THREAD 2 on Igor Danchenko=PSS. Continues . This thread will go through the FBI questions on Steele memo 2016/95, which, with 2016/80, is by far the most important memo, as it makes lurid collusion allegations.
2/ "Report" 2016/95 notoriously stated that there was a "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation" between Trump campaign and "Russian leadership", run through Manafort and Carter Page, arising because Putin "hated and feared" Hillary Clinton. 
3/ this claim was highlighted in the influential Intel Community Assessment of Jan 6, 2017, which cited the FBI source's assessment that Putin ordered influence campaign because he "hated and feared" Hillary Clinton, an assessment endorsed by intel agencies.
4/ memo 2016/95 makes several other explosive claims, which similarly impacted the Intel Assessment.
The FBI inteview report includes two important sections in which they questioned Danchenko, Steele's Primary Sub-Source, on 2016/95. IMO these are fundamental to next phase.
The FBI inteview report includes two important sections in which they questioned Danchenko, Steele's Primary Sub-Source, on 2016/95. IMO these are fundamental to next phase.
5/ I'm going to go through these sections paragraph by paragraph with semi-complete interpolations. @walkafyre made the critical identifications of USPERS and USPER2 in these sections, published here for first time (with W's consent as he's busy today). IMO these identifications
6/ would have led to identification of PSS in a day or two in an alternate way to Hmmmm's clever use of Kieran Porter's social media and earlier detective work by our corner of twitter on character counts in PSS' name and US university.
7/ on the first day, on pdf page 21, there is a section entitled Dossier Report Number 2016/95. Ironically, although 95 and 80 were ultimately the most critical, PSS says that they were then merely a "side project" and that the project only later became more important.
7/ 2016/95 is based on dossier Source E, redacted, but clearly Sergei Millian (Source 6 in the interview). The two USPERS and their organization are redacted and impossible to guess on this section alone or in text of second day. But luckily redactors missed name in day 2 header
8/ with this information, @walkafyre identified USPERS2 as Dmitriy Zlodorev, the RIA Novosti reporter who had interviewed Millian earlier in 2016, and the reporter with long surname as another RIA Novosti reporter, Alexey Bogdanovskiy (who is in PSS' Twitter circle).
9/ we can now read that Orbis had tasked PSS to follow up his June with regarding Trump’s Russian connections in US. So PSS contacted Bogdanovskiy, who put him in contact with Dmitriy Zlodorev, who had Millian’s contact info, saying he should speak to Millian.
10/ as I proceed, keep in mind that, in addition to Orbis' targeting of Millian, Fusion GPS was simultaneously sending Brian Ross and Matthew Mosk of ABC towards Millian (with that effort resulting in the Jul 30 interview shown in Jan 2017, excerpts earlier).
11/ in the first day, PSS said that he emailed Millian twice. That after 2nd call (~late July), he got "very strange phone call" from anonymous caller, who PSS (incorrectly) surmised to be Millian. They "talked for a bit" and "tentatively" agreed to "meet in person" in NYC
12/ "at end of July". Millian (as demonstrable from contemporary FB) was actually in Asia for the 3rd and 4th weeks of July. Without (apparently) confirmation from the mysterious voice, PSS, accompanied (oddly) by reporter Bogdanovskiy, proceeded to NY on Jul 26 (FB pre-lockout)
13/ this testimony requires that Danchenko's two emails were prior to the telephone call, which (if it was real) would have been (say) a week before PSS' Jul 26 trip. This would be around time of Republican convention (Jul 18) and before the Wikileaks dump and Dem convention.
14/ according to PSS, this was the ONLY exchange that he had with Source E. When PSS arrived in NY, "Millian" was a no show. The FBI then moved on to other topics in this first day of questioning. No evidence that they asked a single question about the damning collusion claims.
15/ the next day (pdf, 37), FBI returned to scrutiny of 2016/95. First paragraph simply re-capped the instructions given to PSS.
15/ next paragraph is almost fully infilled. PSS and Bogdan went out to a Thai restaurant, where PSS asked Bogdan for a lead on someone who could talk about "Trump/Manafort stuff or Trump and Russia". Entry of Manafort as a theme interesting here.
16/ PSS re-iterated his story of previous day in which Bogdan referred him to Zlobodev, who had talked to Millian. PSS told the FBI that he believed that Z had sent him Millian's contact info and that he didn't meet Z in person.
16/ PSS again recounted story of "strange" telephone call in which he talked with anonymous caller for 10 minutes, then agreeing to meet him in New York.
17/ PSS then repeated the story about going up to NYC (dated to Jul 26) with "prepared questions" but "Millian" was a "no-show".
17/ this time, PSS added a new detail. That, after the no-show, he talked to Zlobodev, who told him that Millian had been asking about him. But that it would be hard for PSS to "reach out to Millian now" because he was in Asia. Infill of Korea is a guess here.
18/ Note another interesting and important new detail at end of paragraph: PSS told Steele "about Millian's whereabouts in" (presumably some Asian location.)
19/ PSS told FBI that he made one more attempt to reach Millian "in September" via a friend who had a real estate project, but Millian never responded. PSS noted that they had associated on LinkedIn, but "could not remember which initiated". (It was PSS).
20/ the interview notes on this topic close with PSS saying that his contact with "Millian" was limited to this single telecon with an anonymous caller in July. This paragraph was quoted at length by Horowitz, who omitted opening 2 sentences.
21/ so PSS said that he received a single anonymous telephone call (presumably) about a week before his Jul 26 trip to NY, in which the caller said that there had been an "exchange of information" between Trump and the Kremlin. Apparently no FBI questions on what PSS told Steele
22/ another point showing the supposed anonymous call (if it existed) was at least a week before PSS' Jul 26 trip to NY: PSS "did not recall" any discussion of Wikileaks. DNC emails dropped on Jul 22. Inconceivable that they would not be mentioned in a call in Jul 22-26 window
23/ despite PSS' evidence of no discussion of WL with the anonymous caller, 2016/95, supposedly based on Millian "speaking in confidence" in "late July", not only referred to the DNC leak and Wikileaks, but conveniently included a supposed admission of Russian culpability
24/ so why didnt the FBI, in their "counterintelligence" operation, directly ask PSS about the mile-wide discrepancy between what the anonymous caller had supposedly told him and what was in the Steele report?
25/ or pin down the times. If the anonymous call was a week ahead of the Jul 26 trip and BEFORE the Wikileaks drop on Jul 22 and there was no other communication with Millian, then what was the basis for attributing assertions about Wikileaks to Millian? Incompetence squared.
26/ but there's more. Report 202, dated Aug 10, says that there was another conversation with Millian on August 9. In direct contradiction to PSS' evidence of a single anonymous call a week or so before Jul 26. The inspectors Clouseau of FBI did not ask a single question.
27/ the damning conclusion is inescapable: Report 2016/95's lurid allegations of collusion, assertions said to have been made by Source E (Millian) to PSS (Danchenko), were inserted by Steele's office (not PSS) and were total fabrication.
28/ similarly, Millian (Source E) did NOT tell PSS that Putin engaged in an influence campaign because he "hated and feared" Hillary (an implausible claim when you think about it) nor did PSS submit this report to Steele. It too was fabricated in Steele's group.
29/ so when the collective wisdom of the US Intelligence Community solemnly told the outgoing Obama admin and incoming Trump admin that they had reliably originated information that Putin conducted operations because he "feared and hated" Hillary, it was based on a fraud.
