May 18, 2017, Danchenko stated to agents of the FBI that he “was under the impression” that a late July 2016 telephone call that he received was from Chamber President-1, when in truth and in fact, and as the defendant well knew. Chamber President-1 never called DANCHENKO.
- On or about October 24, 2017, Danchenko stated to agents of the FBI that he believed that he spoke to Chamber President-1 on the telephone on more than one occasion, when in truth and in fact, and as the defendant well knew, DANCHENKO never spoke to Chamber President-1.
- On or about November 16, 2017, Danchenko stated to agents of the FBI that he believed that he had spoken to Chamber President-1 on the telephone, when in truth and in fact, DANCHENKO never spoke to Chamber President-I.
The reason I’m starting by laying out this structure is to show that two entire sections of this indictment (both italicized), Section III (Materiality of Danchenko’s alleged lies regarding Dolan) and Section IV (Danchenko’s False Statement regarding disclosure of his relationship with Steele and Orbis), are not charged at all. When Durham did something analogous in the Michael Sussmann indictment, Sussmann accused him of improperly including 404b information in the indictment.
In this case, however, it’s even worse. Section III insinuates that Dolan is the source for dossier allegations that Durham doesn’t even try to prove. He introduces them by making a provably bullshit materiality claim. Worse still, the evidence Durham presents totally undermines those allegations. Nevertheless, having included those insinuations, propagandists like Kim Strassel and purportedly serious reporters like Jonathan Swan have treated those allegations as if they’ve actually been charged. So this section was a very successful way that Durham used credulous hacks to repeat claims he’s not even trying to prove are true.
Section IV, as I will argue, is an outright misrepresentation, a claim that Danchenko lied about a topic when in fact Durham misrepresented the public record (which may be why it’s not charged). On paper, this section mostly attempts to corroborate Charge 1, that Danchenko lied about what Dolan said. But it’s more cynical both for the materiality claim Durham invents (that FBI couldn’t have known that Russia was feeding disinformation to Danchenko and Steele) and because Durham treats Hillary Clinton, not Russia, as the hostile adversary to the US.
Finally, in the underlined section on Olga Galkina, Durham attempts to insinuate that Galkina and Dolan had some conspiracy going. This section is another uncharged allegation. It’s made all the worse because all the available evidence (including that Galkina is credibly alleged to be the source for the most discredited claims in the dossier, that Michael Cohen was in Prague) suggests something more nefarious was going on. In this section, then, Durham runs interference for Russian intelligence.
The point of this structure is that Durham has used both the two italicized sections and the underlined one to make wild (and in some cases, provably false) insinuations without even intending to prove them.
Danchenko posts
The Igor Danchenko Indictment: Structure
John Durham May Have Made Igor Danchenko “Aggrieved” Under FISA
“Yes and No:” John Durham Confuses Networking with Intelligence Collection
Source 6A: John Durham’s Twitter Charges
John Durham: Destroying the Purported Victims to Save Them
John Durham’s Cut-and-Paste Failures — and Other Indices of Unreliability
Thanks, ew!
I know you are aware of this, but the propaganda is the whole point of the exercise. That the method is unsound and there is much BS flung onto the page, means nothing to Durham, as there is about zero chance anything will ever happen to him. The worst might be some kind of reprimand if someone not to be named on his team screws something up majorly. And since it was clear from the get go based on history that nothing would happen to him, since nothing really happens to anyone of substance that is part of the institutional racket of DOJ, or has a similar “pedigree”, this shitshow will continue all through midterms and heck, maybe even longer. He will be called a hero after this by the far right.
The puppet masters of the far right have weaponized technology to further their nefarious means to the end which is autocratic power. We’ll still be waiting for something to happen to the person that changed the documents along the way in trying to screw over Andrew McCabe. And then when there is a small “victory” – like, McCabe gets pension back, well, the damage is done, and we are happy with reversion to the status quo ante, while they have piled onto their ever-growing dungheap of propaganda. The same will happen here, or similar. The indictment will go nowhere quite possibly, and we will shout joy for justice, only to be back where we started. Meanwhile, they further their endgame of getting Trump back in office.
“He will be called a hero after this by the far right.”
Espionage and military victories can often assume a pyrrhic form, with unplanned secondary effects to “success”.
May it always be so …
I’m looking forward to your analysis. On the face of it, this doesn’t look particularly good for either Danchenko or Steele. (The latter because, if this indictment pans out, it would suggest that he was rather sloppy about his sources.) But I need to read through the indictment again and think about it some more.
