American Sergei Millian was framed by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign as being one of the sub sources for raw intelligence in the Steele Dossier used to target the 2016 Trump campaign. Christopher Steele co-founded the private intelligence company Orbis Intelligence in the United Kingdom (UK) with fellow former British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) employee, Christopher Burrows. During 2016 the presidential election, their company was hired and paid by another intelligence company, FusionGPS, supposedly to gather information on associates close to the Trump campaign.
Christopher Steele has claimed he relied on one primary sub source for all his raw intel in the dossier. This primary sub source was later revealed to be a Washington D.C. based Russian national named Igor Danchenko.
Igor Danchenko worked for Open World Leadership Center from July 1999 to May 2005, a nonprofit based in Washington D.C. financed by billionaire George Soros. He also worked at the liberal think tank the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. where he cowrote papers with figures like Fiona Hill, Erica Downs, and Clifford Gaddy.
Danchenko first ran into trouble with the law as he began working for Brookings — the preeminent Democratic think tank in Washington — where he struck up a friendship with Fiona Hill, the White House adviser who testified against Trump during last year’s impeachment hearings. Danchenko has described Hill as a mentor, while Hill has sung his praises as a “creative” researcher.
From ‘The Federalist’ article “FBI Docs: Source For Federal Surveillance Of Trump Campaign Made Up ‘Rumors’ With Drinking Buddies”
Igor Danchenko was employed by Christopher Steele’s and received a monthly stipend for his raw intel and used a ghost employer, Target Lab, to contact unsuspecting targets. On July 21st, 2106, Igor Danchenko would email Sergei Millian about a construction company in Switzerland and request to meet him for a drink in Washington D.C. or New York. Igor signed his unsolicited email as a business analyst for Target Lab. Sergei ignored the strange unsolicited invitation, but did accept Danchenko’s LinkedIn request and denies ever communicating with him. Target Lab was contacted about their “ghost employee” and stated that Danchenko had never been an employee at the company.
Danchenko would be interviewed by the FBI in January 2017 about his raw intel he contributed to the Steele Dossier, which according to Christopher Steele, all came from Danchenko. Igor would tell the FBI that he might have been been in contact with Sergei Millian only once in July 2016 for a 10-15 minute anonymous phone call. Danchenko told the FBI he recognized the voice sounded like Sergei Millian based on a YouTube video he had previously watched featuring Millian. Danchenko would admit that nothing important was relayed to him in this brief phone call, but it was a general discussion about Trump and Russia. Sergei Millian denies ever speaking with Danchenko anonymously or otherwise.
Christopher Steele would state that Sergei Millian was Source D and Source E in The Steele Dossier in the memo titled “Company Intelligence Report 2016/080“. Steele would also state that Igor Danchenko met with Sergei Millian three times in three different cities. Steele would attribute Millian’s Russian-American Chamber of Commerce trade organization as being the intermediary between Alfa Bank and the Trump campaign.
In fact, Steele also stated Millian knew how the inner circle of the Kremlin felt about Carter Page. When the FBI asked Steele how Sergei Millian could be Source E confirming what Source D had stated, Steele just explained Millian is an “egotist”.
Steele lied repeatedly to the FBI. Danchenko lied to the FBI. These two men were paid by Hillary Clinton to fabricate lies and the FBI never held them accountable for their false claims.
After Sergei Millian ignored Igor Danchenko’s initial unsolicited email, Igor sent Sergei another email August 18th, 2016 with another business proposal and request to meet. This email was inquiring if Sergei was interested in investing in the Kaluga region of Russia. This email was signed again by Danchenko stating he was a business analyst for Target Lab. Sergei ignored this email request as well.
In January 24th, 2017, Mark Maremont, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, would write a scathing article claiming Sergei Millian was a source for the Steele Dossier. This is about the same time that the FBI conducted a three day interview of Igor Danchenko who claimed Millian was only a source of a 10-15 minute anonymous phone call and not much raw intel was provided during this brief conversation.
Who was Mark Maremont’s source for this scoop of a story? We know Glenn Simpson was a former journalist at the Wall Street Journal and employed other former WSJ reporters at FusionGPS such as Neil King Jr.
Simpson also told Congress he believed Sergei Millian was a Russian Intelligence officer because he changed his name when he moved to the United States in 2001 at the age of 23-years-old. It should be noted that despite starting the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta, Sergei Millian is not from Russia, but is in fact originally from Belarus before immigrating to the United States and becoming a naturalized citizen.
Sergei Millian has emphatically denied all accusations leveled against him by Steele, Danchenko, Simpson, and dozens of journalists over the past five years. He states he was simply an American who supported a businessman to be President because Trump had managed a successful international company.
How could Sergei be the source of a June memo if Danchenko hadn’t even allegedly talked to him until July? Why didn’t the FBI look further into the contradictions in Steele, Danchenko, and Simpson’s interviews? The answer is of course the FBI didn’t want to look further into the contradictions because anything that vindicated someone in the Trump circle was ignored.
The politicization of our intelligence community to target political opponents has been ramped up in recent years. The framing of Sergei Millian by outsourced smear merchants is a perfect example of the FBI turning a blind eye to perjury by the favored class. Their lies are excused while an unfavored citizen will be crucified by mixing up a date or deleting a Facebook post. This is not a partisan issue. This is a corrupt political class issue.
Christopher Steele’s use of raw intel memos in an attempt to destroy Trump was not just limited to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton campaign. After Trump was elected, Steele ramped up his tactics and used John McCain and McCain Institute Senior fellow, David Kramer, to spread his dirty work.
Christopher Steele’s friend, Sir Andrew Wood, would give David Kramer and John McCain the Steele dossiers when they met in Halifax, Nova Scotia in November 2017. Directly after the Halifax conference, Kramer would fly to the UK to coordinate with Steele. Kramer would go on to give the Steele Dossier to Celeste Wallender in the Obama administration, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Speaker Paul Ryan’s longtime Chief of Staff—Jonathan Burks, Carl Bernstein of CNN, Ken Bensinger of BuzzFeed, Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR, McClatchy news services and other news outlets.
The hit pieces by reporters such as Brian Ross, Chuck Ross, Catherine Belton, and Mark Maremont destroyed Sergei Millian’s reputation in the United States. He lost many of his clients who were nervous to be associated with someone so confrontational. His hard work building a life in America was wiped away in the course of a political season. There has been no redactions or apologies from any reporter, politician, intelligence agency, or opposition research employee.
Sergei was the first person anywhere to criticize the Steele dossier in public. In January 2017, Millian made an appearance on Russia 24 TV and stated,
I want to say that I don’t have any compromising information, neither in Russia nor in the United States, nor could I have. Without a doubt it is a blatant lie and an effort of some people – it’s definitely a group of people – to portray [Trump] in a bad light using my name.
Sergei Millian on on Russia 24 TV in January 2017
At the time Sergei made these statements, nobody, including him, knew what was going on and who was behind all the attacks on him and others who would get swept up in the Russia Collusion witch-hunt.
Imagine if America listened to this brave Patriot back then.
My book, Dragon Games, goes into detail about how Sergei Millian’s life was turned upside down and I hope you learn and support his story.
Regina Mouradian (@ReginaMourad)
Author of Dragon Games: Based on a True Story of Sergei Millian
Author of Dragon Games: Based on a True Story of Sergei Millian, The Hermitage Effect: How Bill Browder and her fiction book Buried Treasure. Lives in Massachusetts.
