Criminal federal indictments connected to Donald Trump Russia-collusion allegations based upon a phony "Christopher Steele dossier" funded by the 2016 Clinton campaign and Democratic National Party offer evidence that U.S. Special Counsel John Durham's investigation into this matter is truly serious.
That entirely unsubstantiated report, which might more aptly be described as the dirty "Hillary dossier," served as the primary premise for the FBI to illegally obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, an activity that continued throughout his presidency.
Following Kevin Clinesmith, a low-hanging-fruit-level DOJ attorney who pled guilty to falsifying FISA documents targeting former Trump adviser Carter Page, most recent likely targets of federal interest are more directly connected to FBI disinformation and a political Clinton-DNC-sponsored Fusion GPS opposition research firm that employed Steele's dirty work.
Russian-born Igor Danchenko, who was indicted earlier this month for lying to the FBI about his role in providing bogus information to British ex-spy Steele, has reportedly long been a subject of scrutiny from Durham and internal Justice Department investigators.
Danchenko was never the credible high-level Moscow Russian source with well-connected insights into the Kremlin he had been represented by Steele to be.
As his indictment asserts, from 2005 through 2010 Danchenko worked at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, and was later introduced to "PR Executive-1" who The New York Times confirmed is Charles Dolan.
Democrat Dolan is a long-time Clinton crony, having served seven years as head of the Democratic Governors Association, state chairman of Bill Clinton's 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, and appointee to the Clinton administration's State Department advisory commission.
Also serving as an active "volunteer" on Hillary's 2016 campaign, Dolan had far more ties to Russians than anyone in Trump's circle. According to his indictment, he had helped handle "global public relations for the Russian government," and had frequently interacted with Russian officials and Russian Embassy staff throughout that period.
Olga Galkina, another Russian who regularly fed false information for Steele's dossier, was noted in two separate emails as expecting Dolan to get her a Clinton administration State Department job.
Durham's 39-page indictment alleges that Danchenko lied about Dolan's interaction with the dossier when the FBI belatedly tried to check the dossier's accuracy, depriving them the ability to learn about the "reliability, motivations, and potential bias" of the Democratic source.
Dolan allegedly wrote in an email: "I've been interviewed by the Washington Post and the London Times — three times over the last two days over the dossier on Trump and I know the Russian agent who made the report (He used to work for me)."
The indictment also suggests — but does not say outright — that Danchenko may also have relied on information provided by Dolan to fuel the most salacious accusation to come out of the dossier: that Trump supposedly had a liaison with Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel, and that a video existed of the encounter that could be used to compromise the presidential candidate.
A separate federal grand jury indictment stemming from Special Counsel John Durham's probe of the origins of the Russia investigation was filed against Michael Sussmann, an attorney also with close ties to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign who had previously worked for the Justice Department.
That September indictment alleges that Sussmann – while a partner at Perkins Coie at the time before recently resigning – falsely told the FBI he wasn't working "for any client" during a 2016 meeting when he shared information about a secret backchannel between Russia's Alfa Bank and the Trump organization.
Instead, Sussmann was allegedly being paid by the Hillary campaign.
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said he anticipates "many indictments" to come in Durham's probe.
On Nov. 7, Ratcliffe told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning" Futures that he had handed over nearly 1,000 pages of materials to the Justice Department to assist with Durham's investigation, some of which implicate potentially criminal actions against several very senior Obama and Biden administration officials.
Included were handwritten notes from former CIA Director John Brennan showing that he briefed then-President Barack Obama in 2016 on plans by Hillary Clinton in July of that year aimed at tying competing candidate Trump to Russia's hack of the DNC as a distraction from her deleted classified email national security "problem."
Ratcliffe said: "But what's important here is, John Brennan's own notes reflect and the other documents that I declassified show, that our intelligence community and our FBI knew this ahead of time, that Hillary Clinton — we had specific intelligence that Hillary Clinton was creating a plan to vilify Donald Trump, to falsely accuse him of ties to Russia. And the intelligence community and FBI knew this, and President Obama, Vice President Biden were briefed ... "
Another shared 2016 declassified document was an investigative referral from the CIA to since-fired FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Operations Peter Strzok related to the same topic.
Strzok was fired from the FBI after the discovery of numerous fiercely anti-Trump texts exchanged with then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
Former DNI Ratcliffe observed: "Everything related to the Steele dossier was known to be untrue, but yet it was the predicate for moving forward with an unjust, unfair, and ultimately now, everyone accepts, a criminally negligent investigation against the Trump campaign."
Ratcliffe concluded that he expects "all of the folks that are involved with creating it and peddling it falsely would be in jeopardy, and I know that that's what John Durham is looking at ... and this goes to the highest levels of our government and government agencies involved."
Ratcliffe added, "I continue to think there will be many indictments based on the intelligence that I gave to John Durham and that I have seen."
Nevertheless, don't count on anything coming out of those indictments until Republicans remove congressional investigatory committee roadblocks following 2022 midterm election victories.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 10 books, "What Makes Humans Truly Exceptional," (2021) is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.