Steele was willing to burn everyone around him to make the dossier true,” Sears said. Helson confirmed that Danchenko was upset that Steele had “embellished” information he had provided, especially when he had told Steele that some of it was rumor or speculation. Helson also confirmed that Danchenko didn’t know at the time that a dossier was being created with the information he was providing to Christopher Steele, the British spy who authored the reports. Danchenko later explained the behavior, attributing it to his wife and lawyer at the time telling him he should be getting more money, and he apologized. Helson agreed with Sears that there was only one instance in their three- to four-year relationship in which Danchenko acted “odd or erratically,” and that was an instance where he was demanding more money for the information he was providing. Sears, in cross-examination, emphasized Danchenko’s cooperation with Helson and the FBI, specifically the fact that he was being interviewed voluntarily and could have declined to answer questions but never did. “To the best of my recollection, there was a bit of hesitation, like he was trying to recall,” Helson said. After playing an audio recording of one of Helson’s interviews with Danchenko, Durham asked about a pause in the conversation when Danchenko was asked about his relationship with Dolan. Helson confirmed that Danchenko never provided any corroborative information for the dossier to the FBI. He revealed that Danchenko was a paid informant to the FBI.ĭurham led the prosecution’s questioning of Helson, attempting to establish that Danchenko withheld information and records from the FBI during their Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Helson was Danchenko’s handling agent from 2017 to 2020, when the defendant served as a “confidential human source” for the FBI. ![]() The government also called a third witness on Thursday, FBI agent Kevin Helson, the second bureau employee to testify after analyst Brian Auten took the stand during the first two days of the trial. Danchenko about anything that showed up in the dossier, correct?” Sears asked. Dolan confirmed to the jury that he didn’t have any inside information, and didn’t have any additional email or phone exchanges with Danchenko in which he provided inside scoops about Trump campaign connections to Russia. Sears also established that the information Dolan had given Danchenko by email - namely that Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski “hated” Manafort - was “common knowledge” at the time. “I agree they were very similar,” Dolan said of the information he gave to Danchenko in 2016 and the subsequent dossier report. In cross-examination, defense attorney Stuart Sears implied Dolan was being pressured by the special counsel to admit that the information in the dossier report came from him - to which Dolan replied, “I guess.” 10, 2017, to “see if he knew where this came from.” The witness said Danchenko claimed he wasn’t sure where the dossier came from and would look into it and get back to him, but never did. ![]() “I just thought he wanted to know what the atmospherics were around the resignation,” Dolan said.ĭolan also said he called Danchenko the day that Buzzfeed published the dossier, on Jan. Dolan said that he never provided additional insights to Danchenko, and that he wasn’t aware at the time of why Danchenko was seeking information from him. ![]() Prosecutor Michael Kielty pointed out similarities in the information Dolan provided Danchenko in that 2016 email with information that had ended up in a subsequent report from the dossier, dated just two days after Dolan sent the email. “I thought I would just embellish a bit to make it seem like his contacts were good,” Dolan said. Dolan told the jury that he had “embellished” that claim to Danchenko, and that he had actually obtained the information about Manafort’s resignation from watching cable news, not from a Republican friend. At one point during questioning, Dolan admitted to having lied to Danchenko in an email in the summer of 2016 about a “GOP friend” he claimed to have met with and who he said provided him with information about former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s resignation.
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