The parts about Dolan’s communications regarding Clinton with Danchenko’s childhood friend, “Russian Subsource-1”, suggest to me something hinky. Perhaps unfairly, because I know nothing about either of them, but I don’t trust it. I don’t mean a setup, necessarily. Maybe just him wanting access to the Clinton team for less than altruistic purposes. (Like, for example, he’s a spook, too.)
I think the Dossier was unsifted intel that was grabbed before the proper analysis was completed. If Steele released it that way, it’s on him but I suspect his clients got antsy for dirt before he could complete his work. However, aside from getting the burn notice of sorts, Steele is finished as a spy.
Huh? the Dossier was background chatter, leads/threads to pull. Steele didn’t “release” this – the Feds discovered it and if I recall correctly McCain pushed to make public.
In any case you can’t fault Steele’s half-developed conjectures And then cheer Durham’s half-evolved charges – only the latter’s supposed to be finished product, and it’s certainly not.
Though yes, planting the meme/bad seed seems Team Trump’s main or only goal, certainly not adhering to legal norms and expectations and valid evidentiary processes.
Rudy said in deposition yesterday in effect, “i didn’t have time to check out this scurrilous piece of slander before releasing – I’m busy!” Durham is taken seriously for doing what Steele is smeared for – even though only the former has a variety of due diligence requirements he should adhere to.
Have said this from the get go. “The dossier” is one of the biggest red herrings in history, and remains so. For anybody that thinks Steele is a hack, and maybe he has turned out to kind of be, they ought take a serious look at Durham, who has very long been.
I’m going to go out on a limb, and guess that Steele knows perfectly well how to evaluate rumors picked up in conversations with sources who might or might not be telling the truth, but in the case of the dossier, he was passing on raw information without trying to evaluate whether it was true or not, because (1) he didn’t have the resources to verify or eliminate the rumors he was being told – that’s a job for intelligence agencies like MI6, where he ended his career running the Russian desk, not for retired intelligence guys working on their own, and (2) he could reasonably have suspected that anyone who received raw information from him would actually try to decide what was wheat and what was chaff before using it, so sitting on anything he heard and waiting for verification wasn’t a winning strategy.
I could be wrong about that – and other people who comment here likely know more specifics than I do – but the crap that gets reported as raw information in intelligence agencies really DOES require evaluation before it goes to policy makers. The “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US” PDB article wasn’t about one intercept – it was about a pattern of behavior, which is one of the things intelligence officers do.
Nothing about Steel as I don’t know the man, but your point was spot on.
“he was passing on raw information without trying to evaluate whether it was true or not“
That is exactly the kind of intel Trump likes.
That was validated in the Senate report. Not brought it out for the first time but validated it.
This was and is Flynn’s specialty. He’s trained and payed for by us, the taxpayers.
This is why they laugh. Every rabbit hole holds the plausible deniability that Alice was or was not high at the time of her trip.
The taxpayer educated and funded digital army Flynn always wanted.
Steele’s sourcing WAS shitty. Worse still he did little to protect himself from being used as a vehicle of disinformation, which the dossier was.
We will see how Danchenko fares. One thing I noted is that, as a non-citizen, if he is convicted, he will eventually be deported. That could literally threaten his life. So he has an incentive to make this go away, though there are multiple ways of doing that.
Danchenko’s childhood friend is Olga Galkina–the underlined allegation above. Yes, it’s hinky.
One more point: Before this was unsealed, Sergei Millian stated that two of his enemies were going down. That means this was leaked to him, but also that he believes someone else was/will be charged. Either Simpson or Steele are the likely candidates.
Lol.
Indeed, on both counts there is a clear indictment of Steele’s tradecraft rather surprising for a veteran of British intelligence. The MoD doesn’t run a remedial course and Steele isn’t a lord either AFAIK.
Millian’s boast is news to me, thanks. That he knew beforehand is very interesting. It could be that he was merely counting on Steele being ruined because of Danchenko’s indictment and conviction.
