Several of my recent pieces pointed the finger at South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham for supporting Russiagate even while being the most prominent Republican voice speaking out against the use of the false narrative against the President. Watch this video, an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo:
Notice all those times Lindsey Graham refers to “the Russian sub-source”?
Sorry, LIndsey, the source is not a Russian. And, you know this, sir.
It is a Ukrainian-born person living in America named Igor Danchenko who was the subsource for the Steele Dossier. Gregg Jarrett has a couple pieces on this, one which we quoted from extensively in this piece, published earlier today. But here is more information, written in a Fox piece by Julia Musto:
In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Jarrett explained that he had previously run into former Brookings Institution senior research analyst Igor Danchenko’s name several times.
“I could never piece it together. Because frankly…it is so wild and stupid that Steele’s source was not from Russia but — it’s a guy in Washington, D.C. working for the liberal Brookings Institution,” he said.
“Now, it sort of makes sense because the president of Brookings at the time was Strobe Talbott: [a] long-time Hillary Clinton ally who was hoping to fuel the collusion narrative and had his own contacts with Christopher Steele,” said Jarrett…
…The FBI knew who Danchenko was and interviewed him in 2017 about the information he provided for the Steele dossier that purported to show Trump campaign ties to the Russian government. Danchenko cooperated on the condition the FBI keep his identity secret so he could protect himself, the paper reported.
But that all changed when Attorney General William Barr directed the FBI to declassify the report about its three-day interview of Danchenko and turn it over to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., whose Judiciary Committee has been investigating the origins of the Russia probe. Graham wanted the interview out because it further undercuts the credibility of the Steele dossier, he said.
Graham released the declassified documents July 17 that had redacted Danchenko’s name and identifying information, but an online blog post titled “I Found the Primary Subsource” pieced together clues and identified Danchekno. RT, a Kremlin-owned news site, then published an article also outing Danchenko’s name.
Danchenko was born in Ukraine and is a Russian-trained lawyer who earned degrees at the University of Louisville and Georgetown University, the Times reported. For five years until 2010, he worked at the Brookings Institution where he obtained Vladimir Putin’s dissertation and documented evidence of plagiarism.
The video embedded in the Fox piece is a must-watch, and only this very early access prevents us from making it available in this piece. (We expect to rectify that as soon as possible.)
https://video.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=6175801867001&w=466&h=263
This is a Ukrainian-rooted man. Now, yes, it is true he was trained in Russia as an attorney. A lot of Ukrainians go to Moscow in particular for education, for work, and no wonder: Russia is more stable than Ukraine is; it has a better economy than Ukraine has; it has better and more prestigious education resources than one can find in Ukraine at present.
But that does not mean the Ukrainians love Russia. Some do, those living in the Eastern and Southern parts of Ukraine are often very must like Russians themselves, preferring to use Russian as the lingua franca and they identify with the Russian culture more than that of Kyiv and the Western part of Ukraine. Many of the people in the western regions have a curiously mixed relationship with Russia, being members of the Russian Church, but hating Vladimir Putin, and holding Russia responsible for the Holodomyr (the great famine that wiped out millions of Ukrainians, orchestrated by bad policies from the Communist Party), and they see no dignity for Ukraine unless it is utterly free of Russian influence.
It is important to understand this, especially for our American readers, who may not understand this dynamic at all. I honestly do not understand it, why it is so strong or deep, but I do understand that it exists, and that it is significant enough to make policy choices. We saw Petro Poroshenko try to bring the country to a fever of fear of war with Russia during the last several months of his term. This lawyer, Igor Danchenko, appears to resent Vladimir Putin a great deal, enough to make his alleged plagiarism a topic of his work. We can probably assume he has it in for Russia.
Senator Graham knows this!! He knows all of it, but he keeps using “Russian sub-source” in his discussion with Bartiromo. Why?
Well, for one, The Intercept reported in 2015 that Senator Graham received almost $3 million in support for his campaign from defense contractors. They look to him to keep the military budget high and keep them in the money for their pet projects. Russia is a much more formidable adversary than Ukraine is. Speculation? Yes. However, it is logical speculation. Graham is similary “strong” on issues with China as well. He is a defense hawk and he makes no secret of it.
Having the number of significant adversaries drop from two to one is probably not in Mr. Graham’s own best interests.
In this, we see an example in plain sight, of a man “in the know” distorting information for his own benefit.
President Trump had better be watching his back. This hawk wants to keep his power and he may turn on Trump now that the Russiagate hoax is being blown to bits.