The FBI's Abuse of Michael Cohen -- Part 4

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

=======

On April 13, 2018 -- four days after the FBI's raid on Michael Cohen's home, law office and safes -- investigative journalists Greg Gordon and Peter Stone wrote an article titled Mueller has evidence Trump lawyer met in Prague with Russians during campaign, sources say. They article's key paragraph:

.... investigators have traced evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, apparently in August or early September 2016 as the former spy [Christopher Steele] reported, said the sources [who leaked to Gordon and Stone], who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Cohen wouldn’t have needed a passport for such a trip, because both countries [Germany and Czechia] are in the Schengen Area, in which 26 nations have open borders. The disclosure still left a puzzle: The sources did not say whether Cohen took a commercial flight or private jet to Europe, and gave no explanation of why no record of such a trip has surfaced.

Later, in the last days of December 2018, Gordon and Stone added some new details:

... cell phone tower records obtained by foreign intelligence sources place Michael Cohen (or at least his phone) in Prague in the late summer of 2016. The [Gordon and Stone] story says this information, as well as the fruits of electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency that picked up discussion among Russians of Cohen’s presence in Prague, are now in the possession of the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

It's obvious to me that this information was leaked to Gordon and Stone by an FBI official assigned to Robert Mueller's Special Counsel staff. The leak's purpose was to justify to the public the FBI's raid on President Donald Trump's personal lawyer.

=======

I think that several elements of this story are true. In fact, an Eastern European intelligence agency did detect Cohen's phone number in Prague and did intercept a discussion of some Russians about Cohen's presence in Prague.

However, I think further that this information was planted by Russian Intelligence in order to boost the credibility of Olga Galkina, who was one of Steele's sub-sources. Galkina -- a secret agent of Russian Intelligence -- told Steele's primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, that Cohen had visited Prague in order to meet with several officials of Russia's Presidential Administration. The planted information was supposed to prove that Galkina was correct about Cohen's visit -- even though he had not actually visited Prague..

======

According to The Wall Street Journal, Galkina had been hired in early 2016 to work as a press secretary for Aleksej Gubarev, an Internet entrepreneur from Russia. In that position, Galkina had asked for some help from Danchenko, a former school-mate from Perm, Russia. More specifically, Galkina had asked Danchenko (now living in the USA) to recommend a US-based publicist to work for Gubarev. Danchenko (on the advice of Fiona Hill at the Brookings Institute) recommended Charles Dolan, who subsequently was hired by Gubarev in July 2016.

Through Galkina, Dolan met Danchenko (Steele's "primary sub-source") and soon began to provide gossip that was included in Steele's Dossier. For example, Dolan was the "Source D" who told the story about Trump watching prostitutes urinating on a bed in a Moscow hotel room. (In FBI reports released to the public, the FBI calls Dolan "PR Executive-1".)

According to Danchenko (when interviewed by the FBI), Galkina herself was the source of the Dossier's first reports about Carter Page meeting secretly with Kremlin officials.

Also according to Danchenko (when interviewed by the FBI), Galkina herself was the source of the Dossier's reports about Cohen. For example, the Dossier's Cohen report dated October 20, 2016, said:

Speaking to a compatriot and friend on 19 October 2016, a Kremlin insider provided further details of reported clandestine meeting/s between Republican presidential candidate Donald TRUMP's lawyer Michael COHEN and Kremlin representatives in August 2016.

I understand that sentence to mean that Danchenko is the "compatriot and friend" and Galkina is the "Kremlin insider".

=======

Before Galkina told Danchenko her Cohen stories, she had quit working for Gubarev. The Wall Street Journal writes:

By this time [i.e. before the Dossier report dated October 20, 2016] Ms Galkina's relationship with her employer in Cyprus, Mr. Gubarev, had soured and she had resigned. Her former supervisor filed a report with police, seen by the Journal, saying she chronically appeared at work late, sometimes drunk, and alleging that a friend [Danchenko] of Ms. Galkina's tried to extort him [Galina's supervisor in Cyprus] for money.

I speculate that around the time (perhaps much earlier) when Galkina lost her job working for Gubarev, she began working as a secret agent for Russian Intelligence. 

=======

If Galkina did indeed work as such an agent, then Russian Intelligence would have been motivated to boost her credibility. In particular, it might have planted evidence that Cohen indeed had -- as Galkina had told Danchenko -- visited Prague. Galkina's original story was that Cohen had visited Prague in the last week of August. Russian Intelligence was not able, however, to plant information about that particular week. Rather, information was planted only that Cohen had visited Prague during the first two weeks of September 2016.  

In that regard, the articles that Gordon and Stone wrote in April and December 2018 were true. Indeed, a East European intelligence agency had detected Cohen's telephone number and intercepted a Russian discussion about Cohen visiting Prague. A discrepancy with the Dossier was that the detection and interception had happened in the first half of September, not in the last week of August 2016. 

=======

My speculation has a chronology problem. Russian Intelligence had done the spoofs -- the phone-number pings and the discussion about Cohen -- in the first half of September, but Galkina did not begin telling Danchenko about Cohen until the last half of October 2016.

