The Trial of Igor Danchenko: Day Three
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During the first two days of the trial, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten was on the stand. It was brutal for him, as both Special Counsel John H. Durham for the Prosecution and Mr. Danny Onorato for the Defense treated Auten as a hostile witness.
On the third day of the trial, long time Democrat operative, Clinton Crony, Russian government connected, and DC Swamp figure Chuck Dolan is on the stand first, followed by Danchenko’s handler at the FBI, Special Agent Kevin Helson.
As the day progresses, we learn that BOTH are under investigation, that Danchenko was paid well and provided a lot of information while a CHS, that the FBI tried to turn Danchenko against Steele, and that there's circumstantial evidence that perhaps Danchenko really did get a phone call and really did plan a meeting with Millian in New York.
For Day Three, first up will be Democrat Party apparatchik and Clinton Crony Charles “Chuck” Halliday Dolan Jr will take the stand. Followed by Danchenko’s handler Special Agent Helson.
Assistant Special Counsel Michael Keilty will be questioning Dolan. After a brief introduction and review of his education, Dolan explains his work history. Which is important and ought to have been important to the Crossfire Hurricane team. I want you to see, in Dolan’s own words, how deep he is in Democrat politics and how connected he is to Russia.
Dolan testifies that he worked on EVERY Democrat Presidential Campaign except Obama’s (because he was working on Clinton’s!). EVERY would include 2016, btw.
He also testifies that as part of his work for Ketchum and KGlobal, he meets “regularly” with officials of the Russian government.
THERE is your Russian Collusion.
Now time for Keilty to paint the connection from Dolan to Danchenko and others.
Sorry, gonna include a pic. Scroll past if needed .
Background on Galkina here.
Danchenko, Dolan, and Galkina meeting in March 2016 in Washington, D.C.
Gregg Hartley, who for over a decade as Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of Cassidy & Associates. The same Cassidy & Associates where Dolan was formerly employed.
Swamp.
Orbis Business Intelligence. Christopher Steele’s company.
Keilty presents Dolan with Exhibit 702, an email from Danchenko to Dolan, dated April 29th, 2016. Keilty has Dolan read it into the record and for the jury.
Dolan testifies that the letter referenced in the email detailed KGlobal’s services. He states that he never met with Steele or Burrows, and the Orbis and KGlobal never established a business relationship.
Keilty now presents Dolan with Exhibit 703, another email from Danchenko to Dolan, also dated April 29th, 2016. Gregg Hartley is cc’d on the email.
There is an attachment to the email, an Orbis document prepared by Danchenko. The attachment is described by Dolan as an,
“intelligence briefing note on Kompromat Nadzor in the Russian banking sector.”
Dolan says he read the email and attachment, but wasn’t quite sure what it was all about.
Dolan continued communicating with Danchenko during the Spring of 2016, specifically in regards to the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and a conference in Moscow. Dolan “suggested to the organizer that Mr. Danchenko could be useful to us on this.” He also stayed in touch with Galkina, as they were planning for him to travel to Cyprus to meet with her and to make a presentation to her boss. KGlobal and service.com would eventually sign a contract to work together.
Dolan was asked to get involved in the YPO by Steve Kupka, a D.C. based lawyer and partner at King & Spalding.
Kupka wanted to organize a conference in Moscow for October 2016 called ‘Inside The Kremlin.’ And so, he reached out to Dolan, the guy with tons of experience and connections in Russia. Specifically of use, connections with the Russian government.
Notice that Dolan has stated that Danchenko “speaks excellent English” (important in order to head off an argument that Danchenko did not understand the immunity agreement or the questions the FBI asked him) and that they communicated via “emails, phone calls” and in person over a meal. He never mentions any apps.
From pages 11 and 12 of the indictment of Igor Danckenko:
Business-1 = XBT Holdings/Service.com
Country-1 = Russia
PR Firm-1 = KGlobal
PR Executive-1 = Dolan
Russian Sub-Source-1 = Galkina
Galkina views Hillary Clinton very, VERY favorably.
