ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — A member of the FBI’s Human Intelligence Validation Unit suggested that Igor Danchenko may have been part of Russian intelligence services after the main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited anti-Trump dossier was made a paid informant for the bureau, according to court testimony.
Special counsel John Durham highlighted on Thursday how Kevin Helson, the handling agent for Danchenko, apparently did not do his due diligence in looking into the Russian analyst’s background before signing him up as a confidential human source. Danchenko was on the FBI’s payroll from March 2017 to October 2020 before he was charged in November 2021 with five counts of making false statements to the bureau. He has pleaded not guilty.
Durham cited a female employee of the FBI’s validation unit, who he said had spent 19 years as an Army counterintelligence officer stationed in Europe. “This is a real problem,” the special counsel said in characterizing her stance on Danchenko.
Helson lamented that “she also implied that he [Danchenko] was a GRU officer.” GRU is shorthand for the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, a Russian intelligence agency. Helson claimed that “there is nothing” that “would indicate that he was a Russian intelligence officer. Period.”
Durham highlighted the female FBI employee’s credentials, but Helson said that her having been a U.S. military counterintelligence analyst in Europe for two decades does not mean she would have the ability to identify a Russian intelligence officer in the United States.
The special counsel asked whether Helson or any of the Crossfire Hurricane team members looking at the dossier ever attempted to resolve the issues with the botched counterintelligence case, but Helson said, “No.”
Durham got Helson to admit that he submitted paperwork in early 2017 on Danchenko which wrongly stated that there was no derogatory information available on the Steele dossier source. In reality, it has been revealed that Danchenko was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation for being a potential national security threat from 2009 to 2011. The inquiry unearthed links between the defendant and Russian intelligence officers.
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The special counsel asked Helson if it was untrue to claim that there was no derogatory information on Danchenko, to which the FBI agent responded in the affirmative and cited the counterintelligence investigation previously opened on Danchenko.
“There was a case on him … It was a counterintelligence case … An espionage case,” Helson said, adding, “I couldn’t see it in the search” when he searched FBI databases for derogatory information on Danchenko.
Helson claimed he did not know about the existence of the prior counterintelligence investigation at the time.
“No,” the FBI agent said when Durham asked if Helson ever corrected his claim that there was no derogatory information on Danchenko even after he found out about the existence of the prior counterintelligence investigation.
Helson said he ended up speaking to the case agent for the prior counterintelligence investigation, Laura Pino. FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten was apparently an intelligence analyst in the prior counterintelligence investigation into Danchenko, according to testimony on Thursday. Auten, who testified during the trial on Tuesday and Wednesday, was one of the FBI agents who interviewed Danchenko in January 2017. Auten said neither Danchenko nor Steele ever provided corroborating information for the dossier, even though the FBI had offered the former MI6 agent up to $1 million if he could back up his claims, which he apparently could not.
According to Durham, Danchenko anonymously sourced a fabricated claim about Trump 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort to Charles Dolan, a Clinton ally who spent years, including 2016, doing work for Russian businesses and the Russian government.
Durham’s indictment also says Danchenko lied to the FBI about a phone call he claims he received from Sergei Millian, a Belarus-born U.S. citizen and businessman whom the Steele source had said told him about a conspiracy of cooperation between former President Donald Trump and the Russians — which the special counsel says is false.
The FBI validation unit told Helson he needed to read the counterintelligence case file on Danchenko. Helson testified Thursday that he did not have access to the file, but Durham said he could have gained access to it if he had wanted. Durham said there was a firsthand witness to Danchenko’s alleged wrongdoing which had sparked the old investigation, and Helson agreed, though he argued another witness contradicted the claims.
Helson said he learned of the existence of the prior counterintelligence investigation within 60 days after opening Danchenko as a paid informant, and he claimed it was his understanding that the counterintelligence investigation should not have been opened as it had been. The FBI validation unit had urged Helson to take a series of steps to look into potential problems with Danchenko, but the FBI agent took little action to do so.
The unit suggested determining if there was fraud related to Danchenko’s immigration status or his visa, looking into whether a foreign government had ever tasked Danchenko with anything, figuring out Danchenko’s motives and allegiances, giving the Russian a polygraph, and investigating whether the FBI was not the primary intended audience for the reports Danchenko was giving to the bureau. Helson testified he didn’t do any of those things.
The validation unit also recommended determining the purposes of Danchenko’s travel and to monitor his travel to see if he did what he said he did. Helson indicated he implemented some of these recommendations but did not look back historically at Danchenko’s travel in a meaningful way. There was also a recommendation to reduce Danchenko’s reliance on open-source information, and Helson said that was implemented somewhat, testifying that 40% to 50% of what Danchenko had been providing to the FBI had been open-source, but he claimed that was necessary context for the information.
The FBI agent testified that he sent texts complaining about the FBI validation unit’s report and even drafted a rebuttal to it. Helson claimed that despite the issues raised by the FBI unit, it had still recommended that Danchenko be “operationalized.”
An FBI summary of the Danchenko counterintelligence investigation was released by then-Attorney General William Barr in 2020, showing that proposed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act targeting of Danchenko was withdrawn in 2010 after the bureau concluded the future Steele source was no longer in the country, which was incorrect, according to Durham.
The bureau’s 2020 summary said an FBI field office initiated a request for FISA surveillance in July 2010, and it was routed to DOJ in August of that year. The FBI contended that “investigators subsequently learned” that Danchenko “departed the United States in September 2010” and the bureau further determined that Danchenko’s “visa was not renewed.”
The FBI counterintelligence summary said the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team investigating claims of Trump-Russia collusion identified Danchenko as Steele’s main source and also became aware of the prior counterintelligence investigation into him in December 2016.
The bureau eventually concluded that Danchenko “(1) had been identified as an associate of two FBI counterintelligence subjects and (2) had previous contact with the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers.”
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Helson testified Thursday that the dossier source went on to become a key part of the FBI’s efforts to combat Russian malign influence in the U.S., and, after Danchenko was publicly identified as Steele’s main source in the summer of 2016, Helson sought to reward Danchenko lucratively.
The FBI agent made an October 2020 request to pay Danchenko a lump sum of $346,000. Helson’s testimony revealed that would have brought the total amount the Russian lawyer and analyst had been paid by the bureau over a few years up to a total of $546,000. The lump-sum payment request was denied.
Helson testified Thursday that he had written in 2020 that, from 2017 through that time, Danchenko had provided assistance in 25 ongoing FBI investigations and contributed to at least 40 intelligence reports. The FBI agent testified that these investigations and reports largely or entirely to combating Russian malign influence.