EW: In a big intelligence operation, different people play different roles. First there is the agent runner, the person who is often the advocate for a heroic agent risk his life. If job is to meet the agent and carefully record all of the details he hears when he secretly meets his agent. That is the role Steele was playing for agent he recruited, Danchenko, who is risking his life on trips to Moscow. In the IG’s report, we see that every so often the FBI has someone besides the agent runner – a professional skeptic if you like – reviewing the entire intelligence produced by an agent for reliability. The IG criticized the absence of a complete review of what the FBI had acquired from Steele. Then there are analyst-customers for the raw intelligence reports submitted by the agent runner. The Dossier is mostly a complication of the raw agent reports that shows no evidence of Steele paying these other rolls. He must have done so as he rose in British intelligence and then as a principal in a business intelligence firm, so why didn’t he do so for his clients at Fusion GPS?
The startling raw intelligence from Danchenko’s first reports on Trump may have changed Steele’s view of his role and client. He immediately ignored his confidentially agreement with Fusion and (as I see it) wrote the kind of raw intelligence reports that an agent runner would be sending to the FBI – where they would have a skeptic evaluating the reliability of Danchenko and his sub-sources and other analysts combining Danchenko’s reports with intelligence from our sources.
Of course, without a large collection of reports from Steele at various times in his career, it is impossible the know how abnormal Steele’s reports for Fusion GPC were. The suggestion above could easily be pure fantasy.
Is Garland handcuffed or could he be exercising his authority to stop this nonsense?
I believe the technical term is ‘neutered.’
As Marcy noted yesterday, as long as the crappy press (& the crappy blogosphere) knee-jerkedly echoes and spreads Durham’s shit work with no analysis or pushback, Garland doesn’t have grounds or support for shutting Durham down – just like people who didn’t read the actual Mueller Reports enabled Team Trump to run with the revisionist “nothing here to see, folks” tale.
You would hope post-McCabe and after that lengthy dodgy 1-indictment crap-a-thon for Sussemann that the press would hold off a bit on Mr. appointed-in-the-dark-of-night’s hit jobs, but they never learn, and sadly that’s the news reference & record the public largely has to go on – even the non-Fox/Newsmax crowds.
Wray is much, much smarter than the other players, look with real objectivity at the past week, and you might see what he’s really doing.
You probably won’t, but you might!
Garland is likely bound and gagged like Mr. Seals in Mayor Daley’s Court.
The Simon Bar Sinister factor, Natasha..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pswvi3QN_tI
Big Lies always have delirious consequences like concrete face plants after a trip with gravity.
Remember when?
You were probably there,
being the OlderDude. 😝
Thanks EW, you are the best..
Haven’t heard of, or thought about, Simon Bar Sinister in around 60 years; thanks for that!
Also wore out the record grooves of Graham Nash’s original version of “Chicago” (with Rita Coolidge on backup);
We weren’t exactly innocent way back then, but a lot of us were hopeful.
I wonder if these Special Counsel indictments (Sussman & Danchenko only because Klinesmith was normal Durham indictment pre-Special Counsel) have been structured in this manner as “lessons learned” from Mueller. That is, when Special Counsel wraps up, all of his indictments get bound up and transmitted to the AG as the Special Counsel statutory “closing report of prosecutions and declinations.” This way, everything that needs to be public is public, all of this can simply be passed on to Congress should Congress press for it, etc. The entirety of the post-Mueller circus is avoided; the “Special Counsel report” is given in the indictments as they’re made?
They read (and the commentary would agree as well) like something thrown together the night before to justify the ridiculous expense we taxpayers have borne to satisfy DJT’s ego and give something to the RWNM to trumpet.
However, perhaps I missed something but I haven’t heard too much from the RWNM about either indictment, so if that is correct even the propaganda machine thinks these indictments are as nasty as a tuna sandwich stuffed in a locker all summer (what came out was almost sentient and definitely “mellow”).
What is interesting to me in Danchenko is nothing here is “new.” All five of his alleged crimes took place in 2017; “On or about June 15, 2017, the FBI interviewed DANCHENKO in the Eastern District of Virginia regarding the Company Reports. FBI agents recorded the June Interview
without DANCHENKO’s knowledge…”
Mueller certainly had authority over these crimes. But that’s water under the bridge. In any case, Danchenko has apparently made a series of bad choices to get to point where in EDVA the FBI are secretly taping your interviews to compare your story to things you might actually have done.
I do believe the dossier is largely comprised of Russian sourced disinfo, and in any case we have an interest to making sure Russian sourced disinfo isn’t corrupting our elections.
If Danchenko lied to the FBI about these things, it’s on him.
