Taking a closer look at the January 2017 Interview by the FBI
John Durham has indicted Danchenko for false statements made not just during the January 24-26 interview that was widely known to those following this subject closely, but also during subsequent interviews done in March and June, 2017.
The Inspector General’s report on “Four FISAs”, reviewing the FBI’s actions in seeking and later renewing a FISA warrant for Carter Page, first revealed other interviews with Danchenko after the initial thee day interview in January 2017. But, to my knowledge, prior to the Danchenko indictment it was not publicly known that Danchenko had been interviewed at least 6 times after January 2017 – both before and after the Mueller SCO was created by order of Dep. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in mid-May 2017:
March 16, 2017
May 18, 2017
June 15, 2017
October 24, 2017
November 2, 2017
November 16, 2017
Kash Patel, who led the investigation for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence while it was chaired by Devin Nunes, has now stated that he was never made aware by the FBI of these additional interviews of Danchenko through the course of 2017.
A careful re-reading of the Four FISAs report also introduces an interesting event into the timeline – one I had not focused on previously, and that takes on new significance with respect to these previously unknown interviews of Danchenko. The Report covers Danchenko starting at Page 186.
Recall that Supervisory Special Agent Joe Pientka ordered a “Human Source Validation Review” (HSVR) for Christopher Steele in early Nov. 2016. Pientka testified in his Senate deposition that this Review was cancelled by Bill Priestap, Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, and Peter Strozk, Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence.
During the first week of February 2017, not long after the first Danchenko interview in late January, Priestap authorized the HSVR for Steele – the very exercise he had cancelled when Joe Pientka first ordered it in early November 2016. From Footnote 329 of the Four FISAs Report by the IG:
[Pientka] initially requested the HSVR in November 2016, which the Unit Chief of VMU confirmed. However, CD delayed the initiation of the HSVR due to the sensitivity of the subject matter and concerns over leaks. Strzok stated that another consideration was uncertainty about whether the assessment would add significant value. The HSVR was restarted in early February 2017.
The IG Report skips over the sequence of events here, not commenting on fact that the HSVR was restarted shortly after the first interview of Danchenko. The only reference to the motivation for restarting the HSVR process seems to be the following, with no reference to the Danchenko interview:
“SSA 3, who started work on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation
in January 2017, and others recalled that there were multiple discussions about the need to complete an HSVR and that initiation of the review had been delayed for several weeks. VMU completed its report on March 23, 2017….”
SSA 3 replaced Pientka.
The IG Report reveals a point of controversy over the HSVR Report’s disclosure that it had not corroborated Steele’s election reporting. “Corroboration” would be noted if the HSRV reviewed second source reporting of the same information obtained from the CHS under review. Finding a “lack of corroboration” only meant that there was no such second source reporting found, and not that the Source information under review was necessarily inaccurate.
But that raises a question as to whether the agents brought in to do the HSVR review knew of or reviewed the Danchenko interview notes. Did they know that Danchenko has undercut many of the claims Steele attributed to him in the various election reports.
David Laufman’s Agreement to Give Danchenko “Use Immunity”.
Danchenko’s first interview is reflected in the 57 page “Electronic Communication” supposedly written by Senior Supervisory Analyst Brian Auten. That EC states at the start that David Laufman, the Chief of the Counterespionage and Export Control Section of the National Security Division of DOJ, gave Danchenko a Proffer Agreement at the beginning of the interview.
Much reporting is handicapped by a lack of substantive understanding of the precise nature and limitations of a Proffer Agreement – “use immunity” -- at issue. “Use immunity” agreements have been colloquially referred to through the years as a “Queen for a Day” letters. The terms of such a letter typically provide that the interview is taking place under ground rules that prevent the prosecution from using the actual statements made by the person being interviewed in any case later brought against that person.
A “confession” is just an interview where a suspect in a criminal matter answers questions in a way that admits his illegal conduct. A “Queen for a Day” interview is the same kind of interview, but there is a contractual agreement in advance that the incriminating statements won’t later be used as a “confession” if the person interviewed is indicted. In exchange for the defendant’s willingness to answer questions, the government promises that no government agent will be called as a witness to repeat for a jury the incriminating statements.
The purpose of this kind of interview is “informational”. The person being interviewed has information the investigators don’t know or haven’t been able to confirm. The person being interviewed is attempting to curry favor – these interviews are normally the first step towards “cooperation” or a “non-prosecution” agreement.
The agreement is intended to give the person being interviewed a reasonable belief that they can answer questions honestly and fully even if the answers involve criminal conduct because their answers will not be used in the form of a confession if they are later prosecuted.
