There have been numerous whistleblower reports over the past few months about FBI bias regarding the handling of the cases against President Donald Trump, Hunter Biden, and domestic terrorism cases.
Special Counsel John Durham has been putting the FBI on trial during his prosecution against Igor Danchenko for lying to the FBI about his sourcing of the Democratic-funded dossier.
Perhaps one of the most shocking things discovered during the trial so far is that the FBI knew the dossier was bunk but they were so seemingly so desperate to get Trump that they were willing to pay Christopher Steele up to one million dollars if he could verify the dossier. But he couldn’t do so, according to the testimony of FBI senior analyst Brian Auten. Despite that, they still used it in applications to get FISA warrants, knowing it couldn’t be verified.
The testimony on Friday in the Danchenko case revealed some more troubling news. Two people who worked on Robert Mueller’s team revealed they tried to get an investigation into Democratic operative Charles Dolan, the Clinton-connected main source of the dossier, but they were turned down.
A current FBI special agent and a former bureau analyst who both served on Robert Mueller’s team testified that the special counsel’s office declined to investigate and never interviewed Charles Dolan, the Clinton-allied business associate of the main source for Christopher Steele, despite their urging.
Supervisory special agent Amy Anderson and former FBI intelligence analyst Brittany Hertzog both testified Friday that, as members of Mueller’s team who were specifically tasked with scrutinizing the allegations within the Trump dossier, they believed the FBI should interview and further investigate Dolan, a longtime ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, partly due to his business connections with Igor Danchenko, a Russian national whom the bureau had made a paid informant. Danchenko has been charged by special counsel John Durham with lying to the FBI about his sourcing for the Democratic-funded dossier.
The Mueller team members also testified that they were concerned about Dolan’s links to Danchenko’s friend Olga Galkina, who had been identified as a sub-source for Danchenko related to the dossier, although she denies being such a source. Danchenko introduced Dolan and Galkina in 2016.
Dolan had spent many years, including 2016, doing business in Russia and with the Russian government. Anderson and Hertzog said they were also concerned about Dolan’s potential dossier links combined with the fact that he had a history of working closely with Russian officials, most notably Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
So we had a fruitless investigation against Trump for years based on rumor, hearsay, and lies, using a dossier the Clinton team paid. But when there’s a Clinton-connected person involved with connections to Russia, can’t have any investigation of that.
Anderson tried to get an investigation opened but her request sat for three to four weeks before she was told they weren’t going to do anything about it by supervisory special agent Joe Nelson.
Hertzog also wanted an investigation. She had been looking into Galkina and was concerned about there being a national security threat from Dolan’s connections to sub-sources for the dossier.
The former FBI analyst said she put together a report on Galkina that referenced Dolan and that she filed the electronic communication to the FBI’s Sentinel system. Hertzog said she “serialized” it in three case files in an effort to get it reviewed by the Washington Field Office, FBI Headquarters, and the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General.
Hertzog testified that she had been instructed not to take further action on the Dolan-Danchenko link but that she wanted higher-ups to see the Galkina information because of what she saw as an important Dolan connection.
Durham said Dolan and Galkina “discussed their political views and their support for Hillary Clinton.” Dolan allegedly gifted Galkina an autobiography of Hillary Clinton, which he inscribed with a message, “To my good friend [Olga], A Great Democrat.” In July 2016, Galkina allegedly wrote to Dolan, “Tell her please [Clinton] has a big fan in” Russia.
Durham said Galkina sent a message to another Russian in August 2016 describing Dolan as an “adviser” to Clinton and claimed in September 2016 that Dolan would “take me to the State Department if Hillary wins.” The day before the November 2016 election, Galkina wrote to Dolan, “As a big Hillary fan, I wish her and all her supporters to have a Victory day.”
Galkina claims she wasn’t a source.
Dolan testified this week that he fabricated some of the sourcing, another problem that should have called the dossier into question. Foreign Agents Registration Act filings from November 2011 and May 2012 show he was paid for working for the Russian Federation and their state-owned energy company, Gazprom.
Durham previously said the Clinton-allied Dolan “interacted with senior Russian Federation leadership whose names would later appear in” the dossier, and also “maintained relationships with” Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. and the head of the Russian Embassy’s Economic Section in Washington, D.C., “both of whom also would later appear by name” in the dossier.
Shutting down an investigation into Dolan also threw a roadblock to discovering that the dossier was full of nonsense. They didn’t want to find out the truth, they wanted to push the lie.
Journalist Eli Lake asked Andrew Weissman who was Mueller’s main guy why they refused to investigate.
Since you’re following the trial, can you explain why the Mueller team shut down the request from FBI analysts to investigate Charles Dolan? https://t.co/RBBev3xRWA
— Eli Lake (@EliLake) October 15, 2022
Story cited here.
