Durham’s work seems to betray a belief that the FBI got played by the Clinton campaign to investigate the Trump team.
Google Alert – fbi and trump
Day: November 6, 2021
Igor Danchenko – GS
Post Link – 8:41 AM 11/6/2021 – Very strange, “voluntary” arrest of Igor Danchenko:
US Authorities Did Not Seek To Detain Danchenko, FBI Arrested Him After Press Leak – UrduPoint https://t.co/MbDdTFxKA3
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) November 6, 2021
from Michael Novakhov on Inoreader
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Michael_Novakhov shared this story from  Voice of America.
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WASHINGTON xe2x80x94xc2xa0
A Russian analyst who provided information for a dossier of research used during the Trump-Russia investigation has been arrested by U.S. authorities as part of an ongoing special counsel investigation, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Igor Danchenko is the third person, and second in a two-month span, to face charges in special counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the Russia investigation.
Danchenko functioned as a source for Christopher Steele, a former British spy who was paid by Democrats to examine ties between Russia and Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. The research he compiled was provided to the FBI and used by federal authorities as they applied for and received surveillance warrants targeting a former Trump campaign aide aide.
Both the dossier and the Durham probe are politically charged. Trump’s Justice Department appointed Durham as Trump claimed the investigation of campaign ties to Russia was a witch hunt and pointed to the dossier, some of which remains uncorroborated or has been discredited, as evidence of a tainted probe driven by Democrats.
But the dossier had no role in the launching of the Trump-Russia investigation and special counsel Robert Mueller ultimately found questionable ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, but not sufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges. Democrats have lambasted the Durham probe as politically motivated, but the Biden administration has not stopped it.
The Justice Department’s inspector general has faulted the FBI and the Justice Department for their handling of the dossier. Danchenko xe2x80x94 who was not identified by name in the watchdog report xe2x80x94 had revealed to FBI investigators during a 2017 interview about the dossier’s origins and veracity xe2x80x94 “potentially serious problems with Steele’s descriptions of information in his reports.”
But those qualms from Danchenko were omitted from the final three surveillance applications, making the dossier appear more credible than even one of its own sources thought it was, according to the report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Danchenko, who previously worked for the Brookings Institution, has himself suggested that the information he offered to Steele was not meant to be portrayed as indisputable fact.
“Even raw intelligence from credible sources, I take it with a grain of salt,” Danchenko said in an interview with The New York Times last year. “Who knows, what if it’s not particularly accurate? Is it just a rumor or is there more to it?”
It was not immediately clear what charges Danchenko might face. But it would be the third criminal action brought by Durham, following the September indictment of Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer accused of making a false statement to the FBI during a 2016 meeting, and a guilty plea last year from an FBI lawyer who admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of the Trump aide, Carter Page.
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Michael_Novakhov shared this story . |
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Mr. Simpson loved holding court with reporters, regaling them with war stories and presenting himself as a journalistic wise man. At a conference of investigative journalists in 2016, he said he and Mr. Fritsch had started Fusion to continue their work as reporters who righted wrongs.
xe2x80x9cI like to call it journalism for rent,xe2x80x9d he said.
Fusion GPS, like its competitors, belonged to a wider web of enablers xe2x80x94 lawyers, public relations executives and xe2x80x9ccrisis managementxe2x80x9d consultants xe2x80x94 who serve the wealthy, the powerful and the controversial. For their part, private intelligence firms take on jobs that others donxe2x80x99t know how to do or donxe2x80x99t want to get caught doing.
Information gathered by private investigators is often laundered through public relations firms, which then shop the material to journalists. Jules Kroll, who created the modern-day private intelligence industry in the 1970s, broke that mold by leaking information directly to reporters. Mr. Simpson took it a step further. He sold Fusion GPS to clients by emphasizing his connections at major media outlets and assured journalists that he was really still one of them.
xe2x80x9cPeople who have never been a reporter donxe2x80x99t understand the challenges of printing what you know, right, because you canxe2x80x99t just say what you know xe2x80x94 you have to say how you know, and you have to prove it,xe2x80x9d Mr. Simpson remarked at the 2016 conference. xe2x80x9cWhen youxe2x80x99re a spy, you really donxe2x80x99t have to get into a lot of that stuff.xe2x80x9d
Fusion GPS also mined a field that other private intelligence firms avoided xe2x80x94 political opposition research. And when Mr. Trump emerged in 2016 as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, lawyers for Hillary Clintonxe2x80x99s campaign hired Fusion to dig into ties between Mr. Trump and Russia.
In the fall of 2016, Fusion GPS invited selected reporters from The Times, The New Yorker and other news organizations to meet Mr. Steele in Washington and receive briefings on what he had uncovered about the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. As is often the case in the world of private intelligence, the meetings came with a catch: If news organizations wrote about the dossier, they had to agree not to disclose that Fusion GPS and the former British agent were the sources of the material.
Mr. Steele was described to journalists as having played a pivotal role in breaking huge cases, including the 2006 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. agent, and the F.B.I.xe2x80x99s investigation into bribery at FIFA, soccerxe2x80x99s governing body. And when speaking about Mr. Trump and Russia, he came across as calm, understated and confident, according to reporters who attended the meetings.
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