The New York Times writes a story about John Durham issuing subpoenas to the Brookings Institute for records of Igor Danchenko’s work there. Danchenko was Chris Steele’s primary sub-source for the infamous Steele Dossier.
The material provided by Danchenko to Steele was described as unsubstantiated “gossip”, “rumor”, “hearsay” and innuendo by Danchenko himself after he was questioned by the FBI.
New York Times – […] Mr. Durham has keyed in on the F.B.I.’s handling of a notorious dossier of political opposition research both before and after the bureau started using it to obtain court permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016 and 2017 and questioned witnesses who may have insight into the matter.
In particular, Mr. Durham has obtained documents from the Brookings Institution related to Igor Danchenko, a Russia researcher who worked there a decade ago and later helped gather rumors about Mr. Trump and Russia for that research, known as the Steele dossier, according to people familiar with the request.
By asking about the dossier, Mr. Durham has come to focus at least in part on re-scrutinizing an aspect of the investigation that was already exposed as problematic by a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report…. (read more)
The Backstory is…in essence Chris Steele put a bunch of garbage inside his dossier, and his dossier was used to get the Carter Page FISA warrant to conduct surveillance against the Trump campaign (October 21, 2016). Danchenko then disavowed the veracity of all the information he provided during FBI interviews in January, February and March 2017; but the FBI ignored the Danchenko discussion and used the dossier for two more FISA renewals in April and June 2017.
The issue of import with the story today is not about the content of the Danchenko work while inside the Brookings group, but rather how the leak from Brookings to the New York Times about the subpoena begins to unravel the Lawfare network.
The Lawfare group is largely funded by The Brookings Institute. Brookings is largely funded by the Chinese. As we pointed out during our research, essentially when you follow the trail you realize the Chinese Communist Government was financing the information that went into the Steele Dossier. But wait, it gets better….
The Lawfare group is also the “beach friends” group. The Lawfare group includes James Baker, Lisa Page, Benjamin Wittes, and Daniel Richman. Once you realize who Lawfare consists of; and then you realize The Brookings Institute is behind Lawfare; you then realize the Lawfare group was likely feeding the opposition research into Danchenko while he worked for Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson who actually contracted Chris Steele for his dossier.
The FBI and DOJ officials working with Lawfare essentially provided raw information to Danchenko, who then packaged it and sent it to Chris Steele. Steele then puts the Danchenko package in his dossier and that is sent back to the FBI and DOJ for use in their FISA application. It is a laundry of weaponized political opposition research.
- FBI/DOJ extracted intelligence to Lawfare.
- Lawfare sends to Brookings (Danchenko)
- Danchenko sends to Chris Steele (dossier).
- Chris Steele sends Dossier back to FBI/DOJ.
- FBI/DOJ use dossier in FISA application.
See the laundry?
The Brookings institute tipping off the New York Times about the Durham subpoena is actually more telling than the content of the subpoena itself.
Brookings is Lawfare. Benjamin Wittes runs Lawfare. He is personal friends with James Comey.
Benjamin Wittes is also personal friends with another Lawfare colleague Daniel Richman:
Daniel Richman is also personal friends with James Comey.
James Comey used Richman to leak his memo content to the New York Times:
China is Funding the Brookings Institute.
The Brookings Institute is funding Lawfare.
Lawfare is a group of current and former DOJ and FBI officials.
As a consequence, China funded the attack position of Lawfare and the DOJ/FBI against the Trump administration.