A few weeks ago my mother, long mesmerized by Fox News, tried to start a conversation about the Durham investigation and its supposed bombshell revelations. Pinkie commie that I am, I responded that for an investigation that had gone on longer than the Mueller investigation it had produced remarkably few (and fairly trivial in comparison) charges. That was before the latest indictments. I suspect they’re hyping this story on Fox quite hard.
Meh, the latest indictments are not that stunning either.
Are you suggesting that John Durham is almost sentient?
Given that the FBI secretly recorded their last three interviews with Danchenko, they must have become suspicious of Danchenko at or soon after their first interview in January. This suggests that Durham has known about Danchenko’s lies since early in his investigation. Why did he wait until well after the election to indict? Is there something bad for Trump here or coming? If the Dossier is filled with false information planted by Danchenko that fooled Steele, then logically there is less to be blamed on the FBI and the DNC. … If logic were important.
And Steele looks less like a master spy trying to bring down Trump and more like the victim of Danchenko’s idiocy. While Steele is going to great length to keep his reports secure, Danchenko is discussing his secret work for Steele with Dolan, Galkina, and others.
I wouldn’t make much of the recorded interviews. They were secretly recording George Papadopoulos at the same time.
In early 2017, Papadopoulos had been the target of an investigation who bragged about getting hacked email from Russia. In early 2017 (from my limited perspective), Danchenko was a heroic immigrant who risked his life gathering intelligence in his home country and who was now volunteering to help the FBI better understand his intelligence. That intelligence had allowed the FBI to get a FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page, a man who posed a significant danger to national security. So Danchenko wasn’t initially someone the FBI was expecting to indict for perjury. Nevertheless, his second and following interviews were secretly taped. The political preferences of the agents involved may have played a role in the taping.
No. The government had plenty without that to get warrants on Page. Pegging the dossier as the basis is flat out wrong and a lie and one that plays into the nutters hands. The warrants, especially the initial one, stand up on their own even without anything from the giant red herring dossier.
The Executive Summary of the DoJ IG’s Report (pages iv-v) asserts:
“Shortly after opening the Carter Page investigation in August 2016, the Crossfire Hurricane team discussed the possible use of FISA-authorized electronic surveillance targeting Page, which is among the most sensitive and intrusive investigative techniques. As we describe in Chapter Five, the FBI ultimately did not seek a FISA order at that time because OGC, NSD’s Office of Intelligence (OI), or both determined that more information was needed to support probable cause that Page was an agent of a foreign power. However, immediately after the Crossfire Hurricane team received Steele’s election reporting on September 19, the team reinitiated their discussions with OI and their efforts to obtain FISA surveillance authority for Page, which they received from the FISC on October 21.”
Please, don’t cite that bogus Horowitz report to me. I have read it, and he could not even bother to discuss the one relevant legal standard. I am not exactly new to this game, Frank.
Also, the government was on to Page long before 2016. and already had a basis, and actually got a FISA warrant on him back in 2014. You are trying to peddle the Fox News version of Page here. Don’t do that.
My first comment is that the Steele dossier/Durham canard is like a 4th dimensional chess game for the average person and that I look forward to your expert scholarship and analysis in subsequent blog posts to help us make sense of it. It is so unfortunate that many Americans will see all of Durham’s smoke and think there is really a fire there. My other comment is that any opposition research on Donald J. Trump would be, shall we say, a “target-rich environment”? So, no one should be surprised that Steele’s dossier is peppered with juicy things about his life that may or may not be totally true. Trump has connections to Russia dating back to 1987 including many of the first condos in Trump Towers in NYC being leased to Russian Mafia figures. Between that and Trump’s publicly known sexual escapades including at the Miss Universe pageant in Russia, any listing of Donald Trump’s potential political exposures or personal points of leverage against him, relative to Russia, would be extensive and subject to exaggeration or hyperbole.
Count One looks to me like Danchenko is being charged for his response to an ambiguous question. Was the question about things that had already appeared in a report, or was it about things that would later appear in a report?
Right: Lots of that going on.
Thanks for this post EW.
Both the Sussman and Danchenko’s indictments are “stretches” by Durham. Sussman has access to good lawyers who may be able to get his indictment dismissed. If EW feels the Danchenko indictment is also BS, then a good lawyer can also get Danchenko’s indictment dismissed. IF a Judge dismisses BOTH of these indictments, Durham will look “bad.” That could be enough for DOJ to tell him to close shop and go home to Connecticut.
This indictment is more likely to survive than Sussmann’s, in part because he won’t have the same legal resources to bear and he does have more to hide. Plus, if he loses, he gets deported to Russia where Putin has good reason to want to retaliate against him.
