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Danchenko Indictment: How Dossier Non-Source Sergei Millian Was Framed
By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations
November 10, 2021
By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations
November 10, 2021
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.
Igor Danchenko: The top Steele dossier researcher was indicted for lying to the FBI, in part about the key source of the dossier's explosive Trump-Russia conspiracy claims.
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."
Sergei Millian says his denials of being a source for the Steele dossier were dismissed by major media.
When his name first publicly surfaced in early 2017 as a key source of the dossier, Millian said he emphatically denied it in interviews with the Washington media, who were scrambling to corroborate the dossier. He showed RealClearInvestigations emails he exchanged with reporters for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamburger from the former and Mark Maremont from the latter in which he tried to steer them off the story, insisting it was “a vicious lie” and a smear campaign against him and the incoming Republican president. But the newspapers nonetheless reported he was the source for the most explosive parts of the dossier, including the claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin had compromising sex tapes of Trump and that he and Trump were engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy” to steal the 2016 election.
Asked for comment, Maremont of the Journal responded, "I don't know you or your outlet,” then referred a reporter to media relations for his paper's publisher, Dow Jones. The Post reporters did not return requests for comment.
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https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/11/10/danchenko_indictment_how_dossier_non-source_sergei_millian_was_framed_803079.html