My Conspiracy Theory About the Prague-Meeting Hoax -- Part 1

I recently published a seven-part series of blog articles titled The FBI's Abuse of Michael Cohen. While doing so, I developed a conspiracy theory about the Prague-meeting hoax. According to Christopher Steele's Dossier, Cohen met secretly with several Kremlin officials in Prague in August and/or September 2016 in order to discuss a collusion between Donald Trump and Russian Intelligence.

The Prague meeting seemed to be confirmed in April 2018 when an unidentified US Intelligence official leaked to two journalists -- Greg Gordon and Peter Stone -- that an unidentified East European intelligence agency had detected two events:

1) Cohen's cell-phone number pinging a cell tower in the Prague area, and

2) a Russian-language communication about Cohen visiting that area.

I will call this "the Double Detection".

The article by Gordon and Stone was published on April 13, 2018. The apparent reason for this leak was to justify to the public the FBI's raid on Michael Cohen's hotel room, apartment and law office that had been carried out on April 9. Since Cohen was the Vice President of The Trump Organization and also was President Trump's lawyer, the raid was sure to provoke public criticism. The leaker -- likely a high-ranking FBI official -- leaked this information in order to assure the public that the raid was not based entirely on Steele's Dossier.

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Since, however, this Michael Cohen never visited Prague, the Double Detection must have been staged in order to plant false evidence that he indeed was there. A device with his phone number pinged a Prague cell tower, and a Russian-language conversation was staged.

I speculate that the Double Detection was arranged by a group of persons who had been associated with the US Intelligence Community and now were working to elect Hillary Clinton. They knew that an East European intelligence agency would detect the two events and would, if asked, share those findings with US Intelligence. From there, the information might be leaked to the US electorate shortly before the Presidential election if a Trump victory seemed possible.

The Steele Dossier was part of a larger program to collect incriminating information about Trump and then to reveal that information to the electorate as necessary. In particular, the Dossier incriminated Trump in collusion with Russian Intelligence and mafias.

The first Dossier reports indicated that the key intermediary between Trump and Russian villains was Carter Page. In subsequent Dossier reports, the key intermediary became Paul Manafort, until Trump fired him from his campaign-manager position on about August 19, 2016. Then on October 16 -- about three weeks before Election Day -- Steele published his first Dossier report indicating that the ultimate intermediary would be Michael Cohen. As a close and long-time associate of Trump, Cohen was a much more impressive collusion culprit than Page or Manafort had been.

Although Cohen had not travled, worked and lived in Russia, Cohen had been involved in a project to develop a Trump Hotel in Moscow that might cause him to visit there for at least a few days in 2016. Since that project fell through, however, Clinton's secret group developed a scheme to place Cohen in at least East Europe, in at least a fictitious, secret situation.

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The following image shows the result of the YouGov/Economist opinion poll conducted during October 15-18, 2016 -- about the time when secret preparations were underway to cast Cohen as the new intermediary. Despite the "grab-them-by-the-pussy" scandal that had begun on October 7, Trump's support was holding steady at 38%, whereas Clinton's support was on a downward trajectory, declining from 44% to 42%. An upset victory by Trump or Clinton seemed increasingly plausible.

In this situation, Clinton might have to resort to revealing the Dossier to the electorate before Election Day, November 8. This revelation would be reinforced by leaks from the US Intelligence Community revealing that Cohen's presence had been detected in Prague, thus confirming the Dossier's reports about Cohen's role in the imaginary collusion.

Of course, Cohen would deny that he had visited Prague, but he would not be able to convince the public adequately until after Election Day.  

Although Clinton had prepared this October Surprise -- the revelations of the Dossier and of the Double Detections -- she had become confident by the beginning of October that she would defeat Trump. The YouGov/Economist poll conducted during October 30 - November 1 found that she was leading him steadily by 46% to 43% among likely voters. Because of this confidence, Clinton did not resort to this October Surprise.

The Dossier remained secret until January 2017, and the Double Detection remained secret until April 2018. Keep in mind, though, that the Dossier and the Double Detection had been prepared for potential revelations in the last week of October or the first week of November 2016. The revelations did not happen only because a Clinton victory seemed certain.

