The Straight-Arrow Incorruptibles At the FBI Put Serial Liar and Suspected Russian Spy Igor Danchenko On Retainer as a Paid "Confidential Human Source" From 2017 to 2020

Which just happens to track almost perfectly with Trump's (acknowledged) presidential term.

In a bombshell revelation, Special Prosecutor John Durham revealed Tuesday in court filings that the FBI paid a Russian businessman as a confidential human source in the investigation of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign even though it had prior concerns that businessman was tied to Moscow's intelligence services.

Durham persuaded the federal judge in the upcoming trial of Igor Danchenko to unseal a motion revealing that Danchenko, the primary source of the now-discredited Steele dossier, was paid by the FBI as a confidential human source for more than three years until the fall of 2020 when he was terminated for lying to agents.

Did they put him on their payroll to shield him from Durham? Or lend his claims credibility?

Danchenko is charged with five counts of lying to the bureau during that relationship and faces trial next month in federal court in the Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C.

"In March 2017, the FBI signed the defendant up as a paid confidential human source of the FBI," Durham's unsealed court filing disclosed for the first time. "The FBI terminated its source relationship with the defendant in October 2020. As alleged in further detail below, the defendant lied to FBI agents during several of these interviews."

The revelation means that the FBI first fired former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, the author of the Hillary Clinton-funded dossier, as a human source in November 2016 for having unauthorized contacts with the news media. And it then turned around a few months later and hired Steele's primary informer to work with the bureau even after determining some of Danchenko's statements in the Steele dossier were uncorroborated or exaggerated.

Even more stunning, Durham confirmed that the FBI had concerns about Danchenko's ties to Russian intelligence a decade earlier, opening up a counterintelligence probe on him after learning he was trying to buy classified information from the Obama administration.

"As has been publicly reported, the defendant was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011," Durham wrote. "In late 2008, while the defendant was employed by a prominent think tank in Washington, D.C., the defendant engaged two fellow employees about whether one of the employees might be willing or able in the future to provide classified information in exchange for money.

"According to one employee ('Employee-1'), the defendant believed that he (Employee-1) might be in a position to enter the incoming Obama administration and have access to classified information. During this exchange, the defendant informed Employee-1 that he had access to people who would be willing to pay money in exchange for classified information. Employee-1 passed this information to a U.S. government contact, and the information was subsequently passed to the FBI.

...

The FBI closed that counterintelligence probe in 2010, but only after it "incorrectly believed that the defendant had left the country," Durham told the court.

We can't defund the FBI. They're the Thin Blue Line competently protecting us from Foreign Subversion.

Before the FBI hired Danchenko as a confidential human source, it detected more troubling behavior, prosecutors told the court.

"During his January 2017 interview with the FBI, the defendant initially denied having any contact with Russian intelligence or security services but later -- as noted by the agents, contradicted himself and stated that he had contact with two individuals who he believed to be connected to those services," Durham wrote.

Durham also revealed additional lies told by Danchenko which he is not being prosecuted for, but which he wants to introduce at trial, I supposed to prove that the lies he is being prosecuted for were told deliberately and were not mere "oopsies."

See JustTheNews.com for more.

Techno Fog @Techno_Fog

The purpose should be quite clear -

The FBI buries Danchenko from inquiry by making him a CHS.

In doing so, the FBI prevents discovery of its own misconduct.

Utterly corrupt and self-serving.

Lee Smith @LeeSmithDC

Question for lawyers @HansMahncke @ProfMJCleveland @Techno_Fog @shipwreckedcrew et al: given FBI once had CI investigation on Danchenko and then made him a CHS, can Durham keep portraying FBI as a victim/sucker?

He told lies during an investigation, obstructing justice. Whether or not the FBI is corrupt -- it is -- and knew that these were lies but wanted to use the lies for its own purposes is legally irrelevant.

I mean, if you lie to court and no one in the courtroom believes you, you're still guilty of perjury. The crime does not require anyone believe the lie, just that you intend them to believe it.

