Thread by @ClimateAudit

THREAD: on 2nd day of Steele October 2017 interview. Long thread on first day of Steele Oct 2017 hre

2/ the second day portion of 302 appears to begin on page 15 with FBI recording Steele's statement that "sub-sources are not paid for information". Indeed, sometimes (e.g. Millian), PSS never even met or talked to supposed "sub-source".

3/ notwithstanding Steele's claim, Danchenko has previously told FBI that he had sought help from Orbis to assist Source 1(Abyshev)'s [daughter?] in obtaining a "scholarship for language courses". However, FBI didn't challenge Steele on this.

4/ Steele also advised FBI of "one situation" in which they supplied "money 123456789" to a sub-source. Curiously, Fusion GPS was involved. Fusion obtained the "money 123456789" which were wiped for prints before giving to subsource. Who? No record of FBI asking.

5/ 302 for day 1 closely followed Auten notes, which had already been released by HGSAC on Dec 3, 2020. 302 for day 2 is new info. Steele said that time between PSS debrief and report was 1 day to 1 week; under redaction apparently that PSS sometimes sent report (ie not in person

6/ now here's something very surprising. Steele told FBI that part of several reports - the paragraphs entitled "COMPANY COMMENT" were generated by Fusion GPS (!?!), not by Orbis.

7/ when one examines actual "Company Comments" in Steele dossier (screengrabs here from 111, 134-court version, 135 and 136 ), they don't seem like comments that Fusion would be in position to assert - as opposed to Orbis. Something doesn't make sense here.

8/ A puzzle. After report sent to Fusion, 123456789012 (presumably Glen Simpson), 123456789 and Steele "went over each" of the reports in Steele dossier. 123456789 is too short for Peter Fritsch, Nellie Ohr, even Marc Elias. Bruce Ohr would fit, but surely it can't be him. Who?

9/ I received message that it's "GlenN Simpson" - 13 characters. D'oh. So both identifications need to be proven. "Nellie Ohr" doesn't fit either. Nor does "Ed Baumgartner" or "Baumgartner". Easy to lob names, harder to fit everything.

10/ D'oh. We were all looking under the wrong streetlight. Walkafyre sent me a DM explaining the redaction. The paragraph is introduction to subsequent sequence of comments. Answer is SSA Woodbery, SIA Auten and STEELE. H/t @walkafyre.

11/ finally, in 2nd day, FBI asks about Steele dossier, starting with Report 80, first report. It and Report 95 (the collusion report) are two most important, inserted amidst much chickenfeed. FBI interview on #80 is so obtuse as to defy credulity.

12/ let me review the stark and fundamental inconsistency between Danchenko interview and Steele dossier #80.

First, Danchenko told FBI that information in 80 paragraph 3 (Ritz Carlton pee tape) came from Source 2 (Ivan Vorontsov).

13/ Vorontsov told Danchenko that there was a "well known story", but it needed to be confirmed and that Danchenko should check with Ritz Carlton staff. Danchenko told FBI he was unable to confirm with hotel staf and reported to Steele that it was just "rumor and speculation"

14/ but in Steele dossier, instead of Vorontsov as source of unconfirmed, it said story was "confirmed", attributing it to "Source D", said to have been a "close associate" of Trump's and identified by Steele to FBI and others as "Millian" (who never met Danchenko or Steele).

15/ Danchenko had told FBI that he had been unable to confirm story with hotel staff and had said so to Steele, but Steele dossier stated that story had been confirmed by hotel staff. Danchenko also said last sentence attributed to SourceB was not valid, but "analytic conclusion"

16/ these contradictions between Steele and Danchenko (together with similar contradictions re Report 95) were the most important issues concerning Steele dossier and ought to have been top priority for Auten and Woodbery. Now watch their obtuseness.

17/ Steele didn't mention either Vorontsov or Sergei Abyshev (Source 1), but instead identified the shiny objects (Trubnikov etc) about who they were gossiping.

Steele re-iterated dossier attribution of Ritz Carlton story to the mythical "Source D", rather than Vorontsov.

18/ Auten and Woodbery appear to have sat their like bumps on a log, duly stenographing Steele, but without challenging him to explain the multiple inconsistencies with Danchenko's story. One of them was lying. Questioning was worse than useless.