I offer two different speculations:

=======

My first speculation is that Russian Intelligence's planting of evidence in September had nothing to do with Galkina. Rather, Russian Intelligence was preparing to cause trouble for Cohen, who was denying publicly that he had been involved, after January 2016, in any negotiations with Russia about the development of a Trump hotel in Moscow. (Trump said such negotiations had ceased in that January because of his election campaign.) 

In that situation, Russian Intelligence planted false evidence in the first half of September 2016 that Cohen was meeting with Russian officials in Prague despite Cohen's public denials of any hotel negotiations. A month later, in the second half of October, this planting of evidence turned out to be potentially useful when Russian Intelligence tasked Galkina to tell Danchenko about Cohen visiting Prague. 

=======

My second speculation is that Galkina had begun to work as a secret agent of Russian Intelligence before the beginning of September 2016 -- while she still was working for Gubarev. Then in the first half of September, Russian Intelligence planted the false evidence about Cohen visiting Prague. The evidence was planted with the foresight that it eventually would boost Galkina's credibility. 

Then Galkina did tell Danchenko in October 2016 that Cohen had visited Prague in September. Later, in 2017 or 2018, that information was collected by a Eastern European intelligence agency, which forwarded it to the US Government. This spoof thus would "prove" eventually that Galkina indeed was a credible "Kremlin insider", as Steele had described her in his Dossier.

=======

In either of my two speculations, the confused information about a Mike Cohen (not Trump's lawyer) visiting Prague in late August caused the Prague visit of Michael Cohen (Trump's lawyerf) to be shifted from September to August in the Dossier reports.

I assume that the FBI resolved the Mike Cohen confusion rather quickly, but nevertheless the planted evidence about Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen visiting Prague caused the FBI to persist in its false belief until the end of 2018, when a second FBI leak to Gordon and Stone attempted to reinforce their April 2018 article about the "proof" of the Prague visit.

=======

On December 13, 2019, Gordon and Stone issued a statement that includes the following passages (emphasis added):

We quoted a total of five sources. Our sources cited information that signals from a cell phone owned by Cohen were detected in the vicinity of Prague and that, during that time frame, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a Russian remarking that Cohen was in the Czech capital. ...

There’s been no indication that Czech intelligence monitored or was aware of such a meeting, so it’s difficult to see how Special Counsel Robert Mueller could have proved this allegation even with an admission by Mr. Cohen. ....

We are aware that other journalists have obtained unpublished information that tends to support our stories, but the fact is that this issue may remain a mystery.

It is always possible that the information we gathered was part of a Russian disinformation campaign, and that the phone intercept was a spoof by Moscow intelligence agencies, but given what we know, that seems unlikely.

When Mr. Mueller testified about his report to Congress last July [2019], a Republican congressman specifically asked him to state whether our initial story was false. Mr. Mueller replied: “I can’t get into it.” In response to the next question, he stated [in contrast to his answer to the previous question] that a story by another news outlet was inaccurate.

From the above statement, I presume that the East European intelligence agency was not the Czech agency, but rather the German agency. (The leaked story was that the phone pings indicated that Cohen had traveled from Germany into Czechia.)

I presume also that Gordon and Stone confirmed with their FBI leaker that the FBI thought now, in December 2019, that the Prague story had been based on "a spoof by Moscow intelligence agencies".

(For more details about phone pings, etc., see also an informative Daily Beast article and an informative Observer article published in December 2018.)

=======

In April 2020, Chuck Ross wrote an article, titled FISA Bombshell: Russian Intelligence Knew Christopher Steele Was Investigating Trump During 2016 Campaign, which summarized the FBI's ultimate understanding then, in April 2020. The article's key passages (emphasis added):

Two Russian intelligence operatives were aware as early as July 2016 that former British spy Christopher Steele was investigating Donald Trump, according to newly declassified information in footnotes from a Justice Department report on FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign. Footnotes from that report also said a member of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team investigating the Trump campaign received evidence in January 2017 that Russian intelligence might have targeted and collected information on Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.  ...

The footnotes ... say that in late January 2017, an investigator on the Crossfire Hurricane team received information that Russian intelligence “may have targeted Orbis” and researched the company. ...

The FBI obtained information on Jan. 12, 2017, ... [that the Dossier' claim] that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen visited Prague in August 2016 was likely the product of Russian disinformation. ....

The January 12, 2017, information was the FBI's interview of Danchenko, who revewaled that the Prague-visit information had come from Galkina, who was a dubious character.

=======

By the time the FBI figured out that it had been spoofed, however, Cohen already had been raided, persecuted, and sentenced to prison. That series of abuses of Cohen had begun because the FBI had tried futiely to find proof that he had visited Prague in order to meet with Russian officials in a plot to steal the USA's Presidential election from Hillary Clinton.

We can hope that John Durham's future report about this history will explain the false story about Cohen visiting Prague.

=======

Continued in Part 5

The FBI's Abuse of Michael Cohen -- Part 3

Part 1, Part 2

=======

The Dossier report that Christopher Steele wrote on October 18, 2016, did not indicate any knowledge of Michael Cohen visiting Prague. However, the report that Steele wrote on the very next day -- October 19 -- begins to claim some such knowledge. In this new report, though, Steele apparently knows only that the visit happed somewhere in the European Union (EU). (I have added emphasis.) 