Keilty brings up exhibit 712A, which is an email from Danchenko to Dolan dated August 19th, 2016. If you read my article on Day Two of this trial, or have previously researched Spygate, you are familiar with this email.
Keilty has the email displayed on a screen for the jury and has Dolan read it.
Dolan was involved in the 2016 Clinton Campaign, btw.
Keilty has Dolan read his own reply to Danchenko’s email.
And then he has him read another reply, which Dolan sent the following day on the 20th.
And now Keilty gets Dolan to admit that he lied to Danchenko in this email.
They really aren’t using their best people for this work, are they?
Assuming Dolan is telling the truth about this, that he got this info, which ended up in the dossier, off the tv and told Danchenko it was from an insider… I mean, how lame is that?
This dossier should have never gotten anywhere except a trashcan. This entire fraud succeeded only because these scumbags that assembled it had willing and/or gullible, unwitting accomplices in the FBI, the corporate media, and in both political parties. I wish I could say it was just ineptitude on the FBI’s part, but I think we all know it was much worse than that.
Keilty now brings up the POLITOCO article that is linked in the email.
Here is Danchenko’s reply.
And now Keilty begins asking Dolan about the Steele Dossier.
Keilty now puts up this report, 95, from the Dossier and Dolan’s email to Danchenko side by side on a screen for the jury to see. He has Dolan read line by line and draws the connections between the email and the dossier report that appeared just two days later.
He then brings up the October 2016 YPO conference in Moscow. Dolan was there. Danchenko was there. Russian government officials were there. After the conference, Danchenko and Dolan bother returned to the US, where they also “had occasion to meet.”
Mmhmm, right.
Heh. Not buying that at all.
Keilty now shows the Buzzfeed article from January 10th, 2017, which contains the Steel Dossier. Dolan recognizes it and has read it. It is admitted into evidence.
It was not public that Danchenko was a source for the dossier, yet Dolan immediately called him after the Buzzfeed article containing the dossier was published.
Now it’s over to Mr Sears of Danchenko’s defense team to cross examine Dolan.
He starts by having Dolan confirm a bunch of things he just testified to. Redundant questions and answers, really. Until we get to this part.
Sears brings up an exhibit which contains Dolan’s interview with the Special Counsel on August 31st, 2021. At that time, he said he had missed the Manafort part if the article and dossier report.
Then he was interviewed by the Special Counsel again on September 7th, 2021.
DOLAN IS A SUBJECT OF THE SPECIAL COUNSEL’S INVESTIGATION!!
Sears is really putting the heat on Dolan. Bringing up him being pressured, bringing up his lie about meeting with a GOP friend, him not actually having inside information, etc. He goes over all the falsehoods that Keilty had just gotten Dolan to admit to. This is to impugn the witnesses testimony. To make the jury question EVERYTHING that Dolan has said. Dolan tries to minimize. Sears is asking a lot of questions.
The FBI was interested in Dolan after January 2017, though. We know from court filings that Danchenko gave the FBI lots of information on Dolan and that an investigative referral was made. Going by these next questions and answers, looks like the FBI, some part of it, perhaps the Mueller SCO (we find out later it is NOT the Mueller SCO), were doing good work.
The work we would all hope they would be doing.
And NO ONE knew. All these years, and none of us knew these steps had been taken to investigate Dolan.
Mr. Keilty now gets up for redirect.
Keilty first addresses the initial interview with Dolan by the SCO in August of 2021. During that interview, Dolan was not shown the email or the side by side with the Buzzfeed article or Steele reports. In the second interview, they did and that is when Dolan changed his tune. Keilty gets a clever question in here.
Nice and quick. Keilty doesn’t need to restore Dolan as a credible witness. He’s admitted to lying. All Keilty needs to do is establish that Danchenko got information from Dolan and that information was used in the dossier and that Danchenko lied when he told investigators that he did not talk to Dolan about specific allegations which ended up in the Steelse Dossier.
Next up is FBI Agent Kevin Helson. Danchenko’s handling agent. Some may remember Helson’s name from the Maria Butina case. He wrote the affidavit.