But this promise by the government is conditioned on the person being truthful. The agreement is null and void if the person being interviewed purposely provides false information, or otherwise intentionally misleads the investigators with the answers he gives to their questions. Being forthright and honest in answering questions is the first ground rule.
Normally, I would assume that Danchenko didn’t just walk into the FBI office and start answering their questions. He had a criminal defense attorney negotiate the “Queen for a Day” letter with Laufman. A defense attorney asks for a “Queen for a Day” letter when he/she expects his/her client will likely implicate himself in one or more crimes by truthfully answering questions during the interview. That expectation comes from the attorney’s interview with his/her own client before sitting down with the FBI.
Danchenko is currently represented by a Washington D.C. attorney named Mark Schamel. The name of Danchenko’s defense attorney who accompanied him to his January 2017 interview is redacted in the EC, but Schamel’s name fits the number of characters under the redaction mark. So, until other information surfaces – if there is any other information – I’m going to presume that Schamel was present with Danchenko in the January 2017 interviews, and it was Schamel who negotiated the “Queen for a Day” letter with Laufman.
The indictment of Danchenko focuses on two particular subjects with regard to false statements he is charged with making. The first involves denials by him that a gentleman named Charles Dolan was a source of information behind some of the allegations made in the Steele reports.
Dolan is a public relations executive who has been around Democrat politics in Washington DC going back to the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. He has held state and national party positions and has been in the orbit of both Bill and Hillary Clinton during their time in Washington DC, including while Hillary was Secretary of State during the Obama Administration.
Danchenko admitted to knowing Dolan through a connection made at Brookings Institute but denied that he obtained any of the information from Dolan that he passed along to Steele.
The second subject of the indicted offenses involves Danchenko’s claims in multiple interviews that he obtained information from a gentleman named Sergei Millian, a Belarus-American businessman who has had business dealings in the past with Donald Trump and Trump Inc.
Steele’s reports of “Primary Sub-Source’s” claimed contacts with “Source E” were sufficiently specific that there was speculation Millian was “Source E” almost from the moment the reports were made public.
Danchenko attributed some of the most salacious allegations about Trump and Russia to “Source E” – Millian – including the following:
Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership. This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate's campaign manager, [Paul Manafort], who was using foreign policy advisor, [Carter Page], and others as intermediaries.
This claim from one of the Steele reports was made public when Buzzfeed News published all the Steele documents on January 10, 2017. This allegation became the “center of gravity” for the years-long media frenzy over the claim that Pres. Trump was supported in his 2016 election effort by the Russian government of Vladimir Putin.
Danchenko had attempted to meet and speak with Millian on more than one occasion, but Millian never responded to any of Danchenko’s overtures. The indictment alleges that Danchenko fabricated all his claims about contacts with Millian and information Millian supposedly gave him because he never met or spoke with Millian.
As noted above, the one “bright line” rule for a Queen for a Day interview is that the person answering questions tells the truth.
According to the Indictment, some of these false statements about Millian were made during interviews conducted in the District of Columbia, and some were during interviews conducted in the Eastern District of Virginia. Durham has brought his indictment in the Eastern District of Virginia, and the only charged counts are for false statements made in Virginia.
Danchenko’s attorney must have understood from his own discussions with Danchenko that truthful answers to questions during the January 2017 interview might involve information that implicated Danchenko in criminal activity. That’s the only reason why he would seek a “Queen for a Day” letter.
Going into that interview, Danchenko was simply Steele’s source – all the suspicions of misconduct were about acts taken by Trump campaign officials as reflected in Steele’s reports. The FBI had developed a certain lack of comfort with Steele based on his contacts with the media, but it was still relying on information in his Reports for various purposes.
Danchenko’s attorney certainly understood that if Danchenko lied or purposely omitted material information in his answers, he would be violating the terms of the Queen for a Day agreement, he would be subject to being charged with making false statements, AND all of his answers that might implicate him in other criminal activity could be used against him – his interview would become a confession.
The reason experienced criminal defense attorneys go through extensive preparations with their clients in advance of a proffer session is so the attorney can recognize if the client might be trying to slip past some questions without giving completely truthful answers. When that happens, the attorney must stop the interview and talk to the client alone. The attorney should remind the client of the consequences of being untruthful, and that the client should always assume that the government might have some evidence about the subject being asked about.
The fact that Danchenko lied during the very first interview about having met with and spoken with Millian, and his attorney made no effort to stop him means that Danchenko almost certainly told his attorney the same story when they met to prepare for the proffer session.
There is no information about whether Danchenko was accompanied by the same attorney to the later interview sessions. There is also no information about whether it was confirmed in advance that the “Queen for a Day” conditions applied to the later interviews. Normally they would apply, but that is typically memorialized in writing in the 302 interview reports of those later interviews. Those have not yet been made public to my knowledge.
More still to come…..