Gregg Jarrett: Why Steele dossier source working for Brookings 'makes sense'
Gregg Jarrett discusses the Russia probe expanding to the Brookings Institution think tank over the Steele dossier
The primary source for former British spy Christopher Steele's unverified dossier working for the Brookings Institution research group "makes sense," Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said Tuesday.
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.
GREGG JARRETT: CHRISTOPHER STEELE'S SECRET SOURCE FOR ANTI-TRUMP DOSSIER IS FINALLY EXPOSED
"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.
"And, it turns out that Talbott's brother-in-law is the Clinton sycophant Cody Shearer," he added. "I write about him extensively in my book 'Witch Hunt' -- how he created a second dossier, contents of which were transcribed into Christopher Steele's phony dossier."
"So, I mean, the machinations of this -- and it's all Hillary Clinton. Her campaign is paying for the dossier. And, it turns out some of her allies are feeding the dossier information, all fabricated," Jarrett remarked.
A lawyer for Igor Danchenko, 42, confirmed to The New York Times on Saturday that his client provided the information to Steele, whose dossier was used by the FBI to obtain wiretaps of Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser.
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.
Former FBI director James Comey speaks during the Canada 2020 Conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 5, 2018. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)
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.
"Neither the Brookings Institution nor its employees had any involvement in the creation of the Steele dossier...Brookings does not take institutional positions on political or policy issues," a spokesperson for the Brookings Institution wrote in a statement to Fox News on Monday, noting that they had fully complied with their obligations as a nonprofit organization.
"Because it was suggested if they are doing political things, they cannot be tax-exempt," host Steve Doocy pointed out.
"That's right. And, you know, Devin Nunes has said Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are now going to be investigating the Brookings Institution. So, we’ll wait and see what comes of that," Jarrett replied.
"If James Comey had been honest and told the truth instead of lying to the president [and] lying to the American people and -- I think -- lying to Congress about information in the dossier, you know, the media would not have used it as a cudgel to bludgeon Trump for the better part of three years," he said.
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"It would not have led to a special counsel who of course in the end found no collusion conspiracy," Jarrett concluded. "It would have dramatically changed the course of Donald Trump's presidency if Comey and the FBI had been honest."
Fox News' Marisa Schultz contributed to this report.
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