reposting other anon article
Revealed: Primary Source for Steele’s ‘Pee Dossier’ Lived in U.S., Not Russia
The primary source for ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s “pee dossier” alleging Russian collusion was a U.S.-based researcher who previously worked at the Brookings Institution, not a well-connected Russia-based source as once believed.
The revelation was highlighted in a recent New York Times report that confirmed the name of the 42-year-old researcher as Igor Danchenko, who was born in Ukraine and is a “Russian-trained lawyer” who earned degrees at the University of Louisville and Georgetown University.
He spent five years, from 2005 to 2010, as a senior research analyst at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank in Washington, D.C., according to the Times.
Danchenko’s lawyer, Mark E. Schamel, told the Times it was a paid assignment to gather allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia and bring them to Steele’s research firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.
The Times noted that Danchenko’s involvement as the dossier’s “primary source” casts further doubt on the credibility of the dossier. Times reporters Adam Goldman and Charlie Savage wrote:
Mr. Danchenko’s identity is noteworthy because it further calls into question the credibility of the dossier. By turning to Mr. Danchenko as his primary source to gather possible dirt on Mr. Trump involving Russia, Mr. Steele was relying not on someone with a history of working with Russian intelligence operatives or bringing to light their covert activities but instead a researcher focused on analyzing business and political risks in Russia.
The dossier, commissioned by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign and outsourced to Fusion GPS, was defended by Democrats as credible since its author, Steele, was a former MI6 spy who had previously worked with the FBI and was believed to have connections in Russia.
Even Schamel appeared to distance Danchenko’s research and the final dossier, which claimed the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia and was used as evidence to obtain secret surveillance warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Schamel told the Times:
Mr. Danchenko is a highly respected senior research analyst; he is neither an author nor editor for any of the final reports produced by Orbis. Mr. Danchenko stands by his data analysis and research and will leave it to others to evaluate and interpret any broader story with regard to Orbis’s final report.
FBI documents recently declassified by Attorney General Bill Barr and released by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) showed discrepancies between what Danchenko said he gave to Steele and what Steele later wrote in the dossier.
According to the documents, in an interview Danchenko had with the FBI as early as January 2017, he told the FBI he disagreed with and was surprised by how the information he gave to Steele was conveyed in the dossier.
He told the FBI he did not recall or did not know where some of the information attributed to him or his sources came from. He also said he was never told about or never mentioned to Steele certain information attributed to him or his sources.
He also said Steele re-characterized some of the information to make it more substantiated and less attenuated than it really was, that he would have described his sources differently, and that Steele implied direct access to information where the access to information was indirect.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/27/revealed-primary-source-for-steeles-pee-dossier-lived-in-u-s-not-russia/