Durham is doing the questioning of Helson.
First they go over Helson’s education and background, history with the FBI, etc.
Helson has been with the FBI for twenty years, he works out of the Washington Field Office (WFO) and his the squad he is assigned to is focused on matters related to Russia. Here is how he describes his job.
He was not, however, assigned to Crossfire Hurricane. At any point. That is very interesting.
Helson got the assignment to handle Danchenko from the Crossfire Hurricane team, but was not brought into the team. Interesting. I’ve often wondered about parallel investigations being run during Spygate. One public, one not. This could be a sign that there was.
The first meeting that Helson had with Danchenko was at the WFO. FBI Special Agent Jason Ruehle and FBI Special Agent Steve Somma were there. It was February/March time frame. Danchenko did not have a lawyer present with him, he spoke fluent English, and this was just an introductory meeting, lasted less than an hour.
Follow up meetings were offsite. Helson was not being briefed on Crossfire Hurricane, but he would get questions from that team and pose them to Danchenko.
The exhibit containing Danchenko’s claim to having been responsible for “80 percent of the raw intelligence and half the analysis in the dossier" is shown. Helson recognizes it, but says he had the number 80% in his before seeing this message from Danchenko. He doesn’t recall exactly how he first came upon that number.
At first, the dossier and questions related to it were the priority of these meetings with Danchenko. No payment was made at the first meeting, the introductory meeting. At the next meeting, Danchenko was paid $3,000 cash or thereabouts.
Though he wasn’t aware of the immunity agreement, Helson says that as a CHS, Danchenko was obligated to not withhold information, or give false information. He was obligated to tell the truth.
I wonder if Danchenko lied to the FBI while be interviewed in districts other than the EDVA?
Durham presents Helson with a CD that is a partial recording of that first substantive meeting. It is dated March 16th, 2017. Helson recognizes it. Other matters were discussed in that meeting and only this partial recording is needed for this case. It is admitted into evidence. A dozen or so other items are placed into evidence as well: more selections from the recorded meetings and corresponding transcriptions. The jurors are given copies.
Audio from a portion of the interview is played.
Danchenko had his copy of the dossier with him during this meeting and other meetings as well. He says on the recording that he has records,
"For reference. Ah — there were communications that I'm in touch with my, you know, sources in all this."
Another portion of the recorded interview is admitted into evidence.
Helson is not aware if the Crossfire Hurricane team made any effort to get those records.
Durham plays some more audio from the March 16, 2017 meeting with Danchenko.
At that meeting, Helson had a chart of various people of interest and was asking Danchenko about them. He also asked Danchenko about the alleged phone call from Millian. Helson had many meeting with Danchenko over the course of being his handling agent. Short ones outside, which were difficult to record, and longer form conversations inside which were sometimes recorded.
Their next recorded meeting was on May 18th, 2017. By this time, Danchenko was providing information via ‘an electronic drop box.’ A portion of the recording of that meeting is played.
Danchenko boasted to the agents that he kept all sorts of records. But the records he produced to investigators relating to the dossier was pretty slim.
Agents kept probing Danchenko in regards to Millian.
Interesting answer there.
Odd that they were not informed of this prior relationship between the FBI and Millian. That’s kind of a theme here, though. Agents being kept in the dark about aspects of Crossfire Hurricane, Millian, Dolan, emails, etc. Plus, an unwillingness on the part of several agents to investigate these matters themselves.
Durham shows several emails, which we have gone over once or twice already in this series, none of which were provided to Helson by Danchenko during his time as his handling agent. Helson testifies that they would have been very useful to him if they had been provided. And not just in regards to the dossier…
More emails, which Danchenko never provided to investigators, are shown to Helson.
Durham presents Helson with the second email that Danchenko sent Millian.
Danchenko was forthcoming with other information, but NOT information related to the dossier or Millian. And he had an obligation to be. Had he been forthcoming, it would have changed the course of the investigation. Or, should have. That is basically what Helson testifies to over the course of these questions and answers.