COMPANY INTELLIGENCE REPORT 2016/135

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: THE IMPORTANT ROLE OF TRUMP LAWYER, COHEN IN SECRET LIASON WITH THE KREMLIN

Summary

– Kremlin insider outlines important role played by lawyer COHEN in secret liaison with Russian leadership

– COHEN engaged with Russians in trying to cover up scandal of MANAFORT and exposure of PAGE and meets Kremlin officials secretly in the EU in August in pursuit of this goal

– These secret contacts continue but are now farmed out to trusted agents in Kremlin-linked institutes so as to remain “plausibly deniable” for Russian regime

– Further confirmation that sacking of IVANOV and appointments of VAINO and KIRIYENKO linked to need to cover up Kremlin’s TRUMP support operation

Detail

Speaking in confidence to a longstanding compatriot friend in mid-October 2016, a Kremlin insider highlighted the importance of Republican presidential candidate Donald TRUMP’s lawyer, Michael COHEN, in the ongoing secret liaison relationship between the New York tycoon’s campaign and the Russian leadership. COHEN’s role had grown following the departure of Paul MANNAFORT as campaign manager in August 2016. Prior to that MANNAFORT had led for the TRUMP side.

According to the Kremlin insider, COHEN now was heavily engaged in a cover up and damage limitation operation in the attempt to prevent the full details of TRUMP’s relationship with Russia being exposed. In pursuit of this aim, COHEN had met secretly with several Russian Presidential Administration (PA) Legal Department officials in an EU country in August 2016. The immediate issues had been to contain further scandals involving MANNAFORT’s commercial and political role in Russia/Ukraine and to limit the damage arising from exposure of former TRUMP foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE’s secret meetings with Russian leadership figures in Moscow the previous month. The overall objective had been to “to sweep it all under the carpet and make sure no connections could be fully established or proven”

Things had become even “hotter” since August on the TRUMP-Russia track. According to the Kremlin insider, this had meant that direct contact between the TRUMP team and Russia had been farmed out by the Kremlin to trusted agents of influence working in pro-government policy institutes like that of Law and Comparative Jurisprudence. COHEN however continued to lead for the TRUMP team.

Referring back to the (surprise) sacking of Sergei IVANOV as Head of PA in August 2016, his replacement by Anton VAINO and the appointment of former Russian premier Sergei KIRIYENKO to another senior position in the PA, the Kremlin insider repeated that this had been directly connected to the TRUMP support operation and the need to cover up now that it was being exposed by the USG and in the western media.

Company Comment

The Kremlin insider was unsure of the identities of the PA officials with whom COHEN met secretly in August, or the exact date/s and locations of the meeting/s. There were significant internal security barriers being erected in the PA as the TRUMP issue became more controversial and damaging. However s/he continued to try to obtain these.

19 October 2016

In regard to the EU meeting (still not a Prague meeting), Steele's source of information seems to be a person employed in the Russian Government's Presidential Administration (PA). In fact, the CIA had recruited such a person as an agent -- Oleg Smolenkov.  

Now I will speculate about this situation. In order to simplify my explanation, I will use a name "Mike Cohen". When I write "Michael Cohen", I mean the person who worked as Donald Trump's lawyer. When I write "Mike Cohen", I mean another person, who was not Trump's lawyer and who visited Prague in late August 2016. 

I speculate that Steele's October 18 report about Michael Cohen had been delivered immediately to FBI Counterintelligence. Within hours, someone there searched an NSA database for information about Cohen and found that Mike Cohen had visited Prague in August 2016. The FBI searcher thought mistakenly that this Mike Cohen was Michael Cohen. 

The mere fact that Cohen was in Prague did not, however, incriminate him. Cohen had to be placed in the same place and time as some relevant Russian officials. After all, the actual meeting might have taken place in, say, Dresden, Germany, or Linz, Austria. 

Therefore, Steele still was not informed definitely on October 19 that Michael Cohen had met with some  Russian officials in, specifically, Prague. 

FBI Counterintelligence did find in a CIA report, based on Smolenkov's information, that some PA officials had traveled to the European Union in mid-August. Perhaps Smolenkov even provided a detail that connected this visit to Paul Manafort. 

Steele's October 19 Dossier report seems to indicate that Michael Cohen had traveled to the European Union in late August because Manafort had been fired from Trump's campaign staff. Manafort had been fired on about August 17. In place of Manafort, therefore, Cohen went on a planned trip to Prague in late August 2016.

=======

In the following days, FBI Counterintelligence was not able to place the traveling PA officials in Prague when Mike Cohen was thought to be there. The best that FBI Counterintelligence was able to do was to place some other traveling Russian officials in Prague -- officials from another, "parastatal" organization, Rossotrudnichestvo. Accordingly, Steele was advised to write in his October 20 report that those "parastatal" officials had met with Cohen secretly on behalf of the PA officials whom FBI Counterintelligence could not place in Prague.

