The main source for the unverified file of former British spy Christopher Steele who works for the Brookings Institution investigative group “makes sense,” Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said Tuesday.
In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Jarrett explained that he had come across the name of former Brookings Institution research analyst Igor Danchenko several times.
GREGG JARRETT: THE SECRET SOURCE OF CHRISTOPHER STEELE FOR THE ANTI-TRUMP FILE IS FINALLY EXPOSED
“I could never rebuild it. Because frankly … it’s so wild and stupid that Steele’s source was not from Russia, but he’s a guy in Washington, DC who works for the liberal Brookings Institution,” he said.
“Now it makes sense because the Brookings president at the time was Strobe Talbott: [a] Hillary Clinton’s longtime ally who hoped to feed the collusion narrative and had her own contacts with Christopher Steele, “Jarrett said.
“And it turns out that Talbott’s brother-in-law is Clinton’s fawning Cody Shearer,” he added. “I write extensively about him in my book ‘Witch Hunt’, how he created a second dossier, the contents of which were transcribed into Christopher Steele’s bogus dossier.”
“So, I mean, the machinations of this, and it’s all Hillary Clinton. Her campaign is paying for the record. And it turns out that some of her allies are feeding the record information, all fabricated,” Jarrett said.
An attorney for Igor Danchenko, 42, confirmed to The New York Times on Saturday that his client provided the information to Steele, whose file was used by the FBI to obtain wiretaps from Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser.
The FBI knew who Danchenko was and interviewed him in 2017 about the information he provided for the Steele dossier that was intended to show the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russian government. Danchenko cooperated on condition that the FBI keep his identity a secret in order to protect himself, the newspaper reported.
But all of that changed when Attorney General William Barr ordered the FBI to declassify the report on his three-day interview with Danchenko and hand it over to Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., whose Judicial Committee has been investigating the origins of Russia Investigation . Graham wanted the interview to come out because it further undermines the credibility of Steele’s record, he said.
Former FBI Director James Comey speaks during the Canada 2020 Conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 5, 2018. (Justin Tang / The Canadian Press via AP)
Graham released the declassified documents on July 17 that had redacted Danchenko’s name and identifying information, but an online blog post titled “I Found the Primary Source” gathered clues and identified Danchekno. RT, a Kremlin-owned news site, later published an article that also mentions Danchenko’s name.
Danchenko was born in Ukraine and is a Russian-trained lawyer who earned degrees from the University of Louisville and Georgetown University, the Times reported. For five years until 2010, he worked at the Brookings Institution, where he obtained Vladimir Putin’s dissertation and documented evidence of plagiarism.
“Neither the Brookings Institution nor its employees were involved in creating the Steele dossier … Brookings does not take institutional positions on political or political issues,” a spokesman for the Brookings Institution wrote in a statement to Fox News on Monday. noting that they had fully met their obligations as a non-profit organization.
“Because it was suggested that if they are doing political things, they cannot be exempt from tax,” said host Steve Doocy.
“That’s right. And, you know, Devin Nunes has said that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are now going to investigate the Brookings Institution. So we will wait and see what happens,” Jarrett replied.
“If James Comey had been honest and told the truth instead of lying to the president [and] lying to the American people and, I think, lying to Congress about the information in the dossier, you know, the media would not have used it as a club to hit Trump for most of three years, “he said.
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“He would not have brought in a special attorney who, of course, ultimately found no collusive conspiracy,” Jarrett concluded. “It would have dramatically changed the course of Donald Trump’s presidency if Comey and the FBI had been honest.”
Marisa Schultz of Fox News contributed to this report.