Now, Durham has some Facebook records. He enters them into evidence.
Ah ha. So when Danchenko does want to be contacted on an app or wants someone to contact him via an app, he says so.
Lunch break.
Durham is back up with Helson on the stand following lunch. He reminds Helson and jury of the messages between Galkina and Danchenko they had been looking at before the break. Helson had never seen them before trial prep. Which means Helson had never gotten Danchenko’s Facebook records.
There is also this message.
Helson third recorded meeting with Danchenko was on June 15th, 2017. In bringing up this meeting, Durham has an interesting question for Helson.
I wonder how common it is for agents to record such meetings? I really don’t know. I would think that recording the meeting would be preferable each and every time. But Helson testifies that he memorialized the meetings with notes and stopped doing the recordings.
Helson met in person with Danchenko again in October of 2017. No recording, but he did take notes. He was tasked by Auten to, once again, raise the issue of the phone call with Millian.
Busted.
Danchenko told Helson that he never met Sergei Millian face-to-face in the… United States.
Helson met with Danchenko again on November 2nd, 2017 and again, raised the Millian question.
Defense objects to the words of Steele coming in by way of Helson repeating what Danchenko told him. Judge agrees.
Very interesting. Seems Durham is eyeing up Steele here and at the same time proving Danchenko lied to the FBI.
Now Durham brings up Dolan.
The first time that Helson brought Dolan up to Danchenko was June 15th of 2017. At the time, Helson was NOT aware of any email exchanges between Danchenko and Dolan and Danchenko did not bring them up.
Durham takes Helson through all of the emails between Danchenko and Dolan. Helson had never seen any of them until trial prep, even though Danchenko was a CHS and Helson was tasked with handling AND given the objective, by the Crossfire Hurricane team, of extracting exactly this sort of information and documentation from him.
Going back to the June 15th, 2017 meeting, Helson explains that SIA Auten and SSA Amy Anderson had asked him to inquire about Dolan. This is one of the meetings that was recorded. Durham plays an audio clip.
Interesting. Agents took note of these odd pauses in their notations for the meeting.
Danchenko met Dolan on January 1st, 2017 at 12:19pm in Tuckahoe Park.
New Year’s Day. He took a picture of Dolan. And the agents failed to get a copy of this photo? Unbelievable!
Durham knows the details, so perhaps he has it. I’d bet that he does.
This would have been just a little over a week before the Buzzfeed article came out and Dolan called Danchenko the day after that article dropped. I’d say this meeting was significant.
Durham asks Helson some questions about Galkina and his responses are he doesn’t recall or he would have liked to have known or understood that. Next interesting tidbit is this.
Agreed. Trump is not normal, haha!
Durham continues asking Helson about various exhibits and pieces of information that Danchenko never told him about and that Crossfire Hurricane/Mueller SCO did not pass on to him. Over and over again, Helson says he was not aware of these pieces of information and that they would have been beneficial in some way to his handling of Danchenko.
Screenshots of conversations about Dolan’s business pitch to Galkina are moved into evidence, followed by a report with Helson made. ID = Igor Danchenko.
Durham admits another audio recording along with transcript into evidence.
Durham moves a photo into evidence and puts it up on a monitor. Helson has never seen it before. It is from Danchenko’s Facebook account, dated June 14th, 2016. Another consequential piece of evidence.
Dolan’s dubious connections.
Durham introduces another audio clip and transcript into evidence, plays it for the jury.
Stunning.
Did Helson get played by Danchenko? The Crossfire Hurricane/Mueller team? By himself? All three?
Mr. Sears is up for cross examination of Helson.
Sears starts off by minimizing Danchenko’s answers to Helson.
Example:
Turns, Helson was asked to join the Crossfire Hurricane team and declined.
This next question may prove very impactful on the jury.
See, if Millian had agreed to testify in this case, he could have totally shut down this argument. Millian could have gotten on the stand and testified that he never called Danchenko on ANY phone or using ANY app. He could have provided evidence and testimony in that regard. But since Millian fears he would be arrested if he returned to the US, and for his safety (his words), defense has this argument available to them. And it is a good one.
