Special Counsel John Durham‘s most recent indictment of Igor Danchenko, who relayed false information to former British spy Christopher Steele, reveals that Clinton ally Charles H. Dolan provided much of the Steele dossier‘s slanderous material, the New York Post reported.
The indictment labels Charles H. Dolan Jr. only as “PR-Executive 1,” but multiple sources have confirmed his identity.
Durham charged Danchenko with five felonies, including lying to the FBI in 2017 about his having talked to Dolan about the Russian collusion narrative
“Danchenko stated falsely that he had never communicated with a particular U.S.-based individual—who was a long-time participant in Democratic Party politics and was then an executive at a U.S. public relations firm (“PR Executive-l”)— about any allegations contained in the Company Report [Steele dossier and information on Trump’s alleged Russian collusion].”
Dolan, who was vice president at KGlobal, and Danchenko had discussed “potential business collaboration,” as well as the project to destroy Trump’s presidential campaign.
The indictment shows that Dolan, a longstanding operative for Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, served as the primary source for information about Paul Manafort, who resigned from his position as then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign chairman in August 2016.
Durham’s indictment does not consider Dolan’s contributions as secondary.
“[Dolan’s] role as a contributor of information to the Company Reports was
highly relevant and material to the FBI’s evaluation of those reports because” he had “pre-existing and ongoing relationships with numerous persons named or described in
the Company Reports, including one of Danchenko’s Russian sub-sources.”
Dolan introduced Danchenko to the Russian sources who provided the false information about Trump, which later appeared in the Steele dossier that sparked Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion investigation.
Danchenko met the Russian sources at “events in Moscow organized by [Dolan].”
Dolan had longstanding connections with Russians because he “spent much of his
career interacting with Eurasian clients with a particular focus on Russia,” Durham’s indictment said.
“For example, from in or about 2006 through in or about 2014, the Russian Federation retained PR Executive-1 and his then employer to handle global public relations for the Russian government and a state-owned energy company,” the indictment continued.
The information that Danchenko received from these sources “mirrored and/or reflected information that PR Executive-1 [Dolan] himself also had received through his own interactions with Russian nationals.”
This unlikely coincidence indicates that Dolan planted the anti-Trump information with the Russian sources, who then communicated it to Danchenko, who then gave it to Steele, who was hired by Clinton-funded Fusion GPS.
These chains helped separate the Clinton campaign from direct involvement in the attempt to label Trump a Russian agent or Putin stooge.
Dolan has a history with Democratic politics—and with the Clintons in particular.
He founded the Democratic Governors Association in 1983, served on Bill Clinton’s presidential exploratory committee, chaired his presidential campaign in Virginia in both 1992 and 1996, and then was “an advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential campaign.”
“Moreover, beginning in or about 1997, President Clinton appointed PR Executive-1 to two four-year terms on an advisory commission at the U.S. State Department,” the indictment stated. “With respect to the 2016 Clinton Campaign, PR Executive-1 actively campaigned and participated in calls and events as a volunteer on behalf of Hillary Clinton.”
Durham described these connections as a cause to inquire about Dolan’s “reliability, motivations, and potential bias as a source of information for the Company Reports.”