An indictment in the investigation into how officials probed Donald Trump's ties to Russia has raised new questions about the sourcing of the Steele dossier.
George Stephanopoulos sits down with former MI6 spy Christopher Steele for an exclusive interview. His first since the publication of the series of intelligence report known as the Steele dossier.brought a new indictment last week and in the process cast fresh doubt on earlier claims that a little-known Belarussian-born businessman named Sergei Millian had been an unwitting source for the"dossier" prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele.
It is illegal to lie to a federal agent. Danchenko's attorney said in court his client intends to plead not guilty, releasing a statement accusing the special counsel of presenting"a false narrative designed to humiliate and slander a renowned expert in business intelligence for political gain." In March 2017, shortly after the dossier surfaced publicly, people familiar with the dossier told the FBI, and later told media outlets including ABC News, that Millian had been an unwitting source of some of the most salacious but unverified information laid out in the document, including claims that the Russian government had a video of Trump watching prostitutes urinating on a bed at a Moscow hotel, which if true could be used to blackmail the then-candidate and future American president.
Early in the campaign, Millian sought contact with members of Trump's campaign, citing past work with the candidate's real estate business marketing Trump-branded properties in Russia, according to texts and messages that later appeared in the Mueller report. He was never accused of any improper conduct.
Danchenko told the inspector general he"felt that the tenor of Steele's reports was far more 'conclusive' than was justified," and that much of the information he had provided came from"word of mouth and hearsay," according to the inspector general report. Just weeks before Danchenko was indicted, Steele was interviewed by ABC News' George Stephanopoulos for the Hulu documentary,"Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier." In the, Steele said he believed his collector may have"taken fright" at having his cover blown and tried to"downplay and underestimate" his own reporting when he spoke to investigators as part of the inspector general's probe.