Attorney Ralph Martin confirmed Thursday that his client, DC-based communications executive Charles Dolan, Jr., is the person referred to as “PR Executive-1” in Special Counsel John Durham’s indictment of researcher Igor Danchenko.
As Breitbart News reported Thursday, Durham indicted the Russian-born, U.S.-based Danchenko on five counts of lying to the FBI in connection with his role as a major source for Christopher Steele’s fraudulent “Russia dossier” on Donald Trump.
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid the Fusion GPS opposition research firm, which hired Steele, to prepare the dossier and then provided it to the FBI. It became a basis for the “Russia collusion” investigation.
Danchenko, who worked from 2005-10 with Democratic policy luminaries at the Brookings Institution, also worked with “PR Executive-1,” according to the indictment. Martin confirmed to CNBC that “PR Executive-1” is, in fact, Dolan.
CNBC noted that Dolan, a vice president at the KGlobal communications firm, also has a history of involvement with the Clintons, chairing Bill Clinton’s campaign in Virginia in both 1992 and 1996. His PR work includes Russia-related issues.
Durham’s indictment suggests that Dolan introduced Danchenko to his Russian acquaintances, as Danchenko was reporting information to Steele. Those Russian acquaintances then allegedly provided some information Danchenko gave to Steele.
Moreover, Dolan had extensive contacts in the Russian government, met with officials at the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., in 2016 and traveled to Moscow with Danchenko that year.
Ironically, the Clinton campaign would then accuse Trump of “collusion” with Russia, even though neither he nor his aides had such contacts in Russia.
According to the indictment, Dolan claimed that the Clinton campaign was unaware of his contacts with Danchenko and Russia. But “PR Executive-1” gave a Russian contact an autobiography of Hillary Clinton, which he signed: “To my good friend … A Great Democrat.”
On another occasion, the same Russian “sub-source” asked for Hillary’s autograph; later, he boasted to another Russian associate that Dolan would “take me to the State Department if Hillary wins” the election.
Dolan also pretended that Republican sources were feeding information to him about then-campaign manager Paul Manafort (“Campaign Manager-1”), which Danchenko then apparently fed to contacts at the “Company” (presumably, Fusion GPS).
Dolan appears to have used Danchenko as a conduit for information he wished to plant with Fusion GPS — and then, perhaps, with the FBI and the media. Danchenko then allegedly lied to the FBI about the nature of his ties to Dolan.
In one striking passage, the indictment says that Danchenko and an “Organizer-1” were given a tour in 2016 of the Moscow hotel — including the presidential suite — where the dossier would later claim Trump had engaged the services of prostitutes, but the staff member who escorted them around the premises did not, in fact, “mention any sexual or salacious activity.”
The indictment goes on to deconstruct allegedly misleading statements Danchenko made to the FBI, along with details about how the “dossier” was produced.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley noted on Fox News on Thursday that the sheer level of detail hints at the depth of Durham’s investigation, and wrote in an analysis of the indictment that Durham’s exposition of the facts in the Danchenko case hints at future prosecutions: “Potential apex targets above him in the investigation range from Steele himself to Clinton general counsel Marc Elias to Clinton campaign officials.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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