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Plenty of US Intelligence Community officials were willing to deceive the US electorate in order to prevent Trump from winning an election. For example, here is a list of 50 such officials:

Jim Clapper, former director of national intelligence

Leon Panetta, former CIA director

John Brennan, former CIA director

Fingar, former National Intelligence Council chair

Rick Ledgett, former National Security Agency deputy director

John McLaughlin, former CIA acting director

Michael Morell, former CIA acting director

Mike Vickers, former defense undersecretary for intelligence

Doug Wise, former Defense Intelligence Agency deputy director

Nick Rasmussen, former National Counterterrorism Center director

Russ Travers, former National Counterterrorism Center acting director

Andy Liepman, former National Counterterrorism Center deputy director

John Moseman, former CIA chief of staff

Larry Pfeiffer, former CIA chief of staff

Jeremy Bash, former CIA chief of staff

Rodney Snyder, former CIA chief of staff

Glenn Gerstell, former National Security Agency general counsel

David Priess, former CIA analyst and manager

Pam Purcilly, former CIA deputy director of analysis

Marc Polymeropoulos, former CIA senior operations officer

Chris Savos, former CIA senior operations officer

John Tullius, former CIA senior intelligence officer

David A. Vanell, former CIA senior operations officer

Kristin Wood, former CIA senior intelligence officer

David Buckley, former CIA inspector general

Nada Bakos, former CIA analyst and targeting officer

Patty Brandmaier, former CIA senior intelligence officer

James B. Bruce, former CIA senior intelligence officer

David Cariens, former CIA intelligence analyst

Janice Cariens, former CIA operational support officer

Paul Kolbe, former CIA senior operations officer

Peter Corsell, former CIA analyst

Brett Davis, former CIA senior intelligence officer

Roger Zane George, former national intelligence officer

Steven L. Hall, former CIA senior intelligence officer

Kent Harrington, former national intelligence officer

Don Hepburn, former national security executive

Timothy D. Kilbourn, former dean of CIA’s Kent School of Intelligence Analysis

Ron Marks, former CIA officer

Jonna Hiestand Mendez, former CIA technical operations officer

Emile Nakhleh, former director of CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program

Gerald A. O’Shea, former CIA senior operations officer

Nick Shapiro, former CIA deputy chief of staff

John Sipher, former CIA senior operations officer

Stephen Slick, former National Security Council senior director for intelligence programs

Cynthia Strand, former CIA deputy assistant director for global issues

Greg Tarbell, former CIA deputy executive director

David Terry, former National Intelligence Collection Board chairman

Greg Treverton, former National Intelligence Council chair

Winston Wiley, former CIA director of analysis

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Continued in Part 2

The FBI's Abuse of Michael Cohen -- Part 7

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

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Christopher Steele's Dossier became available to the public in January 2017 -- four months before the establishment of Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation. For sure, Mueller's staff intended to investigate the Dossier's story about Michael Cohen meeting secretly with Kremlin officials in Prague.

According to staff lawyer Andrew Weissmann, however, that intended investigation of Cohen was delayed because Weissmann very soon received from another lawyer a tip that a Russian "oligarch" (Viktor Vekselberg) had deposited money into an account that Cohen had used to pay to silence two former female lovers of Donald Trump. According to Weissmann, Mueller feared that this sexual aspect of the Cohen investigation might cause a public uproar, as the Monica Lewinsky aspect had done in the earlier Special Counsel investigation of President Bill Clinton. Therefore, Mueller decided to turn the initial investigation of Cohen over to the FBI's Southern District of New York (SDNY).

Mueller and his staff expected the SDNY to implicate Cohen in some process crimes, a situation that eventually would enable that staff to pressure Cohen to confess his secret knowledge of the imaginary Trump-Putin collusion to accomplish an October Surprise that would enable Trump to win unfairly the USA's 2016 Presidential election.

The raid on Cohen's home, hotel room and law office in April 2018 was carried out by the SDNY, without the Special Counsel's involvement.

Of course, the SDNY easily did implicate Cohen in various process crimes and then turn him back over to be Special Counsel staff to be pressured into confessing, but then Cohen was not able to reveal any such knowledge. After all, the collusion always had been just imaginary.

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When Weissmann had been informed about Russian "oligarch" Vekselberg depositing money into Cohen's account that was used to pay hush-money to Trump's alleged lovers, Weissmann surely assumed this arrangement as a key part of the imaginary collusion where Russians secretly had helped Trump win the election. However, the Mueller Report does not say anything about that situation where Vekselberg's money and the hush money were passing through Cohen's bank account. Therefore we should deduce that Mueller's staff was not able to connect "oligarch" Vekselverg's money to any such collusion.

Also, the Mueller Report does not write anything along the lines that:

* the Special Counsel offered Cohen legal leniency for his process crimes in exchange for his secret knowledge about the Trump-Putin collusion,

* but Cohen responded that he did not know anything about any such collusion and furthermore perceived the FBI's collusion delusion to be preposterous.

