Alleged second Steele dossier on Trump emerges in British media as John Durham closes in
A report by the Telegraph
This adds a new wrinkle to what the public has been told about Steele, a former MI6 agent whose first dossier on Trump has been largely discredited, weeks after it was reported that special counsel John Durham used a subpoena to obtain documents a Washington, D.C., think tank related to its employment of a Russian researcher who served as a main source for Steele in his research about Trump.
It also follows the Treasury Department announcing sanctions against Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate of 2016 Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, assessing he is a Russian intelligence services agent who provided Kremlin spies with “sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy” during the 2016 presidential race.
After special counsel Robert Mueller was unable to establish criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, Trump and his allies used this to argue there was "no collusion," but some have argued that the new revelations about Kilimnik are evidence to the contrary.
The FBI declined to comment on the report to the Washington Examiner. Orbis retweeted a statement given to Scott Stedman of Forensic News. “We can categorically state that there is no ‘second dossier,'" Orbis said. "Media reports may be referring to our willing co-operation with the Mueller inquiry which is a matter of public record."
The original dossier, a 35-page collection of reports about Trump's ties to Russia written between June and December 2016, contained allegations of the Trump team coordinating with the Kremlin and a salacious claim that the Russians had a video of Trump with prostitutes urinating on a bed in a Moscow hotel room in 2013.
The research was compiled for Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm, and Steele was paid with money from Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The reports were shared with government officials as well as media outlets, and, in January 2017, BuzzFeed published the dossier. Trump called it "bogus" while claiming the FBI was "tainted."
Mueller's report, released in April 2019, undercut elements of Steele's reporting. And a report released by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in December of that year criticized the FBI for its reliance on the dossier to obtain warrants for wiretapping onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. It revealed that the FBI interviewed Steele's primary Moscow-based source, beginning in January 2017, who "raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting."
Despite this, Steele's company, Orbis Business Intelligence, argued that "much of the dossier has been proven” since 2017. “We stand by the integrity and quality of our work," Orbis added.
The new report by the Telegraph, a national British daily newspaper, claimed that Steele continuing to send his raw intelligence to the FBI "appears to give credibility to his original dossier" and states that the original dossier sparked the Mueller investigation, appearing to clash with a 2018 memo from House Intelligence Committee Democrats that stated the dossier did not reach the FBI's counterintelligence team at FBI headquarters investigating Russia until mid-September of 2016.
Mueller, a former FBI director, was appointed special counsel in May 2017 after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. The FBI investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia that was wrapped into Mueller's effort began in July 2016 following a tip to U.S. authorities by an Australian diplomat who said Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told him that Russia had political “dirt” on Clinton.
This second dossier is said to contain more allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election linked to Trump and his associates, "references claims regarding the existence of further sex tapes," and relies on "separate sources to those who supplied information for the first reports."
The report cited an FBI interview with Steele tied to the Mueller investigation, a redacted transcript of which was released in November, in which he said his primary "sub-source" was no longer active and was replaced by another "main agent network is up and running and is now starting to get good information." The Telegraph reported that it "understands this agent, referred to by Mr Steele in his interview with the FBI, supplied information for the second dossier."
It comes less than a month after the New York Times reported Durham, who is investigating misconduct during the Russia investigation, obtained records from the left-leaning Brookings Institution related to Igor Danchenko, who worked for the organization from 2005 to 2010 as a Russia researcher but is best known as being the main source for Steele's first dossier.
The news report further said Durham “has also asked questions that suggested a focus on skepticism about how the FBI approached issues that might have undermined the dossier’s credibility as a basis for wiretap applications” and that Durham has been asking why the FBI did not tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that Danchenko “had once been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation."
Danchenko defended the years he worked at the Brookings Institution while welcoming scrutiny of his own work.
"While I see this news of the Brookings angle of Durham inquiry as an attack on the integrity of the Brookings Institution, I can only welcome the review of my file,” he told the Washington Examiner. “There is no ‘there there' but a lot of groundbreaking research and analysis. Wish I also had an opportunity to review my file. It’s a wonderful chapter in my long career."
Adopting oblique language, the Telegraph reported that intelligence gathered by Steele for his second dossier is "understood to include further details of Mr Manafort’s alleged Russian contacts."
Manafort, a GOP lobbyist who also spent years working in Ukraine, was the chairman of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign until he resigned in August 2016 and was convicted of a host of crimes arising from Mueller’s investigation, although, like the others, none of these convictions involved a conspiracy with the Russians. Manafort was released from prison last May amid the coronavirus pandemic, and Trump issued him a pardon just before Christmas.
A Senate Intelligence Committee report, released in August, criticized Manafort's close relationships with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and with Kilimnik, about whom Mueller said, “The FBI assesses to have ties to Russian intelligence.”
The FBI is offering a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to Kilimnik’s arrest.
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