COMPANY INTELLIGENCE REPORT 2016/136

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: FURTHER DETAILS OF TRUMP LAWYER COHEN’S SECRET LIAISON WITH THE KREMLIN

Summary

– Kremlin insider reports TRUMP lawyer COHEN’s secret meeting/s with Kremlin officials in August 2016 was/were held in Prague

– Russian parastatal organisation Rossotrudnichestvo used as cover for this liaison and premises in Czech capital may have been used for the meeting/s

– Pro-Putin leading Duma figure, KOSACHEV, reportedly involved as “plausibly deniable” facilitator and may have participated in the August meeting/s with COHEN

Detail

Speaking to a compatriot and friend on 19 October 2016, a Kremlin insider provided further details of reported clandestine meeting/s between Republican presidential candidate, Donald TRUMP’s lawyer Michael COHEN and Kremlin representatives in August 2016. Although the communication between them had to be cryptic for security reasons, the Kremlin insider clearly indicated to his/ her friend that the reported contact/s took place in Prague, Czech Republic.

Continuing on this theme, the Kremlin insider highlighted the importance of the Russian parastatal organisation, Rossotrudnichestvo, in this contact between TRUMP campaign representative/s and Kremlin officials. Rossotrudnichestvo was being used as cover for this relationship and its office in Prague may well have been used to host the COHEN / Russian Presidential Administration (PA) meeting/s. It was considered a “plausibly deniable” vehicle for this, whilst remaining entirely under Kremlin control.

The Kremlin insider went on to identify leading pro-PUTIN Duma figure, Konstantin KOSACHEV (Head of the Foreign Relations Committee) as an important figure in the TRUMP campaign-Kremlin liaison operation. KOSACHEV, also “plausibly deniable” being part of the Russian legislature rather than executive, had facilitated the contact in Prague and by implication, may have attended the meeting/s with COHEN there in August.

Company Comment

We reported previously, in our Company Intelligence Report 2016/135 of 19 October 2016 from the same source, that COHEN met officials from the PA Legal Department clandestinely in an EU country in August 2016. This was in order to clean up the mess left behind by western media revelations of TRUMP ex-campaign manager MANAFORT’s corrupt relationship with the former pro-Russian YANUKOVYCH regime in Ukraine and TRUMP foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE’s secret meetings in Moscow with senior regime figures in July 2016. According to the Kremlin advisor, these meeting/s were originally scheduled for COHEN in Moscow but shifted to what was considered an operationally “soft” EU country when it was judged too compromising for him to travel to the Russian capital.

20 October 2016

========

After that October 20 Dossier report, the next known report is dated December 13, 2016. Some of this report has been redacted in accordance with an agreement with Alexey Gubarev. Gubarev had sued Steele for writing in his blog that Gubarev was involved in computer-hacking. Gubarev lost his lawsuit, but he did obtain voluntary agreements to redact the Dossier passages that accused Gubarev. (I have not been able to find the pre-redaction texts.)

From the context of the redactions, it seems that Steele indicated that Gubarev allegedly had told someone that Cohen was accompanied by three "colleagues" when he attended the Prague meeting, where the agenda included discussions about computer-hacking.

The addition of the three colleagues to the Dossier story apparently caused a chronology problem. The Dossier does not name the three colleagues, but FBI Counterintelligence must have known their identities. The chronology problem was that FBI Counterintelligence was able to place the three colleagues in Prague only in early September -- not in late August.

COMPANY INTELLIGENCE REPORT 2016/166

FURTHER DETAILS OF SECRET DIALOGUE BETWEEN TRUMP CAMPAIGN TEAM, KREMLIN, AND ASSOCIATED HACKERS IN PRAGUE

Summary

– TRUMP’s representative COHEN accompanied to Prague in August/September 2016 by 3 colleagues for secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers

– Agenda included how to process deniable cash payments to operatives; contingency plans for covering up operations; and action in event of a election victory

– Some further details of Russian representatives/operatives involved; Romanian hackers employed; and use of Bulgaria as bolt hole to ‘lie low’

– Anti-CLINTON hackers and other operatives paid by both TRUMP team and Kremlin, but with ultimate loyalty to Head of PA, and his successor/s

Detail

We reported previously (2016/135 and /136) on secret meeting/s held in Prague, Czech Republic in August 2016 between then Republican presidential candidate Donald TRUMP’s representative, Michael COHEN and his interlocutors from the Kremlin working under cover of Russian NGO Rossotrudnichestvo

[REDACTED BY BUZZFEED NEWS] provided further details of these meeting/s and associated anti-CLINTON /Democratic Party operations. COHEN had been accompanied to Prague by 3 colleagues and the timing of the visit was either in the last week of August or the first week of September. One of their main Russian interlocutors was Oleg SOLODUKHIN operating under Rossotrudnichestvo cover. According to [REDACTED BY BUZZFEED NEWS] the agenda comprised questions on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the CLINTON campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow’s secret liaison with the TRUMP team more generally.

[REDACTED BY THE MOSCOW PROJECT] were significant players in this operation. In Prague, COHEN agreed contingency plans for various scenarios to protect the operation, but in particular what was to be done in the event that Hillary CLINTON won the presidency. It was important in this event that all cash payments owed were made quickly and discreetly and that cyber and other operators were stood down / able to go effectively to ground to cover their traces. (We reported earlier that the involvement of political operatives Paul MANAFORT and Carter PAGE in the secret TRUMP-Kremlin liaison had been exposed in the media in the run-up to Prague and that damage limitation of these also was discussed by COHEN with the Kremlin representatives).

