Durham Trial Reveaks Mueller Declined to Investigate Clinton Ally Linked to Dossier Source Danchenko

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — A current FBI special agent and a former bureau analyst who both served on Robert Mueller’s team testified that the special counsel’s office declined to investigate and never interviewed Charles Dolan, the Clinton-allied business associate of the main source for Christopher Steele, despite their urging.

Supervisory special agent Amy Anderson and former FBI intelligence analyst Brittany Hertzog both testified Friday that, as members of Mueller’s team who were specifically tasked with scrutinizing the allegations within the Trump dossier, they believed the FBI should interview and further investigate Dolan, a longtime ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, partly due to his business connections with Igor Danchenko, a Russian national whom the bureau had made a paid informant. Danchenko has been charged by special counsel John Durham with lying to the FBI about his sourcing for the Democratic-funded dossier.

CLINTON ALLY DOLLAN LIED ABOUT SOURCING FOR TRUMP DOSSIER CLAIM

The Mueller team members also testified that they were concerned about Dolan’s links to Danchenko’s friend Olga Galkina, who had been identified as a sub-source for Danchenko related to the dossier, although she denies being such a source. Danchenko introduced Dolan and Galkina in 2016.

Dolan had spent many years, including 2016, doing business in Russia and with the Russian government. Anderson and Hertzog said they were also concerned about Dolan’s potential dossier links combined with the fact that he had a history of working closely with Russian officials, most notably Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Despite Dolan’s potential dossier links through Danchenko and Galkina, as well as his associations with Russian officials, Anderson and Hertzog said their efforts to investigate Dolan were shut down.

Anderson, a special agent with the FBI since 2012 who is currently an FBI assistant legal attache in Ottawa, said she worked on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team and then the subsequent Mueller team from April 2017 to January 2018. She said her main career focus has been on Russian counterintelligence and that she was “working the dossier in particular” during her time on the Mueller investigation.

She said she became aware of Danchenko through his handling agent, Kevin Helson, and FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten, who had interviewed the Steele source in January 2017, and said she became aware of Galkina through database checks by Hertzog.

“I wanted to look into him,” Anderson said of Dolan upon learning of his connections to Danchenko and Galkina. She said Auten and Hertzog were in agreement.

After meeting with and interviewing Galkina in Cyprus in August 2017, Anderson said she spoke with Auten and prepared an electronic communication in a request to open an investigation into Dolan.

“It sat for approximately three to four weeks,” Anderson testified during questioning, adding that she was subsequently told it would not be opened by her superior at the time, supervisory special agent Joe Nelson.

Anderson said she deleted her memo requesting a Dolan investigation from the FBI’s Sentinel

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