In
new affidavits filed in a Washington, D.C., court late on June 21, sub-sources
for Igor Danchenko—the “primary sub-source” in Christopher Steele’s
dossier on the 2016 Trump presidential campaign—deny having provided any
information contained in the dossier.
Danchenko had previously told the FBI that
he obtained the information that was published in the dossier by “word of mouth
and hearsay” from a network of sub-sources in Russia.
The affidavits were filed as a part of
a long-running defamation lawsuit
by the owners of Russia’s Alfa Bank against Fusion GPS, the
company that tasked Steele with compiling the dossier.
Steele’s dossier contained
allegations that the owners of Alfa Bank “were on very good terms”
with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as allegations of other
connections between them.
In response to these allegations, the
owners of Alfa Bank—Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan—filed their
defamation suit against Fusion GPS and its owner, Glenn Simpson, in October
2017.
The lawsuit has been mired in various
technical battles over the years but recently, new life was breathed into the
matter after it became
public that Danchenko was Steele’s main source, along with the
identities of sub-sources whom he professed to have obtained his information
from.
Based on this new information, lawyers
for the owners of Alfa Bank began quietly
working to obtain affidavits from Danchenko’s now-identified alleged
sources.
All of Danchenko’s sub-sources have now
denied under penalty of perjury that they provided Danchenko with any
information that was attributed to them in Steele’s dossier.
Alfa Bank’s attorneys are also
attempting to directly depose Danchenko, Steele’s source for most of the
material in the dossier.
Request
for Danchenko Deposition
In the June 21 filing
with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Fridman, Aven, and
Khan requested that the court compel Danchenko to appear for a deposition.
Their attorneys argue that “the declarations of Mr. Danchenko’s sub-sources
call into question the veracity and reliability of not only Mr. Danchenko, but
of the Defendants’ entire dossier.”
The lawsuit notes that “Danchenko told
the FBI that he obtained the information that Defendants published in the
dossier by ‘word of mouth and hearsay’ from a network of sub-sources in
Russia.”
Steele stated in testimony
before a British court that Danchenko’s sub-sources were “Russians with
‘personal knowledge of and/or direct access to the relevant information,’ and
that they included ‘top-level’ Russian government officials ‘[a]t the peak of the
vertical of power.’”
Steele has also claimed, according to a
book authored by Fusion GPS’s Simpson, that Danchenko was “a remarkable person
with a remarkable story who deserves a medal for his service to the West.”
The court documents reference additional
statements by Simpson who “claimed that the sources for the dossier were “deep
and well placed” and that the allegations in the dossier came from “people with
extraordinary access in Russia.”
And Simpson’s partner, Peter Fritsch, testified
in Florida that the information in the dossier came from a source network that
“was extremely well placed and had been reliable in the past.”
The lawsuit notes that all of
Danchenko’s “claimed sub-sources” have provided denials made under penalty of
perjury that they provided Danchenko with any information “related to the
contents of the dossier.”
And that “these declarations call into
question the veracity and reliability of not only Mr. Danchenko, but of the
Defendants’ entire dossier.” It also states that Danchenko’s sub-sources have
“never held any kind of ‘official’ government position at all, and none could
remotely be characterized as a ‘top-level’ Russian official.”
Danchenko’s
Sub-Sources
Danchenko’s claimed
source for the infamous pee tape story, Ivan Vorontsov, denies
in a deposition having ever told Danchenko anything in relation to the dossier,
claiming, “I was not a ‘source’ for the Dossier. I never provided Mr. Danchenko
(or anyone else) with any information associated with the contents of the
Dossier.”
Vorontsov also alleged that Danchenko
admitted to that, stating that “Mr. Danchenko later confirmed this to me as
well when he expressed guilt for dragging me into this whole controversy
concerning the Dossier.”
Vorontsov said the dossier was
“fabricated to fit whatever the client who requested the information wanted to
receive.”
Lyudmila Podobedova, who also has denied
providing any information used in the dossier, said that “once Mr. Danchenko
realized that the Dossier was coming under scrutiny, he decided to point at me
to make it look as if I were involved in the Dossier and thus add credibility
to his work.”
Olga Galkina, who worked for a
Russian-owned IT company, Webzilla, was the alleged source for
the dossier story that Webzilla had hacked into the Democratic National
Committee’s servers. As with the other sources, Galkina is now on record as denying
that she told Danchenko any of those things, stating that Danchenko named her
to “create more authoritativeness for his work.”
Alexey Dundich and Ivan Kurilla, both
of whom are Russian academics, also deny
having provided
Danchenko with any information used in Steele’s dossier. Although Dundich was
previously identified as an alleged dossier source, Kurilla’s name hadn’t been
mentioned in the publicly released sections of the dossier.
Dundich’s affidavit claims that
“Danchenko framed [Dundich] as Sub-Source 4” in order to “add credibility to
his low-quality work, which is not based on real information.”
According to
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on
FISA surveillance applications, the verification of Danchenko’s sources was
ignored by the FBI as they pursued a FISA application and three subsequent
renewals on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
In March 2020, Horowitz criticized
the work of the FBI, noting that he does “not have confidence that the FBI has
executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy.” Woods Procedures
refer to supporting factual documentation underlying any application for a FISA warrant.
Additionally, Horowitz’s report identified
“at least 17 significant errors or omissions in the Page FISA applications, and
many additional errors in the Woods Procedures.”
It appears that many of these same
issues were present in the FBI’s underlying review of sources that allegedly
contributed to the Steele Dossier.
Neither Steele’s company, Orbis
Business Intelligence, nor Simpson’s company, Fusion GPS, immediately responded
to a request for comment. An attorney for Danchenko returned an initial email
asking for more information but didn’t provide a subsequent comment and couldn’t
be reached by phone.