Igor Danchenko, confidential FBI informant, talks Steele Dossier, Donald Trump, Russia, and the infamous pee tape.
Igor Danchenko believes he was betrayed by the U.S. government — when the federal government’s chief law-enforcement officer effectively outed the Russian émigré, then a confidential FBI informant, as the architect of one of the most explosive and controversial documents in American political history — Danchenko was on vacation.
The Steele Dossier has left a permanent imprint on American politics and on the intelligence community. When Danchenko was in Russia digging up rumors on Trump, he says, he didn’t know his work was financed by the Democratic National Committee. He didn’t know it would be compiled into a document that after publication would take on a life of its own.
“All these years, I wasn’t hiding,” Danchenko says. “My social media was all open for people to see. So many open records. It was impossible to shield myself from this. I couldn’t undo my whole life. These details were so particular, so specific — ofSenate Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham holds a copy of the Steele Dossier during a 2019 committee hearing on Capitol Hill.The FBI said they shouldn’t park in their normal spot; they moved their SUV a few blocks away.
For the next few days, Danchenko and his wife hunkered down in Ocean City, contemplating their next move. They went for a walk on the beach. The skies darkened. Winds gusted above 20 mph. People rushed away from the sea, beach gear in hand, but Danchenko and Kristina decided on a quick swim before the storm.
After his acquittal, Danchenko figured his family’s yearslong drama was over. They went on a family vacation to Puerto Rico. He finally became a U.S. citizen. He started a book; his ghostwriter told him he might get a seven-figure advance. His wife focused on her high-paying job as an attorney. He sees deep irony in this: With Russia’s war in Ukraine and its increasingly menacing stance toward the West, his expertise may be more valuable than ever before.
“Igor,” says an old friend, Baron Bustin, an American petroleum engineer who worked with him in Russia two decades ago, “has been a pawn in this whole thing.” He joined a yearlong exchange program and graduated from high school near New Orleans. He returned to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Louisville, then later got another master’s degree at Georgetown University and worked at the Brookings Institution. He achieved some notoriety when he collaborated on a paper showing more than 16 pages in Vladimir Putin’s dissertation were lifted virtually word for word from a 1978 American business-school textbook.
After the investigation closed, he began working for Steele. He met Kristina in 2014 at the Russian Embassy in D.C., when he gave a speech on Russian sanctions. They exchanged cards and spoke about taking their daughters, who were the same age, on a playdate. They didn’t get together until the summer of 2016, when Kristina was mid-divorce.
Fusion GPS was paid by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to do opposition research on Trump. By June 2016, that company subcontracted with Orbis, Steele’s private-investigation firm, to dig into Trump’s Russian connections because of Steele’s firm’s deep intelligence connections there.
He knew the rumors and innuendo he’d reported about the Trump campaign’s Russia connections were volcanic. But he never imagined the depth to which it would penetrate the American psyche. He never imagined how the right would weaponize it as evidence of the ineptitude and politicization of the U.S. intelligence community. He never expected his intelligence would become such catnip to the left and liberal news outlets like MSNBC: “Trump is in a way a victim of this media world,” Danchenko says.
The irony? The leak of the dossier, meant to warn the U.S. of the influence Russia may have over the incoming U.S. president, ended up furthering Putin’s goal of sowing discord and disagreement in American society. According to Danchenko, several sources in Russia — sources he still won’t reveal — told him rumors about what Trump did next: He instructed the sex workers to pee on the bed.
The American response was predictable: All nuance was lost. The obsession with the pee tape, Danchenko believes, diverted focus from a more substantive conversation. “Certainly there is corruption,” Danchenko continues. “How big was it in the case of Trump and the Agalarovs and Putin? Is that the real pee tape? I still think there’s some leverage they hold against Trump. You want to call it pee tape? Call it pee tape.” (AgalarovA few weeks after I visit Danchenko and his family, Trump is convicted of 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial.
One of those meetings was with Steele. It was the first time he’d seen Steele since his public outing. Kristina wanted her husband to give Steele hell in person. Danchenko wasn’t so sure. Despite everything, he still had warm feelings for his old boss. He’d subcontracted with him for more than a decade. And frankly, he needed work.“I told them I had multiple occasions I could go after the FBI, go after you — I never fucking did,” he recalls.
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