The agent denounced the exposure by the Trump Justice Department of Igor Danchenko, who was an F.B.I. informant but is now on trial on charges of lying to investigators.
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Igor Danchenko faces five counts of making false statements to the F.B.I. in the special counsel investigation led by John H. Durham.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent testified on Thursday that the Trump Justice Department’s decision in 2020 to release sensitive documents about a bureau informant to a Senate committee examining the bureau’s Russia investigation had damaged national security.
The agent told jurors at the trial of Igor Danchenko, who is charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about matters related to the anti-Trump Steele dossier, that Mr. Danchenko, a Russia analyst, had provided extraordinary assistance for years as a paid F.B.I. informant.
Internet sleuths managed to piece together Mr. Danchenko’s identity after Attorney General William P. Barr directed the F.B.I. to declassify a redacted report about its three-day interview of Mr. Danchenko in 2017 and give it to Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time.
Kevin Helson, the agent, said Mr. Danchenko became a political target, adding that the “release of the document was dangerous.”
The testimony by Mr. Helson, a witness for the prosecution, seemed to be another setback for the special counsel investigation examining the origins of the F.B.I. inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump’s ties with Russia. The trial of Mr. Danchenko appears to be the last chance for the special counsel, John H. Durham, who Mr. Trump had said would expose a “deep state” conspiracy against him, to obtain a court conviction before his investigation winds down.
In November 2021, Mr. Durham charged Mr. Danchenko with five counts of making false statements to the F.B.I. about his sources for certain claims in the dossier, which contains a collection of rumors and unproven assertions suggesting that Mr. Trump and his 2016 campaign were compromised by and conspiring with Russian intelligence officials to help him defeat Hillary Clinton. Although a few of the dossier’s claims made their way into an F.B.I. wiretap application targeting a former Trump campaign adviser, that was largely peripheral to the official inquiry.
This is the second trial for Mr. Durham, whom Mr. Barr appointed to lead the investigation in the spring of 2019. The first trial, in which Mr. Durham accused a lawyer of providing false information to the F.B.I., ended this year with an acquittal.
What to Know About the Trump Investigations
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Numerous inquiries. Since leaving office, former President Donald J. Trump has been facing several investigations into his business dealings and political activities. Here is a look at some notable cases:
Classified documents inquiry. The F.B.I. searched Mr. Trump’s Florida home as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into his handling of classified materials. The inquiry is focused on documents that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, when he left the White House.
Jan. 6 investigations. In a series of public hearings, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack laid out a comprehensive narrative of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This evidence could allow federal prosecutors, who are conducting a parallel criminal investigation, to indict Mr. Trump.
Georgia election interference case. Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney, has been leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the efforts of Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. This case could pose the most immediate legal peril for the former president and his associates.
New York State’s civil case. Letitia James, the New York attorney general, filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump and his family business, accusing both of a sweeping pattern of fraudulent business practices. The yearslong investigation has been focused on whether Mr. Trump’s statements about the value of his assets were part of a pattern of fraud or simply Trumpian showmanship.
Manhattan criminal case. Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has been investigating whether Mr. Trump or his family business intentionally submitted false property values to potential lenders. But the inquiry faded from view after signs emerged suggesting that Mr. Trump was unlikely to be indicted.
In the new trial, which began on Tuesday at a federal courthouse in Northern Virginia and in which testimony is expected to conclude Friday, with closing statements likely on Monday, Mr. Durham and his team have had to grapple with significant questions about the quality of their evidence.
Mr. Helson’s testimony on Thursday capped three days of questioning of him and another F.B.I. prosecution witness, a counterintelligence analyst, both of whom at certain points seemed to undermine the prosecution’s case. Mr. Durham at times appeared visibly frustrated with the testimony of the F.B.I. officials.
Mr. Durham has tried to make the case that Mr. Danchenko never spoke to Sergei Millian, a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, as a potential source for the dossier, a claim at the heart of four of the false-statement charges.
Mr. Danchenko told the F.B.I. that he had received a phone call in late July 2016 from a Russian-sounding person who did not identify himself but whom Mr. Danchenko believed to be Mr. Millian, and that he had arranged to meet the businessman in New York on a weekend later that month.
As part of Mr. Durham’s investigation, he turned up evidence that Mr. Helson and Brian Auten, an F.B.I. supervisory counterintelligence analyst and a prosecution witness earlier in the week, said could have supported Mr. Danchenko’s version of what had happened. The evidence included Amtrak receipts showing that Mr. Danchenko had traveled to New York that weekend and documentation that Mr. Millian had flown to New York that same weekend.
ImageMembers of Mr. Danchenko’s legal team wheeling evidence to the courthouse in Alexandria, Va., this week.Credit…Alex Wong/Getty Images
Charles Dolan, a public relations executive with ties to the Democratic Party whose interactions with Mr. Danchenko are the basis of another false statement charge, also testified on Thursday. The indictment said Mr. Danchenko falsely told the F.B.I. that he had not discussed the claims in the dossier with Mr. Dolan. But Mr. Durham says that Mr. Dolan was an unwitting source for some of the claims.
Mr. Dolan said on Thursday that he had emailed a tidbit he had heard on the news to Mr. Danchenko, who appeared to have used the information in the dossier. But he testified that he had never discussed the dossier with Mr. Danchenko and did not realize that the analyst had used his information in the compendium until Mr. Durham’s team pointed out the similarities.
Mr. Danchenko’s lawyers seized on that testimony. During cross-examination on Thursday, Mr. Helson said that in one instance, the basis of Mr. Durham’s false statement charge, he had asked Mr. Danchenko if he had talked with Mr. Dolan about the information in the dossier.
Mr. Danchenko told him that they had talked about issues related to the dossier, Mr. Helson said, but he agreed that it was “literally true” that Mr. Dolan and Mr. Danchenko had never talked about the dossier itself.
Defense lawyers also tried to buttress the idea that Mr. Danchenko was an exceptional informant and that his exposure was a huge loss to the F.B.I., citing annual internal bureau reports that showed Mr. Helson thought highly of Mr. Danchenko and saying he was paid more than $200,000 for his work.
Mr. Helson said Mr. Danchenko had provided information that had aided in at least 25 investigations and dozens of reports distributed to the U.S. intelligence community, and he acknowledged that he had told investigators previously that Mr. Danchenko “reshaped the way the U.S. even perceives threats.” Mr. Helson said the F.B.I.’s Washington Field Office had not had an informant with a comparable source network during his 20 years there and had set up a new squad of agents based on Mr. Danchenko’s information.
In October 2021, Mr. Helson said, he drafted an internal F.B.I. document asking to provide Mr. Danchenko a $346,000 final payment for his work and expenses helping the F.B.I.
“The disclosure of false and baseless claims aimed to undermine his credibility,” the document said, adding that his public outing would hurt his ability to make a living. “This payment is part of the F.B.I.’s commitment for insuring the safety and security of this highly valued” informant “and his family, and will fulfill the F.B.I.’s commitment to properly take care of those individuals who come forward to help our mission at grave risk to themselves and their loved ones.”
Mr. Danchenko did not get the money.
After the defense was done with Mr. Helson, Mr. Durham sought to limit the damage of his testimony. He brought up a 2009 F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Danchenko. But Mr. Helson said he had discussed the matter with the case agent who had handled the earlier investigation and was comfortable continuing to use Mr. Danchenko as a source.
Source: nytimes.com