In terms of practical measures to be taken, it was agreed by the two sides in Prague to stand down various “Romanian hackers” (presumably based in their homeland or neighbouring eastern Europe) and that other operatives should head for a bolt-hole in Plovdiv, Bulgaria where they should “lay low”. On payments, IVANOV’s associate said that the operatives involved had been paid by both TRUMP’s team and the Kremlin, though their orders and ultimate loyalty lay with IVANOV, as Head of the PA and thus ultimately responsible for the operation, and his designated successor/s after he was dismissed by president PUTIN in connection with the anti-CLINTON operation in mid August.

13 December 2016

Thus, on December 13, 2016, FBI Counterintelligence still had not realized that the person who had visited Prague in August and/or September 2016 was Mike Cohen -- not the Michael Cohen who worked as Trump's lawyer.  

On April 9, 2018 -- about sixteen months after that last Dossier report -- the FBI raided Michael Cohen's hotel room, home, law firm and safes -- still searching for proof that the Dossier's false statements about him were true. 

=======

Continued in Part 4

The FBI's Abuse of Michael Cohen -- Part 2

Part 1

=======

Four Dossier reports made statements about Michael Cohen.

1) Report 2016/134, dated October 18, 2016

2) Report 2016/135, dated October 19, 2016

3) Report 2016/136, dated October 20, 2016

4) Report 2016/166, dated December 13, 2016

These are the last four known Dossier reports. The gap between 2016/136 and 2016/166 has not been explained to the public.

The first known Dossier report was 2016/80, dated June 20, 2016. That report was the first in a series of 12 reports that extended through 2016/113, dated September 14, 2016. There are several gaps -- all unexplained -- in that series.

That series of 12 reports was delivered by Christopher Steele to FBI official Michael Gaeta, who was stationed in London. According to the FBI's official story, Gaeta did not send any of those 12 reports to FBI Headquarters in Washington DC. Rather, beginning in early July, Gaeta sent them, as he received them, to the FBI New York Field Office, where the Chief Division Counsel stored them and did not take any known actions on them. 

The FBI Headquarters had established the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016. According to the official FBI story, the New York Field Office's Chief Division Counsel did not send any of the Dossier reports to the Crossfire Hurricane staff until September 19, 2016. On that occasion, only six of the 12 reports were sent to the Crossfire Hurricane staff.

(I speculate that, in fact, Gaeta had sent copies all 12 reports immediately to the FBI Counterintelligence Chief. In that regard, the official FBI story is misleading.)

In any case, the Crossfire Hurricane staff had received six Dossier reports by September 19. I presume it had received the other six shortly afterwards. I presume also that the staff received the four Cohen reports shortly after their publication dates in October and December.

=======

Before the Crossfire Hurricane staff received the Dossier reports, the staff based its investigation entirely on other information. The staff began with its belief that Russian Intelligence had hacked the Democratic National Committee's computers in April 2016. The staff then proceeded with another belief that Trump campaign-staff advisor George Papadopoulos had told Australian diplomat on May 10 that Russian Intelligence was collaborating with a campaign-staff member to use those hacked documents for an "October Surprise". More specifically, Russian Intelligence intended to release some of those hacked documents (some of which might be falsely altered) to discredit Hillary Clinton shortly before the election, which was scheduled for November 8, 2016.

On September 19, the Steele Dossier was added as new information to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Before then, the Crossfire Hurricane staff already had figured that the collaborator probably was one or more of the following four members of the Trump campaign staff:

1) George Papadopoulos

2) Carter Page

3) Paul Manafort

4) Michael Flynn

When the first Dossier reports were arrived in mid-September, the Crossfire Hurricane staff saw that those reports incriminated mostly Page and (to a lesser degree) Manafort.

Accordingly, the Crossfire Hurricane staff began at the end of September to prepare an application for a FISA warrant against Page. That preparation took about three weeks. The so-called Woods Procedures verification began on October 19 (page 151), and then the warrant was completed, submitted and approved on October 21.

That was the secret situation within FBI Headquarters when Steele wrote his first three Cohen reports on October 18, 19 and 20, 2016. The Crossfire Hurricane staff was finishing its first FISA warrant -- against Page -- and so now would be ready to begin preparing a second FISA warrant -- against Cohen.

=======

The four Dossier reports about Cohen can be separated into two groups. The last three reports -- dated October 19 and 20 and December 13 -- are mainly about Cohen visiting Prague in late August or early September 2016 to meet with three Russian Intelligence officials. In contrast, the first report -- dated October 18 -- does not indicate any knowledge of that trip.

After Steele wrote that first report, someone found in an NSA database that a Michael Cohen had visited Prague during that period. Based on that found information, Steele wrote a Prague trip into his following three reports. However, it turned out that the Michael Cohen who visited Prague was not the Michael Cohen who worked as Trump's lawyer. This confusion reveals that there was some secret collaboration between Steele and someone in the US Intelligence Community who was able to search for information about people in that NSA database.