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The FBI had interviewed Steele's "primary sub-source" Igor Danchenko already in January 2017 and so knew that the "Kremlin insider" who told the yarn about Cohen in Prague was Danchenko's former school-mate Olga Galkina, who was living in Cyprus. Therefore, the Mueller Report ignored that yarn except for three sentences stating simply that Cohen had not gone to Prague. The Report does not explain the FBI's certainty about this point.

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In regard to Cohen, the Mueller Report's main idea is to insinuate that there was something sinister about proposals to develop a Trump Hotel in Moscow. The insinuation was that Putin was helping Trump to develop that hotel project as one part of a larger collusion to help Trump win the 2016 election by devious methods. The FBI's idea -- reinforced by the Dossier -- seems to be that Putin's secret help on the hotel project would compromise Trump and so allow Putin to blackmail and extort Trump. 

At that time, the Trump Organization had developed six Trump Hotels in the USA, two in Scotland and one in Ireland. On one hand, developing Trump Hotels was not a new activity, but on the other hand, a Trump Hotel in Moscow would be in a novel location and environment. 

Indeed, Cohen was involved in some talk about the proposed Moscow hotel, but nothing significant happened. No site was selected, no financing was provided, no Russian partners were recruited, no business trips were done, and no contracts were signed. The main promoter of the project was Felix Sater, a Russian immigrant who lived in the USA and dabbled in real estate.

The Special Counsel indicted Cohen for stating publicly that the project essentially had ended in January 2016, whereas some trivial conversations had happened as late as June 2016. Cohen wrote in his book that he pleaded guilty to all the charges -- no matter how absurd -- just to prevent an indictment of his wife for evading taxes. He had turned against Trump and was happy to incriminate Trump in any wrong-doing, but Cohen simply did not know anything about the imaginary election collusion.

If Cohen had gone to trial on the charge that he had not mentioned the June 2016 conversations about the hotel project, then the prosecutors would have had to prove that this omission was material to the FBI's investigations. If the FBI had been told earlier about the June 2016, then nothing would have changed in the FBI investigations. The FBI never had to prove the materiality, however, because Cohen pleaded guilty and did not go to trial.

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This blog article is the end of my series titled "The FBI's Abuse of Michael Cohen". However, I intend to write another series summarizing my current speculations about the Prague-meeting yarn.

The FBI's Abuse of Michael Cohen -- Part 6

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

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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.

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

The FBI's Abuse of Michael Cohen -- Part 5

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

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Andrew Weissman's book Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation, published in 2020, provides some limited information about the FBI's investigation of Michael Cohen. 

Cover of Andrew Weissman's
book, Where Law Ends

In Mueller's Special Counsel staff, Weissman headed one of three "principle teams" -- the team that investigated Paul Manafort. The other two teams investigated "Russian interference in the 2016 election" and "obstructions of justice". (The overwhelming majority of the staff members were current or past FBI officials.)

Weissmann tells at length how he intended to "flip" Manafort by prosecuting him for tax evasions, for failure to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), for lying to the FBI and for any other process crimes. Once Manafort's guilt for such crimes was proved, then Weissmann intended to promise leniency in the punishments if Manafort would provide evidence that Donald Trump or his associates had colluded with Russia to affect the election.  

In that regard, Weissmann's book is a shaggy-dog story. Eventually, Weissmann did confess to some crimes and agree to cooperate with Weissmann. However, the book does not reveal what Manafort was asked about the suspected collusion -- or what relevant information Manafort provided. It should be obvious to any intelligent reader that Manafort could not provide any information about such collusion -- because no such collusion ever happened.

Likewise, the book's telling about the principle team investigation of "Russian interference in the 2016 election" is another shaggy-dog story. That team indicted several Russians for such interference. One such Russian, Yevgeny Prigozhin, hired an American law firm, which agreed to stand trial. When the trial was about to begin in March 2020, the prosecutors dropped all the charges, and so the trial never took place. Weissmann's book tells about the indictments, but says nothing at all about the dropping of all charges right before the trial.

(The intelligent reader should surmise that the Special Counsel's indictment of Prigozhin was just a publicity stunt that was not based on compelling evidence. The Special Counsel had not foreseen that any of the indicted Russians ever might appear to stand trial.)

Weissmann's book does not significantly discuss the fact that Mueller's final report said that no evidence was found incriminating any Americans in the suspected collusion with Russia. Rather than discuss that finding, Weiussman's book complains at length that the Special Counsel staff was not able to compel President Trump to answer all the arrogant, obnoxious questions that Weissmann thinks should have been asked.

