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The book Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump, was written by Fusion GPS owners Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch and was published in November 2019.
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| Cover of the book Crime in Progress, by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch |
Simpson and Fritsch hired Christopher Steele, who wrote the Dossier.
The book's final chapter suggests that false information about Michael Cohen visiting Prague was "misinformation fed to Steele to discredit him".
It is certainly possible that Cohen was mistakenly identified as one of the attendees of the [Prague] meeting by Steele's source. It could also be that the whole story of the Prague meeting was misinformation fed to Steele to discredit him, something the former spy [Steele] knew to be a risk anytime he collected information from sources.
Yet Cohen has never publicly produced a concrete alibi concerning is whereabouts during the period in question, and there are still unexplained aspects of the alleged incident, such as reports of cell signals from Cohen's phone in the region and reports of his presence picked up by foreign intelligence agencies.
It's likely that Simpson and Fritsch knew by November 2019 (when their book was published) that Steele's "primary sub-source" was Igor Danchenko. I think Danchenko had told Steele most of what he had told the FBI in early 2017, and then Steele told Simpson and Fritsch.
If so, then it's likely also that Simpson and Fritsch knew that Danchenko had heard the Prague-visit yarn from Olga Galkina, a former high-school classmate (each was about 38 years old in 2016), who worked for "oligarch" Aleksey Gubarev in Cyprus during most of 2016. (In his Dossier, Steele called Galkina a "Kremlin insider".)
Since Simpson and Fritsch might know significant information about Galkina that is not known to the public, I take seriously their speculation that the Prague-trip yarn was fed to Steele in order to discredit him. I perceive two likely culprits: 1) Gubarev, and 2) Russian Intelligence.
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As Galkina's employer in Cyprus, Gubarev might have learned (for example, by secretly reading her communications) that she was earning money also by selling derogatory information to Danchenko, who in turn was selling it to Steele. Some such derogatory information was about Gubarev himself. (Eventually, Gubarev sued Steele for defamation.)
Gubarev fired Galkina in Cyprus shortly before she told the Prague-trip yarn to Danchenko in October. The ostensible justification for her firing was that she chronically came to work late, often drunk. However, that justification might be just a pretext for another, real reason -- that Gubarev had learned she was selling derogatory information about himself.
In this situation, Gubarev himself might have told Galkina -- before he fired her -- the false story about Cohen visiting Prague. Doing so, Gubarev intended that the false story eventually would discredit Galkina, Danchenko and Steele. In order to give his false story an initial, secret plausibility, Gubarev caused Cohen's phone number to ping in Prague and to cause a couple of Russians in Europe to communicate about Cohen being in Prague. (Gubarev was wealthy enough to accomplish such spoofs.)
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The other likely culprit, Russian Intelligence, might have learned about the Galkina-Danchenko-Steele arrangement in various ways. For example, Galkina herself might have been recruited to work as an agent for Russian Intelligence. Or perhaps Gubarev himself occasionally informed and cooperated with Russian Intelligence.
In any such case, Russian Intelligence likewise could have caused Cohen's phone number to ping in Prague and to cause a couple of Russians in Europe to communicate about Cohen being in Prague. Furthermore, Russian Intelligence might have known that those pings and communications would be detected by an East European intelligence agency.
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In any such scenario, the selection of Cohen to be the fall-guy is puzzling. In September 2016, Cohen was not an obvious candidate for involvement in any hoax about Trump-Russian collusion. In late 2015, Cohen had played a role in a proposal to develop a Trump hotel in Moscow, but that proposal had ended essentially in January 2016. Cohen was not involved significantly in Trump's election campaign.
If Russian Intelligence had wanted to concoct a false story about a Prague meeting, then it would have made much more sense to implicate, say, Carter Page rather than Michael Cohen.
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In relation to their Russian-collusion conspiracy theory, Simpson and Fritsch write that they became interested in Cohen in September 2016 (page 234). In that month, a Fusion GPS employee, Jacob Berkowitz, observed that Cohen had addressed a Twitter tweet to Sergei Millian, asking whether Millian had seen Trump's standing in the polls. Following that observation, ...
... Fusion asked Steele in the fall of 2016 to see whether Cohen rang any bells among his sources in Russia. ... On October 18, Steele filed a [Dossier] memo with the first mention of Cohen. ....
At Fusion's urging, Steele kept pushing his sources for more information on Cohen. [On October 20,] two days after his first memo mentioning Cohen, he came back with more: In August [2016], Cohen had held a secret meeting with "Kremlin officials" in Prague, Steele's source [Galkina] said.
It was a stunning report. While there was no way to immediately verify Cohen's whereabouts, other aspects of the Prague reporting fit with information coming in at the time from independent sources. One of the Russians who Steele [i,.e. Galkina] said was at the meeting ran the Prague office of a Russian government cultural organization [Rossotrudnichestvo] that the U.S. authorities believed was a front for Russian intelligence.
Simpson and Fritsch add that ...
... other aspects of the Prague reporting fit with the information coming in at the time from independent sources.
It's likely that this other information was data from an NSA database that a Mike Cohen (not the Michael Cohen who worked as Trump's lawyer) had been in Prague in August 2016.
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While Fusion GPS was monitoring Millian's Twitter communications in September 2016, Cohen happened to send an election-related tweet to Millian.
Therefore, Simpson and Fritsch asked Steele whether he could provide any information about Cohen's involvement in the imaginary Trump-Russia collusion to affect the USA's 2016 election. Therefore, Steele asked Danchenko (located in the USA), who asked "Kremlin insider" Galkina (located in Cyprus). In order to keep earning money in this arrangement, Galkina told a yarn -- Cohen had met recently with Kremlin officials in Eastern Europe -- that she knew would please Danchenko, Steele, Simpson and Fritsch.
That is how Cohen got included in Steele's Dossier.
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Continued in Part 7
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