In this blog article here, I will discuss only the first Cohen report, which is ignorant about a Prague trip. I will discuss the other three Cohen reports in my following blog articles.

=======

The text of the October 18 Dossier report follows. I myself have emphasized the passages (like this) that are relevant to Cohen. (You can skip through the other passages.)

COMPANY INTELLIGENCE REPORT 2016/134

DETAILS OF KREMLIN LIAISON WITH TRUMP CAMPAIGN

Summary

- Close associate of SECHIN confirms his secret meeting in Moscow with Carter PAGE in July

- Substance included offer of large stake in Rosneft in return for lifting sanctions on Russia. PAGE confirms this is TRUMP’s intention

– SECHIN continued to think TRUMP would win presidency up to l7 October. Now looking to reorient his engagement with the US

- Kremlin insider highlights importance of TRUMP’s lawyer, Michael COHEN in covert relationship with Russia. COHEN’s wife is of Russian descent and her father a leading property developer in Moscow.

Detail

Speaking to a trusted compatriot in mid October 2016, a close associate of Rosneft President and PUTIN ally Igor SECHIN elaborated on the reported secret meeting between the latter and Carter PAGE, of US Republican presidential candidate’s foreign policy team, in Moscow in July 2016. The secret had been confirmed to him/her by a senior member of staff, in addition to by the Rosneft President himself. It took place on either 7 or 8 July, the same day or the one after Carter PAGE made a public speech to the Higher Economic School in Moscow. In terms of the substance of their discussion, SECHIN’s associate said that the Rosneft President was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered PAGE/TRUMP’s associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft in return. PAGE had expressed interest and confirmed that were TRUMP elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted.

According to SECHIN’s close associate, the Rosneft President had continued to believe that TRUMP could win the US presidency right up to 17 October, when he assessed this was no longer possible, SECHIN was keen to readapt accordingly and put feelers out to other business and political contacts in the US instead.

Speaking separately to the same compatriot in mid-October 2016, a Kremlin insider with direct access to the leadership confirmed that a key role in the secret TRUMP campaign / Kremlin relationship was being played by the Republican candidate's personal lawyer Michael COHEN. [REDACTION]

Source Comment

5. SECHIN’s associate opined that although PAGE had not stated it explicitly to SECHIN, he had clearly implied that in terms of his comment on TRUMP’s intention to lift Russian sanctions if elected president, he was speaking with the Republican candidate’s full authority.

Company Comment 6.

6. [REDACTION]

18 October 2016

Below is an image showing the two redactions at the end of the report.

=======

According to this Dossier report, Steele became aware of Cohen's importance because of some information that Steele received from "a Kremlin insider with direct access to the leadership". However, now in late 2022, the public knows that there was no such "Kremlin insider". Instead, Steele got all his information from Igor Danchenko and his fellow ignorant gossipers. Furthermore, the confused information about a Michael Cohen visiting Prague would not have come from a real "Kremlin insider" who really knew something about the Michael Cohen who worked as Trump's lawyer.

=======

Since Steele's idea about Cohen collaborating with Russian Intelligence did not come from a "Kremlin insider", where did the idea come from?

This Dossier report indicates that Steele's idea came from some information about Cohen's father-in-law -- supposedly a Russian who was "a leading property developer in Moscow".

The maiden name of Cohen's wife is Laura Shusterman. Her father was a Ukrainian Jew who had emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1973 -- almost two decades before the collapse of the Soviet Union. He never set foot in Moscow. Why did Steele imagine that this Mr. Shusterman had something significant to do with Moscow real estate?

On August 24, 2020, I published a blog article titled Michael Gaeta and FBI Counterintelligence -- Part 5. (See also Part 6.) There, I wrote about how Steele had come across information that former Ukrainian President Yulia Tymoshenko had provided to a New York court about the alleged laundering of Ukrainian money in New York real estate. That blog article included the following passage:

In 2011, Yulia Tymoshenko -- the Ukrainian politician whom [Ukrainian politician Viktor] Yanukovych had defeated in the 2010 election -- had filed a civil lawsuit in the federal court in New York that accused her political opponents of having operated in a U.S.-based racketeering enterprise. The suit alleged that Manafort had colluded with Dmytro Firtash, a Putin-connected Ukrainian natural gas magnate and a Yanukovych ally, to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains from Ukrainian gas interests through a "labyrinth" of companies in Panama, Cyprus, and Europe -- and into real estate ventures in New York City. ....

[In 2008], according to documents filed in the lawsuit by Tymoshenko's lawyers, Manafort had met with Firtash in Kiev to discuss a proposal for the oligarch to invest $100 million in a global real estate fund. As part of the arrangement, Firtash would pay $1.5 million in management fees to a firm owned by Manafort and a real estate executive named Brad Zackson, who had once been a manager for the Trump Organization under Fred Trump, Donald's father.

Suffice it to say here that Tymoshenko's court documents provided to Steele a wealth of details about how Ukrainian money was laundered in New York real estate. I speculate that, in those documents, Steele came across the Mr. Shusterman who is Cohen's father-in-law.  I speculate that in October 2016, Steele used that information about Shusterman to concoct an insinuation about Cohen. In that process, Steele also turned Shusterman into "a leading property developer in Moscow".

