ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — A current FBI special agent and a former bureau analyst who both served on Robert Mueller’s team testified that the special counsel’s office declined to investigate and never interviewed Charles Dolan, the Clinton-allied business associate of the main source for Christopher Steele, despite their urging.
Supervisory special agent Amy Anderson and former FBI intelligence analyst Brittany Hertzog both testified Friday that, as members of Mueller’s team who were specifically tasked with scrutinizing the allegations within the Trump dossier, they believed the FBI should interview and further investigate Dolan, a longtime ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, partly due to his business connections with Igor Danchenko, a Russian national whom the bureau had made a paid informant. Danchenko has been charged by special counsel John Durham with lying to the FBI about his sourcing for the Democratic-funded dossier.
CLINTON ALLY DOLLAN LIED ABOUT SOURCING FOR TRUMP DOSSIER CLAIM
The Mueller team members also testified that they were concerned about Dolan’s links to Danchenko’s friend Olga Galkina, who had been identified as a sub-source for Danchenko related to the dossier, although she denies being such a source. Danchenko introduced Dolan and Galkina in 2016.
Dolan had spent many years, including 2016, doing business in Russia and with the Russian government. Anderson and Hertzog said they were also concerned about Dolan’s potential dossier links combined with the fact that he had a history of working closely with Russian officials, most notably Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Despite Dolan’s potential dossier links through Danchenko and Galkina, as well as his associations with Russian officials, Anderson and Hertzog said their efforts to investigate Dolan were shut down.
Anderson, a special agent with the FBI since 2012 who is currently an FBI assistant legal attache in Ottawa, said she worked on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team and then the subsequent Mueller team from April 2017 to January 2018. She said her main career focus has been on Russian counterintelligence and that she was “working the dossier in particular” during her time on the Mueller investigation.
She said she became aware of Danchenko through his handling agent, Kevin Helson, and FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten, who had interviewed the Steele source in January 2017, and said she became aware of Galkina through database checks by Hertzog.
“I wanted to look into him,” Anderson said of Dolan upon learning of his connections to Danchenko and Galkina. She said Auten and Hertzog were in agreement.
After meeting with and interviewing Galkina in Cyprus in August 2017, Anderson said she spoke with Auten and prepared an electronic communication in a request to open an investigation into Dolan.
“It sat for approximately three to four weeks,” Anderson testified during questioning, adding that she was subsequently told it would not be opened by her superior at the time, supervisory special agent Joe Nelson.
Anderson said she deleted her memo requesting a Dolan investigation from the FBI’s Sentinel system after she was told such an inquiry would not be happening.
The FBI agent also described the meeting with Galkina in Cyprus, claiming that Danchenko’s friend “seemed mostly forthcoming” but that “she was hesitant in telling us about Mr. Dolan” and that “she did not want to speak about him.”
During a car ride toward the end of the Cyprus trip, Anderson said she asked Galkina directly about whether Dolan was linked to the dossier and described Galkina’s response: “She was slightly hesitant. … She asked me to remove my sunglasses and to look me directly in the eye” before talking about Dolan.
The defense team objected to this line of questioning and Judge Anthony Trenga stopped it from going further.
Anderson said an investigation into Dolan could have yielded important information about the dossier and would have allowed the FBI to conduct interviews and issue subpoenas.
During questioning by defense lawyer Danny Onorato, Anderson acknowledged that Danchenko brokered the FBI’s meeting with Galkina and that “some” of the information she put in her proposed investigation launch document had come from Danchenko.
Hertzog, a former Russian counterintelligence analyst who now works for Nasdaq, joined the Mueller team in about July 2017 at Auten’s request and also said Auten and Anderson shared her concerns about Dolan but that there was disagreement within the Mueller team and that some special counsel members did not want to investigate Dolan.
Hertzog said her primary focus had been on Galkina, and she testified that she was concerned about the possible national security threat posed by Dolan’s connections to alleged sources and sub-sources for the dossier.
The former FBI analyst said she put together a report on Galkina that referenced Dolan and that she filed the electronic communication to the FBI’s Sentinel system. Hertzog said she “serialized” it in three case files in an effort to get it reviewed by the Washington Field Office, FBI Headquarters, and the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General.
Hertzog testified that she had been instructed not to take further action on the Dolan-Danchenko link but that she wanted higher-ups to see the Galkina information because of what she saw as an important Dolan connection.
Durham said Dolan and Galkina “discussed their political views and their support for Hillary Clinton.” Dolan allegedly gifted Galkina an autobiography of Hillary Clinton, which he inscribed with a message, “To my good friend [Olga], A Great Democrat.” In July 2016, Galkina allegedly wrote to Dolan, “Tell her please [Clinton] has a big fan in” Russia.
Durham said Galkina sent a message to another Russian in August 2016 describing Dolan as an “adviser” to Clinton and claimed in September 2016 that Dolan would “take me to the State Department if Hillary wins.” The day before the November 2016 election, Galkina wrote to Dolan, “As a big Hillary fan, I wish her and all her supporters to have a Victory day.”
Galkina denies being a dossier source and said last year that “I never gave my permission to Mr. Danchenko to publish (or disclose to a third party) any part of our private discussions.”
On Thursday, Dolan testified that he fabricated the sourcing behind a claim about Trump’s 2016 campaign that ended up in Steele’s dossier.
Dolan had worked as a senior vice president at the D.C.-based Kglobal PR firm since February 2014, and before that, he had worked at Ketchum, another PR firm. Foreign Agents Registration Act filings from November 2011 and May 2012 show that Dolan was paid $78,000 and $79,000 for “out-of-pocket expenses” while working on behalf of the Russian Federation and Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom.
Durham previously said the Clinton-allied Dolan “interacted with senior Russian Federation leadership whose names would later appear in” the dossier, and also “maintained relationships with” Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. and the head of the Russian Embassy’s Economic Section in Washington, D.C., “both of whom also would later appear by name” in the dossier.
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Mueller claimed in his July 2019 congressional testimony that “I am unable to address … matters related to the so-called ‘Steele Dossier,'” saying those matters were the “subject of ongoing review by the Department [of Justice],” despite testimony Friday that FBI employees on his team did dossier-related work. When asked whether the dossier was part of a Russian disinformation campaign, Mueller said that “that part of the building of the case predated me by at least 10 months.”
Mueller claimed that “with regard to the Steele [dossier] — that’s beyond my purview.”
