When you are a federal prosecutor and you are not actually interested in pursuing a particular case, but you want to go through the motions to make it look good, you do things like not seizing computers, allowing defense counsel to decide what documents investigators should receive, allow lawyers who are witnesses to possible criminal activity to serve as defense counsel for targets so they can sit in and listen to interviews, hand out immunity to whoever asks without having a clear view of their culpability ….
Wait — that was the Hillary email investigation. Danchenko and Crossfire Hurricane are different.
Aren’t they?
With the indictment of Igor Danchenko this past week, the answer to that question is becoming less and less clear. While the two investigations were, technically speaking, separate from one another, a similar coterie of DOJ and FBI officials seemed to want their “Igor Problem” to slip beneath the waves and disappear in the same way the “Hillary’s Email” problem was made to slip beneath the waves and disappear. The tactic is to use decision-making implicitly designed to not produce a prosecutable case, ignore or excuse evidence of criminal culpability, and point to a bright shiny object of supposedly greater significance to be concerned with.
I’ve read several stories and opinion pieces about how the indictment of Danchenko for lying to Christopher Steele, and the media’s swallowing whole of the claims made by Steele, exposes the mainstream press for its duplicity and dishonesty in the way it carried on with the Trump-Russia Hoax. No matter how much the media tries to alibi its malfeasance now, or points to other sources of information that led to similar conclusions, there simply is no doubting the fact that the media spit up the narrative fed to it by partisan actors in the Democrat party and Intelligence Community.
That’s not what this story is about.
This story is about that Danchenko’s escape from accountability by the Mueller Special Counsel’s Office is the second instance where that happened. Danchenko is the second Trump-Clinton-Russia connection that went unpursued by Mueller SCO in terms of prosecution when the facts underlying Durham’s indictment were squarely in the “purview” of the Mueller investigation. It was a second instance where Mueller’s decision to not pursue a line of inquiry avoided going down a road at the end of which would have been Fusion GPS and Perkins Coie — and Brookings Institute.
The first episode was the topic of my most recent piece, looking into what possible reason there could have been for the Mueller SCO to completely ignore the bogus Trump Inc.--Alfa Bank internet communications story peddled to the FBI and CIA by Michael Sussman and the Clinton Campaign. As noted, the Mueller Report includes no substantive mention of the allegations themselves, or anything related to an inquiry into them after the Mueller SCO took over the FBI’s investigation in May 2017.
But the Danchenko issue is even more revealing when it comes to sussing out reasons for the apparent failures of the Mueller SCO. The Trump Inc — Alfa Bank story had been rejected by the FBI before Mueller was appointed. That fact could have provided superficial coverage for the decision by the Mueller SCO to not pursue it — the investigation was done and no meaningful contact between Trump and Russia was discovered. No need for the Mueller SCO to revisit it.
But Danchenko is different. Danchenko’s lies are at the heart of the Trump—Russia conspiracy hoax. Danchenko’s lies were some of the most consequential allegations that the Mueller SCO tried to establish as being true. Danchenko lied to the FBI before Mueller took over, and Danchenko lied to the FBI after Mueller took over — meaning Danchenko lied to Mueller.
Danchenko is a Russian national who had drifted in and out of the orbit of Democrat party politicos for more than a decade.
In early 2009, while working at the Brookings Institute, he approached incoming junior staffers for the Obama Administration, offering to assist them in selling any classified information they might have access to in their new positions. After the FBI became aware of Danchenko’s offer, he was made the subject of a counter-intelligence investigation into whether he was a Russian Intelligence. Danchenko left the United States in 2010 before the FBI could obtain a FISA warrant on him.
But Danchenko wanted to immigrate to the United States to go to graduate school. He was introduced to Christopher Steele and began working for him in Steele’s intelligence-gathering business while living in London. Steele put him to work on their project digging out derogatory information about Donald Trump while he was still a candidate.
He traveled between the U.S., Great Britain, and Russia while working on the project for Steele. Within a few weeks of having started, Steele began producing “Reports” suggesting possibly illegal connections between Trump and various Russian actors.
When the FBI Crossfire Hurricane team first received and reviewed the Steele reports, an immediate concern was that Steele himself was not a witness to any of the matters his reports described. Steele’s reporting relied on a “Primary Sub-source” and a network of other sources described as belonging to the “Primary Sub-source.” Steele declined to identify his “Primary Sub-source” to the FBI when he was interviewed by members of the Crossfire Hurricane team in September 2017. That did not mean that the FBI would not seek on its own to identify Steele’s “Primary Sub-source”, and that’s what the Crossfire Hurricane team did.
Steele had been made a “confidential human source” by the FBI shortly after he was first interviewed in September 2016. This designation allowed the FBI to use information from Steele and attribute it to a CHS who had been vetted and opened based on a conclusion that he was reliable.
But Steele was “closed” as a CHS on October 30, 2016, on the basis that he was then determined to be “unreliable.” That change in his circumstance was based on Steele having disclosed his relationship and work with the FBI to reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, both of whom published stories stating that an individual fitting Steele’s general description was working with the FBI on possible connections between Trump and Russia.
By doing so, Steele violated one of the primary conditions of his CHS relationship with the FBI — that he not disclose the relationship to anyone. By making the statements he did in clear violation of the direction to not do so, the Crossfire Hurricane team could no longer “rely” on Steele to follow other directives given to him – hence he was now “unreliable” and FBI policy mandated that he be “closed for cause.”