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Weissman's discussion of Michael Cohen is limited, because the investigation of Cohen was removed from the Special Counsel's jurisdiction -- in particular, from Weissmann's supervision.

Of course, Cohen had nothing at all to do with any Russian collusion to affect the election -- because there never was any such collusion.

During the Special Counsel investigation, Cohen came to Weissmann's attention because an outside attorney (not named in the book) -- who had become acquainted with Weissman during a previous FBI investigation of the Enron company -- sent Weissmann a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) that a foreign bank (represented by that attorney) intended to submit to the US Treasury Department about Cohen. 

That SAR indicated that, "soon after the 2016 election", some payments had been deposited into "a Cohen business account ... from a source linked to a Russian oligarch". After those words, on page 143 of his book, Weissman never writes another word in the following 200 pages about those payments or that unnamed "oligarch". 

The SAR mentioned also that the same "Cohen business account" had, before the election, deposited $130,000 into the account of adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. Mueller worried that this sexual aspect might turn his own Special Counsel investigation into something like the Monica Lewinsky circus, and so he decided to transfer the entire Cohen investigation to the FBI's Southern District of New York (SDNY). Therefore, Weissmann's book does not provide any further inside information about the investigation and prosecution of Cohen. 

Eventually, Cohen pleaded guilty to several charges (e.g. tax evasion, campaign-finance violations) that had nothing at all to do with any suspected Russian collusion to affect the 2016 election. In the course of his ordeal, Cohen turned against Trump and so was eager to provide any information incriminating Trump that he knew. 

After Cohen was convicted, he agreed to answer the questions of the Special Counsel staff. Of course, that staff asked Cohen about the suspected election collusion, but Weissmann's book does not specify any such questions -- or Cohen's answers. So Weissmann's narrative about Cohen is yet another shaggy-dog story. The intelligent reader should surmise that Cohen could not provide Weissmann any information about election collusion -- because no such collusion happened. 

Cohen did tell the Special Counsel staff that he had made some misleading statements about a project to develop a Trump-branded hotel in Moscow. Cohen had said publicly that the project had ended by January 2016, although some discussions had occurred intermittently until June 2016. In the post-January discussions, however, their essence was that no significant progress was being accomplished.

Obviously, Weissmann and some of his fellow staff members were obsessed by their suspicion that Russian President Vladimir Putin was secretly helping Trump to establish the Moscow hotel as a reward for Trump's collusion. 

Cohen, in his own book, writes (pages 10-11) that in January 2016, his associate Felix Sater had tried to arrange for him, Cohen, to travel to Russia make some progress on the hotel project. (Cohen was not only Trump's lawyer; he was acting also as an executive in Trump's organization.) However, Cohen decided not to do the trip, because he lacked any reliable information that any relevant person in Moscow had the necessary licenses, permits and funding to develop such a hotel project. In Cohen's mind, his decision in January 2016 to not travel to Moscow was the actual end of the project, although there were a few more discussions in the following months, into June 2016.   

Nevertheless, the FBI compelled Cohen to plead guilty to lying when he had said that nothing happened in the hotel project after January 2016. In general, Cohen says he was innocent of all the charges, but he was compelled to plead guilty because he feared his wife might be prosecuted likewise for the tax-evasion charges. 

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When Weissmann wrote in his book that  "soon after the 2016 election", some payments had been deposited into "a Cohen business account ... from a source linked to a Russian oligarch", Weissmann intended that his book's readers would assume that these deposits incriminated Cohen somehow. 

Since, however, Weissmann never writes another word about those deposits or that "oligarch", the intelligent reader should surmise that those deposits had nothing at all to do with any Russian collusion in the USA's 2016 election." That passage in Weissmann's book is just a gratuitous and malicious smear of Cohen. 

Exactly what was this "source linked to a Russian oligarch"? It was not even the "oligarch" himself! Rather, it was merely a "source linked to a Russian oligarch".

According to another book, Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump (page 241), which I will discuss in my next blog article, the "oligarch" was Viktor Vekselberg, who paid Cohen's company Essential Consultants for "investment consulting".

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The Special Counsel's published report stated that Cohen did not travel to Prague, despite the many Dossier statements that he had done so. Weissmann does not write anything about the Special Counsel's investigation of this trip or about its firm conclusion that the Prague trip had not happened.

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Continued in Part 6

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

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

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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.

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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..

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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".

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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. 

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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. 

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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:

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Continued in Part 3