Anyway…
Sears brings up a document that Helson wrote in regards to Danchenko being a CHS.
WHAT?!?!?! Patriotism to the United States!
Sears brings up a time that Danchenko demanded more money for his information and was erratic during a meeting with Helson. Then we learn that Helson was interviewed by the OIG.
That’s not surprising, but I do wonder, given what we have learned so far, if he is under investigation in some way. Perhaps similar to Auten.
Crossfire Hurricane team never asked for basic access to Danchenko’s accounts or communications.
Helson advised Danchenko to scrub his phone of anything that could lead back to Steele. I get why he would be advised to do that, but why not memorialize that information before deleting it?
Sears brings up, and Helson confirms, that Danchenko did end up giving him a lot information about Dolan. He also says more than once, and Helson confirms, that Danchenko had never seen the Steel Dossier until it showed up in Buzzfeed. Well, that’s because Steele assembled, not Danchenko. Doesn’t change the fact that Danchenko, in his own words, provided “80'% of the raw intelligence and 50% of the analysis” for the dossier.
Very interesting snippet here.
FBI were trying to flip, or did flip, Danchenko against Steele! And Danchenko, by October 2017, was telling his handler that he had NEVER met Millian!
That’s pretty amazing. Two more very interesting revelations from this trial that major media, on both sides, have neglected to even report.
To close, Sears goes over Danchenko’s statements to Helson in regards to Dolan and Galkina, characterizing them as true and accurate. Helson agrees. He puts separation between Helson’s work with Danchenko as a CHS and the work of the Corssfire Hurricane/Mueller teams. All of this is to make Danchenko seem far more credible, which is effective if you first forget all the times Danchenko couldn’t keep his lies straight and all the times that he left important details out, the emails he didn’t had over, the phone call records he never produced, ya know… It’s fair to say that Danchenko was honest and forthcoming with information as long as you disregard all those times that he wasn’t.
Court now takes afternoon break.
Sears picks right back up where he left off. I have to wonder if that break was ill timed for him. Form the transcript it seemed that he was in a good rhythm with Helson and was effectively cross examining him. The judge interrupted him for the break. I guess it probably worked out well for him as regards Count One, because here, shortly after the break, Sears goes right to heart of it. And hits a home run that possibly lead to that count later being dismissed by the Judge.
Yep. I think those questions and answers resulted in Count One being dismissed.
And I get that.
I don’t blame the judge for it at all.
I blame Agent Helson. He didn’t handle this line of questioning with Danchenko as well as he ought to have.
And I blame Auten. He did not adequately inform Helson so that he would be prepared to effectively pursue this line of questioning.
Sears admits and publishes another exhibit for the jury to see.
Danchenko’s priority as a CHS was to corroborate Trump-Russia collusion, and he could not. The Primary Sub-Source for the Steele Dossier could not,
“obtain any …information that would indicate collusion between the Trump campaign, the Trump administration, and the Russian government and/or any of its representatives."
More exoneration for Trump!
Mr. Sears moves on to discussing the counts related to Millian.
He goes through the interviews with Danchenko where he was asked by Helson about Millian.
Good framing and context, there.
Yikes. That is NOT GOOD. Not good for the charges and not good for agent Helson.
Sears now moves to a line of questioning that harms his own client and Helson. It harms Danchenko in that it shows that he was lying to someone about meeting Millian; either to his handler and Steele or Auten and Somma back in January 2017.
Sears refreshes Helson memories by showing him some notes he had made following the interview with Danchenko in October 2017.
Sears grabs another exhibit. It is Helson’s interview with the OIG from October of 2018.
The FBI were working Danchenko and Steele against each other. Very interesting.
And there’s more.
Sears then goes over all the pieces of emails and messages to and from Danchenko that Auten and the Crossfire Hurricane team and kept from Helson. All the stuff that Helson never knew about until trial prep or this very day. Then, he presents a very interesting hypothetical.