The Crossfire Hurricane team was already making efforts to identify Steele’s “Primary Sub-source” since so much of the information in the reports traced back to him. The FBI could no longer make use of Steele himself in any court filings – such as the Carter Page FISA renewal that would come up in January.
I’m not sure precisely how it was that the FBI discovered Danchenko’s identity as Steele’s “Primary Sub-source”, but the “how’s” do not matter. What is important is that by mid-December 2016 the FBI had determined that Danchenko was him.
Almost immediately the agents became aware that the FBI databases showed the existence of the 2009-10 counter-intelligence investigation with Danchenko as the target suspected of being an “agent of a foreign power” – Russia.
That should have been a dozen flashing red strobe lights with sirens for the Crossfire Hurricane team, causing them to stop and consider all the information in the Steele reports against the backdrop that Danchenko -- the source for most/all of the most important allegations -- was POTENTIALLY a Russian operative.
But they did not.
Joe Pientka was the original Supervisory Special Agent over the various aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The assigned Special Agents reported to him, and he reported to Peter Strzok. This was a quite extraordinary chain of command, and Pientka testified it was used so that high-level decision-makers in FBI management could be accessed as needed without delay.
Pientka testified in a deposition for the Senate Judiciary Committee that during the second week of January 2017 – after he had rotated off the Crossfire Hurricane team on January 6 – he was asked to go to Danchenko’s home to make contact with him. Danchenko was not at his home that day, but Pientka later spoke with him by telephone. Danchenko then put Pientka in contact with Danchenko’s attorney.
On January 24, 25, and 26, 2017, Danchenko sat for an interview with FBI personnel assigned to the Crossfire Hurricane team. He was accompanied by his attorney. In attendance at the interview was David Laufman, then the Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section (CES) in the National Security Division at the DOJ. Espionage and other national security cases are prosecuted primarily by CES.
It has been reported that the only persons from FBI who were present for the interview was Case Agent Steve Somma and Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten.
There is a 57-page document known inside the FBI as an “Electronic Communication” — or “EC” — that memorializes this first interview. I have seen it reported that the EC was drafted by Supervisor Analyst Auten.
There are two serious anomalies in connection with this document. First, Danchenko is being interviewed under a "Queen for a Day” rules — which I’ll explain in much more detail in my next article. But suffice it to say, the use of “Queen for a Day” rules meant that Danchenko’s attorney expected that Danchenko’s answers to questions might tend to implicate him in criminal activity.
An “EC” is not intended to be a “testimonial” document. That means that the author of the EC is not intending to communicate to any readers that “If called as a witness in any matter in which Danchenko’s comments are relevant, I would testify that he said the following…..”
When the FBI is creating a “testimonial” document that might be used later in court, it creates a form “302” to reflect the witness’s statements in an interview.
An EC is a quasi-informal means of communicating information internally in the Bureau. It gets placed in the case file, and circulated to Agents or squads who have a reason to need to know the information learned by the agents in the interview. It is not uncommon for an interview to result in both a 302 and an EC.
But under the circumstances of Danchenko’s January 2017 interview, having only an EC to reflect what he said is very unusual.
The second anomaly about the EC is that the author is reported to have been Supervisory Analyst Auten, and not Case Agent Somma.
In my experience and the experience of agents I have asked about this, an intel analyst — supervisor or not — does not memorialize a subject interview. He might take notes, his notes might be reviewed, and the case agent might consult with the analyst on the 302 or EC, but the author of those documents is the Agent, not the Analyst. I’ve yet to see any explanation offered for why Auten, not Somma, wrote the EC of the Danchenko interview.
The entire process was set in motion by contact between Danchenko’s attorney and David Laufman. The fact that the Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section is involved in the negotiations and is present for the first day of the interview is a strong signal that there was a recognition inside DOJ of just how important this interview might turn out to be.
The exchange between Laufman and Danchenko’s attorney that led to the interview would have begun with Danchenko’s attorney saying that Danchenko was willing to answer questions and that Danchenko had valuable information to offer. But because some of Danchenko’s answers might implicate him in criminal activity, any questioning would need to be on “Queen for a Day” terms.
The prosecutor is not going to accept those representations at face value. He’s going to ask for a “proffer” from Danchenko’s attorney about the information Danchenko has to share. If the proffered information is substantive and not already known to the investigators, then you have a basis to negotiate use immunity — “Queen for a Day” — for the interview.
When the interview began on January 24, 2017, the Crossfire Hurricane investigators knew something about what they were going to hear, just not the details. Danchenko had an idea about what it was they wanted to hear — but he didn’t realize how much about him they likely already knew.
Still to Come —
The Need for a “Proffer Letter,” and Why Did Danchenko Lie?
Danchenko continued to lie after the Mueller SCO took over — why wasn’t he indicted by them?
Let’s Revisit the two Russian “Active Measures” Indictments and ask a few “Why?” questions regarding the SCO.
That’s why there was so much opposition to candidate Trump from the GOP establishment. That’s also why so many Republicans abandoned their re-election efforts in 2018 in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s successful election outcome in 2016. Masks were dropping at an alarming rate inside the RNC as well as traditional GOP media and GOP politicians on Capitol Hill.
