A longtime Democratic operative testified he fabricated the sourcing behind a claim about Trump’s 2016 campaign that ended up in British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier.
Charles Dolan, an ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton who spent many years doing work with Russian officials and businesses, testified Thursday about his business relationship with Igor Danchenko — the main source for Steele’s anti-Trump dossier. Danchenko has been charged with five false statements, including one related to allegedly concealing from the FBI his August 2016 email exchange with Dolan about information that Danchenko then passed along to Steele and which ended up in the dossier.
Dolan confessed Thursday he made up the sourcing for a claim that made it into the dossier and that he had actually gotten the tidbit not from an insider acquaintance of his but from watching TV. The Russian had sent Dolan an August 2016 email telling him he was “working on a related project against Trump” and asked the Clinton-allied businessman for “any rumor, thought, or allegation” on Paul Manafort’s departure as Trump’s campaign manager.
FBI ANALYST SAYS SPECIAL COUNSEL THREATENED TO INVESTIGATE HIM IN ‘SCARY’ MEETING
Dolan replied, “Let me dig around on Manafort,” and emailed Danchenko the next day to claim that “I had a drink with a GOP friend of mine” who provided alleged insight into Manafort leaving the campaign. Allegations that were similarly sourced and which closely echoed Dolan’s email appeared in one of the Steele reports dated just two days later.
Dolan testified Thursday that he had not actually talked to any Republican friend about the information he sent to Danchenko. “I actually got it off of cable news,” Dolan said. He later added that “I was trying to throw him a bone because he was helping me.”
Dolan also testified Thursday the information in the email he had sent to Danchenko and the information in the Steele dossier were “substantially similar.”
Danchenko, who had been introduced to Dolan through future Trump National Security Council member and Ukraine impeachment star witness Fiona Hill, was working with Dolan to help prepare for an October 2016 conference in Moscow, but was separately working for Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence, in the production of the dossier.
Some of Dolan’s business records from KGlobal, a consultancy firm he worked for at the time that did business in Russia, were entered as evidence showing Dolan and Danchenko talking business. Durham said in prior court filings that Dolan’s “role as a contributor of information to the Company Reports was highly relevant” because Dolan “maintained pre-existing and ongoing relationships with numerous persons named” in the dossier, including one of Danchenko’s “Russian sub-sources,” his friend Olga Galkina.
DURHAM WITNESS: FBI OFFERED TRUMP DOSSIER SOURCE $1M FOR PROOF OF CLAIMS
Durham has used court filings to point to comments made by Dolan in 2016 and 2017 suggesting he suspected Danchenko was connected to Russian intelligence, and had said Dolan would be willing to testify to this in court, but the judge didn’t allow it.
Dolan testified Thursday that he called Danchenko the day the dossier was published because he was “curious to see if he knew where this came from.”
Danchenko allegedly told Dolan that “he wasn’t sure” about the dossier and said that “he would check and get back to me” but never did. Danchenko’s lawyers revealed that Durham’s team named Dolan a “subject” in the special counsel investigation during an August 2021 meeting.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The special counsel’s team has said Danchenko never told the FBI that he was in Moscow with Dolan in June 2016, despite that time frame being the source of the salacious Ritz Carlton allegations that ended up in the dossier, and argued that if Danchenko had been honest, the FBI would’ve likely interviewed Dolan much sooner.
Durham’s indictment also says Danchenko lied to the FBI about the existence of a phone call he claims he received from Belarus-born U.S. businessman Sergei Millian, 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.
