Steele Dossier Primary Source Revealed: Here’s What it Means
The Steele Dossier never left the public’s watching eye since it was first leaked soon after the 2016 US presidential elections. Soon after these elections, which Donald Trump won and became president, the now-infamous yet discredited dossier was mysteriously leaked to the public, which contained allegations of misconduct and cooperation between Donald Trump’s election campaign and the Russian government. The leak to the public was then used by many major media news channels to push a specific narrative along about Donald Trump’s alleged ties to the Russians.
When the dossier was first revealed there was plenty of willingness to believe these largely-unsubstantiated allegations by the American mainstream media, the likes of CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and the like. The goal was to discredit Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. There were even calls from some politicians within the halls of Congress who were anti-Trump already to have him removed from his high office due to the contents of this report, which they used to reach the conclusion that his presidency was illegitimate. What is more, the Steele Dossier was a cornerstone and a crucial motivating factor in initiating Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian government election interference against Hillary Clinton’s campaign and for Donald Trump’s campaign, which lasted over two years and cost many millions of tax-payer dollars. In addition, the Dossier was used by the FBI to obtain wiretap warrants of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, and in this way was used to spy on his election campaign.
Great liberties and truth-stretching were taken to produce the now-famous dossier, and apparently, more than just some lies had been incorporated. Until recently, we did not know who the primary source of information in the dossier was. All that was reported by the FBI was that it was someone “reliable” who was based in Russia, with credible and legitimate ties to the Russian government. In fact, it was recently revealed from a newly declassified FBI summary that the primary source used in the report is simply a person with a Russian name — Igor “Iggy” Danchenko — who is a resident of the United States, and hence not based out of Russia. In fact, Igor Danchenko is a Ukraine-born former Brookings Institution senior research analyst. He holds obvious anti-Russian views and co-authored an analytical paper on Russia with Fiona Hill in 2010, who was an expert on Russia at the National Security Council and served as an impeachment witness against Donald Trump.
Perhaps this uncomfortable fact is the reason why it took so long for the information to be revealed on who exactly was the “primary sub-source” of the report. What is more, is that The Brookings Institution is the most prominent Democratic think-tank in DC, and in this way has strong connections to Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. These new revelations are significant enough to have caused new investigative interest from the federal government.
Although these revelations are of interest to the federal authorities, it has received practically zero coverage from the same mainstream media outlets that fanned the story in the beginning that Donald Trump had colluded with the Russians. This is probably because this new revelation does not fit their desired narrative that Donald Trump’s election was in any way illegitimate, and therefore is not worth reporting on. This just proves that these media outlets do not want to pursue a story that does not fit their political agenda and desired narrative.
After over two years of searching for any clues on ways that the Russians helped to get Donald Trump elected has produced practically nothing, this story has died a slow and painful death. It would be too much to assume that the same mainstream media outlets that created the momentum for this story to survive, correct their mistakes and admit that they used uncorroborated sources to pursue a specific political agenda of undermining Donald Trump any way they can.
Alexei Gladyshev is a writer for The Russian Public Affairs Committee.