19/ the "questioning" of SIA Auten by Gonna Graham's Senate staff compounded the obtuseness. The #1 question for Auten - if Gonna wanted to get to "bottom" of Russiagate hoax - was why he didn't get answer on contradiction between Danchenko and Steele on Report 80.

20/ FBI questioning on report #95 was, if anything, even worse. Report 95 was even more important than #80 in ICA which cited it. It purported to describe conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russian intel & was attributed to Source E, already identified by Steele as "Millian"

21/ in Dec 2019, Horowitz had pointed out a huge issue arising in respect of Report 95 from Danchenko's testimony: Danchenko never met Millian; his only contact with Source E was said to be a single anonymous telephone call of 10-15 minutes, which Danchenko presumed to be Millian

22/ yet four reports in dossier, ranging from June 22 to August 10, were supposedly sourced entirely or in part from this single anonymous telephone call. While this information from Horowitz was not publicly known beforehand, it was known to Auten and FBI from Danchenko 302.

23/ Steele dossier required that Millian disclose information to Danchenko on four different occasions: in June, then twice in late July and finally on August 9. Millian's records (which FBI would have had in their possession) clearly show that Danchenko and Millian never met.

24/ the inconsistency between attributions to Millian in Steele dossier (especially, #95) and Danchenko evidence to FBI was so stark and on such a vital report that it would be negligent for FBI not to clarify.

25/ so what happened in interview? Nothing. Beneath the redaction, it appears that Steele repeated his (false) identification of Millian as Source E. Which FBI duly wrote down without asking questions of when and where Danchenko met Source E? Total negligence by FBI.

26/ another curious FBI oversight.

Steele report 95 was undated. FBI reported that it had "handwritten date 29 August 2016" and considered it after reports with lower numbers. However, FBI's own records showed datestamp of Jul 28, 2016.

Why did Steele show false date?

27/ it appears more or less certain that Steele named "Millian" as source for paragraphs 1-5 of report 95 in this interview, as he had done earlier. Millian fits the redaction in 3rd line, but I can't figure out longer redaction in 2nd line. Sergei's patronymic too long.

28/ continuing with parsing 2nd day of Steele 302. In the first paragraph, Steele identified Source D using 23 characters. I believe that this redaction is Sergei (Kukuts) Millian. I'll elucidate this downthread in discussion of related dossier reports 97 and 102.

29/ next FBI asked about Report 94, the report which first bruited imaginary Page-Sechin and Page-Diveykin meetings, information attributed by Danchenko to Lyumila Podobedova and Olga Galkina respectively. This section is heavily redacted.

30/without much confidence, I speculate that infill in 1st para information is collected "from two sub-subsources" and in 4th paragraph "was not collected during an overseas trip". We KNOW that info for #94 arrived while Igor in DC in mid-July at DC swimming pool. Prob on Jul 16

31/ next #97. This is follow-up to explosive #95, which initially associated Wikileaks publication of DNC emails to supposed collusion between Trump campaign and Russian intel. Like #95, attributed to "Russian emigre" supposedly linked to Trump.

32/ consistent with Steele's previous framing of Millian as (fabricated) "subsource" within Trump campaign, infills of redactions here indicate that Steele again named Millian in Oct 2017 interview: 7 letter surname and 23-character long format.

33/ Steele told FBI/Auten in Oct 2017 tht "Millian" has "provided information directly" to Danchenko, but Danchenko already told Auten that he never met Millian. So why didn't Auten challenge Steele on inconsistency between Danchenko and Steele? This isn't rocket science. WHY?

34/ And why didn't Gonna Graham's highly paid lawyers challenge Auten at his failure to challenge Steele on inconsistency? WHY?? By the time of Auten's interview, Barr and Graham already raised inconsistency between PSS interview and dossier as a major priority.

35/ next report 100. irrelevant to collusion. It was typical Steele/Danchenko fantasy set inside Kremlin that was a sort of intel porn for US agencies. Steele said that he didnt know identity of sub-subsource since he had destroyed documents. Solid enough for FBI.

36/ Danchenko previously told FBI that "source" of information about Peskov, Ivanov (eg #100) was Source 3/Olga Galkina, his BFF from Perm, who, in 2016, was in Cyprus, had just quit PR job with Webzilla. Yet supposedly privy to most intimate conversations in Kremlin. Yeah, sure