On the other hand... Michael Sussman used this defense and it may have gotten him off. (Although what probably got him off was being a Hillary Clinton lawyer in a Democrat dominated town with a pro-Clinton jury.)

This is some interesting timing -- seems like the FBI wanted to keep Danchenko on speed dial in case they needed to fabricate new claims to keep their fraudulent FISA warrant alive.

TheLastRefuge @TheLastRefuge2

@Techno_Fog the FBI interviewed Danchenko immediately after the first FISA renewal (Jan), then hired him prior to the second FISA renewal (April), maintained him during the third renewal (June) and dropped him immediately after last one expired (Oct).

Hired = throw a bag over.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Turley can't help noticing that Danchenko worked for the very Clinton-aligned Brookings Institution-- as did many other Russiagate figures.

The latest indictment by Special Counsel John Durham has created a stir in Washington as the investigation into the Russian collusion scandal exposed new connections to the Clinton campaign. The indictment of Igor Danchenko exposes additional close advisers to Hillary Clinton who allegedly pushed discredited and salacious allegations in the Steele dossier. However, one of the most interesting new elements was the role of a liberal think tank, the Brookings Institution, in the alleged effort to create a false scandal of collusion. Indeed, Brookings appears so often in accounts related to the Russian collusion scandal that it could be Washington's alternative to the Kevin Bacon parlor game. It appears that many of these figures are within six degrees of Brookings.

...

[E]ven in Washington's inbred environment, the layers of connections to Brookings is remarkable in the Durham indictments and accounts of the effort to create a Russian collusion scandal....

Brookings played a large role in pushing the Russian collusion narrative, hiring a variety of experts who then populated media outlets like MSNBC and CNN stating confidently that Trump was clearly incriminated in a series of dubious criminal acts. While no such crimes were ever charged, let alone prosecuted, Brookings maintained a deep bench of enabling experts like Susan Hennessey (now a national security adviser in the Biden Administration), Ben Wittes (who defended James Comey in his leaking of FBI memos) and Norm Eisen (who then become counsel in the Trump impeachment effort). This included the Brookings site, LawFare, which ran a steady stream of columns on how Trump could be charged for crimes ranging from obstruction to bribery.

However, that type of media cross-pollination is common. What is most surprising is how the indictment seems to map out roads that keep leading back to Brookings.

The latest indicted figure, Danchenko, worked at Brookings. He proved to be the key unnamed source for Christopher Steele and later admitted to the FBI that the information attributed to him was not just "unsubstantiated" but, after being reworked by Steele, was unrecognizable from the original gossip or speculation.

It appears that Danchenko was introduced to former British spy Christopher Steele by Brookings employee Fiona Hill. If that name seems familiar, Hill secured a position on President Trump's National Security Council and later became a key witness against him in the first Trump impeachment over the Ukraine scandal.

Steele also testified in London that his friend and then Brookings President Strobe Talbott was involved in briefings and inquiries on the development of the dossier. Talbott is also a former Clinton administration diplomat and Clinton friend who served in a high-ranking position under Hillary Clinton. (Another figure, Cody Shearer, who has been mentioned in accounts developing and spreading his own collusion claims, was the brother of Talbott's late wife).

When Steele was called to the State Department for a briefing on his dossier, Talbot sat next to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who is currently at Brookings. The role of figures at Brookings in the dossier is still developing but all roads seem to lead back to the think tank.

Even when it became clear that false statements made in the secret FISA applications targeted Trump associate Carter Page, the secret court selected David Kris, who wrote for Brookings' LawFare despite his prior denial that the FBI misled the court and criticism of Trump).

Brookings has long been viewed as effectively the research arm for Democratic figures and liberal causes. Yet, even in the Baconesque world of Washington insiders, it is rare to see a think tank connected on so many levels to a criminal investigation.

posted by Ace at 12:00 PM

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