What is Durham’s game? Is he doing his work this way because that’s always how he does it? Or is there an agenda? What does he get out of all this?
Has Durham always done it this way? Let’s put it this way, he has very long been a cover up agent. Does he have an agenda? Yes. What does he get out of it? Paid.
About to post the same…”paid”… an easy government job
It doesn’t help that Garland assumes a posture of helplessness. And maybe he really doesn’t have much choice. If he puts pressure on Durham, Trump enablers in Congress will claim “political persecution!”, a fight Garland will sprint from. At the same time, it’s not as if the AG doesn’t have ultimate authority (28 CFR 600.7(b)) over Durham and his (poorly executed) fishing expeditions.
I’ve read –can’t say just where, offhand, possibly in *I Alone Can Fix It*, but that’s a guess– that AG Barr instituted a special counsel in order to ensure that an investigation would not be shut down in the event Democrats won the 2020 election.
That was clearly his intent, yes.
Sure. But nothing says that Garland must held hostage to this permanently; a special counsel still is subject to being overruled by the AG. At least in terms of the law. In political terms, yes, but that just highlights how Garlands’s obsession with appearing apolitical is in itself political. He fails to assert the power he has to avoid having to take on Republicans and their very much political mission to abet Trump’s ongoing obstruction of justice.
It seems to me that it is you, and many others, who are assuming an awful lot about Garland. A posture of helplessness? He’s been doing the correct thing by staying out of the limelights. It wasn’t so very long ago that many of us were livid at the way that Barr repeatedly interjected himself in order to prod both investigations and talking points in the direction that he preferred.
That’s the fundamental disagreement: I see no equivalence between Barr and Garland. The former engineered the protection of Trump; Durham’s appointment was one of the tools used. But that doesn’t translate into Garland’s being compelled to tolerate/endure indefinitely the transparently politically motivated work that Durham is doing, not least from a cost/benefit perspective. Motive matters. If Garland were to shut down Durham, it wouldn’t be to protect the current president against a wagon-load of obstruction-of-justice evidence. It would actually be the straightforward administration of justice, regardless how loud geniuses like Grassley and Blackburn howled otherwise.
Washington Post published an article today about Charles Dolan – PR Exec – 1. The article makes it sound like Dolan was running a double cross operation – feeding information to Danchenko who would then feed it to Steele to taint Trump but then also, after Trump is elected, running to Tucker Carlson and telling him that he could discredit the Steele Dossier.
The article reports that Dolan was well-connected in Putin’s Russian circle, with Brookings where he knew Fiona Hill and in Democratic circles.
It also reports that Dolan thought Danchenko was a Russian spy. Or at least said he thought so.
The universe of people with Russian connections and knowledge must be a small world and one in which trust is at your own risk.
But the Durham indictment has so much fluff about Democrats that I wouldn’t be shocked if Durham was hired by OAN after he leaves DOJ.
PS Lying to the FBI is not a good thing. One hopes that the Jan. 6th participants understand that.
The great result the Mueller investigation produced is a check against all of the conniving American political mercenary industry: all the Black & Manaforts, Mercury, and Podesta Groups who the world over were looking to undo or work against whatever official US policy was in effect.
The murkiness surrounding Dolan’s motives and the question about whether Danchenko is an agent of Russia — surely one shared by many of the actors in this drama — are fascinating to me. Who was playing whom?
This started occurring to me last year. The Steele dossier started as one thing before the Dems got it, then maybe deliberate sabotage–spike it with some things that could not be proved, and of course the hotel thing was spicy in a really, really gross way. Thereby undermining any broad truths.
The dossier also originally started with an entity which has shielded itself from oversight of its income. How convenient.
Brick
In this season with its sharing,
what’s the whine that will be pairing
with all the generous double daring,
and all the news that will be airing?
Soon it will be time for stuffin’
turkeys that don’t need to toughen,
Still there may be just enough in
to call it all a real McGuffin.
Mushrooms, corn bread & red herring
err apparently crossing Charing,
Even though bells might be blaring,
Who cut a rug with their Red squaring?
Someone tries to play MacDuff in
digging dirt and grabbing scruff in
ways to scatter wayward fluff in
building up his ruddy bluffin’.
As Durham’s indictments’ logical and legal stretches reach Mr. Fantastic proportions, I’m beginning to wonder if his ultimate stretch is to indict Hillary Clinton.