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Danchenko indictment exposes role of Clinton campaign in Russiagate

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Ben Weingarten Federalist Senior Contributor; Claremont Institute Fellow
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A recent indictment of a Russian National for lying to the FBI reveals more details indicating Russiagate was a hoax and orchestrated by the Clinton campaign to take down former President Donald Trump.

We already learned quite a bit about that bogus story when Special Counsel John Durham indicted Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman.  Now we know more about the chain of lies that got us here. It began with the Clinton team hiring an opposition research firm who hired a foreign spy, Christopher Steele of the notorious Steele Dossier.  He hired Igor Danchenko as the key researcher for the dossier, and the indictment reveals, Danchenko lied about his own source who turned out to be complete fiction.  Danchenko, however, had another source – someone inside the Clinton camp.

Let’s underscore a few critical things about the significance of this case — why we should care about these revelations in some cases five years after the initial events that sparked all of these investigations and now Durham’s investigation into the start of all of this:

    • This was a Clinton campaign dirty trick operation from start to finish, and it had willing accomplices up and down the Obama administration that Hillary Clinton of course had served as Secretary of State.
    • Innocent lives were destroyed, and the government ran roughshod over the most fundamental civil liberties of individual American citizens through lies of omission and commission that for example misled a FISA court to give federal officials the ability to spy on innocent Americans under suspicion they were Russian spies.
    • The national security, law enforcement, and intelligence apparatuses proved themselves to be hyper-politicized, and weaponized, at the highest levels—eviscerating the line between America and Third World tinpot dictatorships.
    • The media of course played a central despicable role as the stenographers for the Deep State, and to this day continue to barely even acknowledge the lies and innuendo they printed and ran with for months.
    • Russiagate cast a pall over the entire Trump presidency, diverting invaluable time, energy, and resources from actually executing the president’s agenda. 

It’s clear Durham is building a massive conspiracy case.

The John Durham Special Counsel investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion hoax, and the fraud, corruption, and unlawfulness that it set in motion, recently issued its third indictment—and it’s a major one.

This indictment of Igor Danchenko on five counts of lying to the FBI is so big because it further eviscerates Russiagate’s key document – part of a Clintonian, not Russian, disinformation effort; it implicates the government officials and the media who used it for their nefarious ends; and it represents another sign that the Durham special counsel is building a massive conspiracy case from the ground up, hopefully not only against the Clinton campaign but the government officials who picked up the baton and ran with it to try and destroy a presidency and subvert the will of the people.

So first, who is Igor Danchenko? 

Danchenko was the key source behind the key document behind Russiagate. His indictment reveals that his own alleged key source of some of the most critical and explosive information included in Russiagate’s key document, was totally fabricated. The source’s supposed source never even communicated with him. Danchenko lied to the FBI about this source and his information that was central to the so-called Steele dossier. Danchenko was the dossier’s key researcher.

That dossier was used as the basis for four warrant applications presented to the secret FISA court that it blessed to allow the FBI to spy on Trump 2016 campaign adviser Carter Page, the supposed linchpin of the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy according to the collusion-mongers. 

It turns out Page was an innocent man; not only that, he had served as an asset on behalf of the FBI and CIA against Russia in the past, and the FBI that went to the FISA court to surveil him hid that information from the court.

They also hid the fact that they knew Danchenko was lying to them, claiming in sworn court documents he was “truthful and cooperative” even after they learned he had misled them about his key source.

That key source was Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American. Danchenko claimed he called Millian in July 2016, providing information to him demonstrating a, quote, “conspiracy of cooperation,” between the Trump campaign and Russian officials—as described in the Steele dossier.

As the indictment notes, “In truth and fact, and as Danchenko well knew, Danchenko never received such a phone call or such information from any person he believed to be [Millian].”

And get this–another key source for the dirty dossier was a longtime Clinton crony and 2016 Clinton campaign supporter.

Information he fed to Danchenko also made it into the dossier. Let me repeat that – a Clinton ally fed dirt included in the Steele dossier used to spy on the campaign of Clinton’s opponent. Not a Russian source. A Clinton source.

Danchenko lied to FBI agents when he denied Charles Dolan’s role in providing information that made it into the dossier which the FBI relied upon in evaluating the dossier’s credibility.

It also turns out Danchenko had previously been suspected by federal officials of being a Russian spy—something never disclosed to the FISA court either, when all of that kind of information that could call into question the credibility of the basis for the spy warrants had to be disclosed.

These two cases—the Sussmann case which we spoke about in a prior installment and the Danchenko case, one targeting one of the partners hired by the Clinton campaign/DNC to hire oppo research firm Fusion GPS to hire Christopher Steele and his dossier assemblers, and the other targeting one of those assemblers—are microcosms of how asinine Russiagate was from its beginning, and they also reflect an effort—given the detail they contain, and the people indicted—that Durham, again, could be building a massive conspiracy case from the ground up.

He’s impaneled two grand juries, in fact, already as these cases have revealed.

Let’s summarize the 30-thousand foot view of this story again:

The Clinton campaign hired an opposition research shop to hire a foreign spy who hired among others this indicted individual, Danchenko, to build this dirty dossier which the campaign, the opposition research shop, and its friends, family members, and confidantes repeatedly bombarded the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, and the State Department with, in a bid to try and find crimes to match a man they had already convicted of being a traitor and a tyrant, or worst case stymie his entire presidency.

Let’s underscore a few critical things about the significance of this case — why we should care about these revelations in some cases five years after the initial events that sparked this all of these investigation and now Durham’s investigation into the start of all of this:

  • This was a Clinton campaign dirty trick operation from start to finish, and it had willing accomplices up and down the Obama administration that Hillary Clinton of course had served as Secretary of State.
  • Innocent lives were destroyed, and the government ran roughshod over the most fundamental civil liberties of individuals of American citizens through lies of omission and commission that for example misled a FISA court to give federal officials the ability to spy on innocent Americans under suspicion they were Russian spies
  • The national security, law enforcement, and intelligence apparatuses proved themselves to be hyper-politicized, and weaponized, at the highest levels—eviscerating the line between America and Third World tinpot dictatorships
  • The media of course played a central despicable role as the stenographers for the Deep State, and to this day continue to barely even acknowledge the lies and innuendo they printed and ran with for months.
  • Russiagate cast a pall over the entire Trump presidency, diverting invaluable time, energy, and resources from actually executing the president’s agenda. 

Meanwhile, in focusing on Russia, it turned our attention away from our greatest adversary of all –  communist China—a China that as we’ve documented here before, much of the Russiagate-obsessed Ruling Class kowtows to—and a China, by the way, that Donald Trump targeted like no president since Nixon’s opening in 1972. 

Imagine what Trump could’ve done in U.S.-China relations had he not been so hampered, so hamstrung by the fake Russian collusion conspiracy.

  • The real collusion was between the Clinton campaign, the Obama-controlled national security, intel, and law-enforcement apparatuses, and the Trump-loathing and Trump-fearing institutionalists who perpetuated Russiagate for years—plus again their media stenographers.

For all of these reasons, getting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about how Russiagate/Spygate began, and all the wrongdoing that ensued—plus bringing to justice all those who broke the law during this saga is absolutely, utterly imperative.

It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of all the details, but all of this comes down to a conspiracy among a political campaign, its administration allies and partners, particularly in the Deep State, and the media to use their full powers to try and destroy their political opposition—a competing campaign, and then a White House that threatened their power and privilege on behalf of the American people.

Nothing could be more important than meting out justice, or we will ensure far graver scandals to come—and our descent into Third Worldism.

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