That… makes a lot of sense. Might this have actually been what happened? Might Sears’s hypothetical be closer to the truth than any other explanation we have been presented with?
Sears goes on, and remember the Amtrak records and flights records that came up on Day Two when Auten was on the stand? Turns out, it was Durham’s SCO that subpoenaed them!
Honestly, I just do not know what I believe about the Danchenko and Millian, the phone call, the meeting… I just don’t know. Been researching this stuff for years. And this new information has been reconsidering what I previously had considered firmly settled.
But…
That is what a great defense attorney can do. And Mr. Sears is showing here that he is a great defense attorney for Mr. Danchenko.
Next, Sears goes over a report that Helson wrote on Danchenko. A Field Office Annual Source Report dated April 2nd, 2019. Helson stated that inconsistencies in Danchenko’s information were “minor,” information provided was corroborated, his story as regards Millian had not changed.
He wrote another Field Office Annual Source Report on Danchenko in March of 2020. Sears states, and Helson agrees, that “it basically says the same thing” as the report from the year before.
This is where we get into Helson’s praise for Danchenko.
Sears pulls up a report justifying a $10,000 payment to Danchenko.
So, Danchenko provided useful information on at least 25 reports during the first year as a CHS.
Sears is doing a superb job of painting Danchenko as a very valuable source to the FBI. And, perhaps he really was. That seems to be the case. Doesn’t mean he didn’t lie at other times. In this type of work, lying is an essential skill. It does seem though, that Danchenko did actually flip or at least sell his services to the FBI. The rub, though, is that he also lied, concealed, and omitted information related to this work with Dolan, Steele, and, according to the charges, his efforts to contact and meet Millian.
Sears pulls out a quote from one of Helson’s reports on Danchenko.
Guys… how does Danchenko know all of this stuff, all of this intelligence, if he was not at one time a Russian foreign agent?
Doesn’t that mean that the REAL Russian Collusion was the DNC, the Clinton Campaign, Christopher Steele, and Chuck Dolan, colluding with an ACTUAL Russian Agent to influence the 2016 US Presidential election, to RIG IT, for a specific candidate?
And wouldn’t that candidate be Hillary Rodham Clinton?
Sears brings up a story about Danchenko.
And with that Sears closes his cross examination of Helson.
Now Durham is up to redirect.
Durham raises the validation unit and their recommendations to Helson.
And that’s it for redirect.
Personally, I think shopping his information around is exactly what Danchenko was doing. And he found a buyer in Steele. And then he found a better buyer in the FBI.
Sears gets up for recross.
He basically works to minimize what Durham brought out on redirect.
I think we can all see what is going on here with Danchenko. There is bad, and their good. For Helson, Danchenko was too valuable of a CHS for him to risk losing over an inconclusive espionage case from almost ten years ago. So, he ignored some things, skipped some recommendations, and just kept working Danchenko.
I think Durham gets this. However, juries tend not to return guilty verdicts on defendants whom they like or regard highly. After what Sears was able to do on cross, the jury was likely thinking very favorably of Danchenko. Perhaps particularly right now with the Russia-Ukraine situation and years of anti-Russian propaganda in this country. Sears and Helson painting Danchenko as this super valuable source against Russian influence operations in the United States likely went over very well with them.
On Re-Redirect, Durham gets another shot and reveals this very interesting piece of information that likely knocked Danchenko down at least some in the jury’s view.
There was someone in the human validation unit who Helson had strong disagreements with in regards to Danchenko. This person, a woman, was a 19 year army counterintelligence officer in Europe who then went into the FBI. She indicated to Helson that Danchenko was a GRU officer. GRU is like the Russian equivalent of the DIA here in America. Military intelligence, basically. She wanted Danchenko polygraphed. She wanted Danchenko closed as a CHS.
Helson didn’t do it and she didn’t have the authority to force it to happen.
Durham closes with a banger for the jury to go home with.
Danchenko soliciting people at the Brookings Institution who were moving into the Obama Administration in 2009 for classified information that he could sell was never looked into again. Just forgotten.
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