When Steele wrote his first Cohen report, Steele still did not know how he would develop this concoction. One day later, however, Steele was informed -- by someone who had read his first Cohen report -- that Cohen had visited Prague in August-September 2016. This new information caused Steele to abandon completely his real-estate story and to switch completely to the Prague-visit story. That switch turned out to be disastrous for Steele after it turned out that another Michael Cohen had visited Prague.

=======

The two passages that were redacted at the Dossier reports end involved a Russian businessman named Aleksey Gubarev. He sued Buzzfeed, claiming that he had been libeled by Buzzfeed, which had published the Dossier for public consumption. Buzzfeed prevailed in the lawsuit, but agreed to redact all the passages about Gubarev from its Internet versions of the Dossier. 

As a consequence, I have not been able to find the entire original text of the Dossier's October 18 report. Perhaps something that Gubarev allegedly said or did caused Steele to bring Cohen into Steele's insinuations that Russian Intelligence had colluded with some Trump associates. 

=======

In his book, Cohen does not address the Dossier in a detailed manner. In particular, Cohen does not address the Dossier's remarks about Cohen's father-in-law. (Cohen's book is a meandering rant that lacks in index, so it's difficult to verify what his book does or does not say about any particular person.)

However, BookTV has broadcast a lecture that Cohen gave in a bookstore about his book, and in that lecture Cohen mentioned that his father-in-law had immigrated from Ukraine in 1973, had never set foot in Moscow and had not invested in Moscow real estate. (Generally, Cohen says persuasively that every statement in the Dossier about Cohen is false.) 

=======

It's possible that Steele brought Cohen into the collusion story by something that Steele learned about Cohen's friend Felix Sater. Here are three articles about the Cohen-Sater relationship:

Felix Sater and Michael Cohen: Childhood Friends

A Former Russian Spy Worked On A Trump Moscow Deal During The Presidential Campaign

Who is Felix Sater and what's his role in Michael Cohen's plea deal?

However, neither Cohen's book nor Steele's Dossier indicate obviously that Sater was a consideration -- especially in late 2016 when Steele wrote his Cohen reports. 

After Steele's first Cohen report -- the report dated October 18, 2016, which mentioned falsely that Cohen's father-in-law was "a leading property developer in Moscow" -- Steele never wrote anything more (as far as the public knows) about Cohen's direct or indirect involvement in real-estate deals. Steele wrote only about Cohen's supposed visit to Prague.

In other words, Steele seems to be ignorant in late 2016 about any Cohen involvement with Sater in any real-estate deals or in any other activities. For that reason, I think that Steele's interest in Cohen was prompted by something he read about a Mr. Shusterman in the documents that Tymoshenko had provided to a New York court in 2011.

=======

Continued in Part 3

The FBI's Abuse of Michael Cohen -- Part 1

On April 9, 2018, the FBI searched the apartment of Michael Cohen, a lawyer currently (at that time) employed by President Donald Trump. Cohen describes the search in his book Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics. 

The cover of Michael Cohen's
book Revenge

This book is a meandering rant. It seems to be a first-draft that lacked a professional editor. The book does not show at all the "Donald Trump weaponized the US Department of Justice against his critics". In particular, the book does not show that President Trump had anything at all to do with that search of Cohen's apartment. 

On April 9, Cohen and his wife were staying in a nearby hotel room, because water was leaking from apartment above their own apartment. At 7 a.m., about "two dozen" men and women in black suits" crowded into the hallway outside their hotel room. There was a knock on the hotel room's door. Cohen, dressed only in shorts and a t-shirt, looked through the door's peephole.

... I had no idea what they wanted. So, I opened the door and said, "Can I help you?"

The lead agent was central casting: standing about six foot two, broad-shouldered, well-manicured. Over his right shoulder was one of the biggest men I've ever encountered. He was at least six inches taller than the lead agent, and had to step sideways to pass through the doorframe. He didn't say a word; he didn't need to.

We didn't know it at the time, but meanwhile, simultaneously, 48 other agents converged on my apartment that was undergoing renovation due to the flood, as well as my law office and our safety deposit book at TD Bank.

.... the warrant said my home, hotel room, and offices were to be searched for evidence related to conspiracy, false bank entries, false statements to a financial institution, wire fraud, bank fraud and illegal campaign contributions.

The agent asked me to unlock and and over my cellphones, and step into the hallway. .....

They spent five hours going through our rooms. They went through the sofas, looked behind curtains. They looked on top of and beneath cabinets, and even removed, checked and photographed all of my daughter's stuff in her underwear drawer. .... To this day, I still don't understand the need to photograph my college-age daughter's underwear. ....

Each of the bedrooms had a safe, and I was directed to open them. ....

Throughout, we didn't get upset. Not in the slightest. There was nothing that we had done that would have caused us any worry.

So I was beyond surprised then they walked out of the hotel room with a dozen boxes.

The FBI officials searching Cohen's law office seized 16 pages of shredded documents. An FBI laboratory at Quantico reassembled those 16 pages and (according to a Buzzfeed article quoted by Cohen) found that the shredded pages "don't seem to have a connection to the current investigations by the Office of Special Counsel and Southern District of New York". Cohen quotes also a longer passage from the Buzzfeed article:

It remains to be seen whether any of the reconstructed documents are of use to federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York in their ongoing probe into Cohen, whose home, office, and hotel room were raided by the FBI in April [2018].

They [the shredded 16 pages] are among the nearly four million individual paper records or electronic files discovered on more than a dozen cellphones, computers, and other devices. Some of the devices -- including old cellphones, cameras and laptops -- belonged to Cohen's wife and children.

On April 14 -- five days after the FBI search -- The Washington Post indicated that the search had been caused primarily by Christopher Steele's Dossier about President Trump's alleged collusion with Russian Intelligence.

Cohen's visiting Prague ... is concrete. Over the course of three of the Dossier's reports, the claim is outlined -- but we hasten to note that all these allegations have not been confirmed by The Washington Post.

Cohen rightfully mocks the newspaper's tendentious "journalism".

Well, if they weren't confirmed, then what the hell were they doing being reported as "concrete"? The Post and others wanted to say I took over management of the [Trump campaign staff's alleged] relationship with Russia after Paul Manafort was fired [from that campaign staff in mid-August 2016] and that I secretly traveled abroad [to Prague] to do so.  

=======

Keep in mind that, when this search happened, Trump still employed Cohen as his lawyer. Cohen still felt himself to be innocent and expected to be exonerated by the FBI. He looked forward to his continued employment by Trump.

... other than poor reporting from the press, life returned to some sense of normalcy for a while after the raid. Reporters still diving into the Steele Dossier ... slowly began to see how baseless it all was -- at least in my case. So, I went back to the Trump fold, believing there was nothing to the federal investigation and that it would eventually all just blow over.

Immediately after the raid on my home and office, Trump himself called and told me not to worry. He told me to "stay strong." He told me it was all bullshit and the investigation was going nowhere. Our conversation was about five or ten minutes long. He told me three times there was no Russian collusion. .... I was still in his good graces, or so I thought.

Less than two weeks after the FBI raid, Trump slammed a report in The New York Times that said his legal team was bracing for me to "flip", and he went wild on Twitter:

The New York Times .... are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will "flip". Sorry, I don't see Michael doing that, despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media.

Since I didn't hear from the DOJ [Department of Justice] at all -- despite four months of repeated attempts to reach out to them -- I mistakenly thought all was well. The whole thing seemed to fall flat .. until the creation of the special counsel [Robert Mueller] into Russian collusion.[on May 17, 2017]

Trump continued to employ Cohen as a lawyer for two months longer -- until June 15, 2018. On about that date, Cohen was questioned by Mueller's staff.

On June 15, Trump wrote on Twitter that Cohen was not his lawyer any more, but Cohen was "a good person" and that the FBI's investigation of Cohen was an "attack on our country".

Cohen insinuates that Trump disassociated himself from Cohen in June 2018 on the advice of Rudy Giuliani. During that two-month interval, Trump had continued to think, correctly, that Cohen never would or could provide any information incriminating Trump in collusion with Russia. 

After Cohen lost his job as Trump's lawyer, Cohen began to blame Trump for his situation. Trump should have fired Mueller. Trump and Giuliani were setting Cohen up "to make sure I took the fall". 

Cohen's blaming Trump for the FBI's abuse of Cohen is preposterous. For example:

From the beginning, it should be understood that Trump always had control of the Mueller investigation. Technically, Mueller was not independent. He could be fired, the way Nixon fired Archibald Cox. ... So you can bet that instead of firing Mueller, Trump was protecting himself by closely monitoring what went on with me.

=======

Cohen's blaming of Trump is especially preposterous because "one of those [officials] who works inside the DOJ spoke to us on the condition of background for this book."

"This is how we do things," the DOJ official stated. "We thought (Trump) was a mob boss and that Cohen was his consigliere. But Cohen didn't know as much as we thought [he did]," or conversely the DOJ thought I was an expert on hiding shit. ...

What the DOJ was specifically looking for were crimes by Trump related to Russia. The DOS was correct in stating I [Cohen] did not know as much as they suspected.

In the end, the DOJ had to indict me on something. "We put a lot of effort into it, and it was a high-profile case," the agent stated.  "We're happy we got him [Cohen] on something -- and we used a lot of pressure to get him [Cohen] to a plea deal. It's really questionable we would've been able [without a plea deal] to convict on some of those charges."

In explaining what "pressure" the DOJ used, the agent confessed, "We pulled every record we could. We talked to everyone and tried to use anyone who we thought have a connection to him (Cohen) to put pressure on him."

"We have to change some of this," the DOJ source stated. "We're on the right side of history and the law. But sometimes we're arrogant. Our power makes us this way."

And all of this began because of the Steele Dossier: that pile of unsubstantiated bullshit fiction about me. ....

Why did they [the DOJ] take the unprecedented step of raiding an attorney's office -- and not just any attorney but the attorney to the President of the United States ...?

... According to the DOJ source, I deserved "something". .... But to try to enforce the law, the DOJ stretched it to the point of breaking. And as the DOJ official told me, it all began "with that stupid dossier".

=======

Continued in Part 2