A ‘Key’ Source For A Debunked Claim In The Steele Dossier Has Been Identified
- Olga Galkina, a Russian public relations specialist, has been identified as a source for the Steele dossier’s most direct allegation of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.
- Galkina was a sub-source for Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who provided information to Christopher Steele.
- A former national security official confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that Galkina was a source for Danchenko.
- A Russian tech executive who Galkina accused of working with Russian hackers has called her a “disgruntled and unstable” former employee.
The source for some of the Steele dossier’s most specific but debunked allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government has been identified as a Russian public relations executive named
Olga Galkina.
Galkina, 40, was a sub-source for Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who reported directly to dossier author Christopher Steele, a Wall Street Journal investigation found Wednesday, citing a former national security official.
When Galkina began feeding information to Danchenko in mid-2016, she was an employee of Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive who owns two Cyprus-based web hosting companies, XBT Holdings and Webzilla. Gubarev is accused in a dossier memo dated Dec. 13, 2016, of working with Russian hackers to infiltrate Democrats’ computer systems, and of having been recruited by Russian spy services.
Galkina had been fired at Gubarev’s company a month before Steele wrote the memo, according to The Journal, providing a possible motive for her to spread questionable allegations about the company.
Galkina had been hired by the firm as a public relations specialist in November 2015 to help the company produce press releases about the company’s business in the U.S. and Europe. She is listed as a press contact on a Feb. 2, 2016, press release for Servers.com, an affiliate of XBT.
According to The Journal,
Galkina’s manager filed a report with police in the Cypriot city of Limassol saying that she drank heavily and was often late for work. One of Galkina’s former colleagues told the Daily Caller News Foundation in August that she drank heavily and often failed to show up on time to work.
By August 2016, Webzilla was looking to fire Galkina over what her former co-workers have said was erratic behavior. According to one report in Russian media in February 2017, Galkina sued Gubarev, accusing him of harming her career and reputation by spreading rumors that she was unable to care for her young son.
In addition to the allegations against Gubarev, the dossier memo also asserted that a Russian man named Seva Kaptsugovich took part in the hacks of Democrats’ computer networks. Kaptsugovich was likely not involved in the cyber attacks, McClatchy reported in 2017.
The news outlet reported that Kaptsugovich had been in prison since 2013 on child pornography charges.
A lawyer for Gubarev alleged Wednesday that Galkina fabricated allegations against the tech executive.
“The report that allegations about Alex Gubarev, XBT and Webzilla originated from a disgruntled and unstable employee is further proof of what has already been proven time and time again – all of the allegations against my clients are a pure fabrication and their inclusion in any report, whether private or public, is a gross dereliction of professional responsibilities,” Val Gurvits, the lawyer for Gubarev, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Galkina’s role as a source for the Steele dossier would seem to further undercut the credibility of the salacious document, which BuzzFeed News published on Jan. 10, 2017. The FBI relied heavily on the dossier in applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Steele, a former MI6 officer, had declined to tell the FBI the identities of his primary source and sub-sources, but the FBI identified Danchenko as the likely primary source by January 2017. During a series of interviews that month, Danchenko described six sub-sources he relied on to collect information that he passed to Steele, according to an FBI memo from those interviews and released on July 17.
Danchenko and the other sources’ names are redacted in the memo, but two Twitter users were able to identify Danchenko and Galkina based on clues from the document. Galkina did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
In his FBI interviews, Danchenko said that Galkina was a “close, personal friend” who had served as a “key” source for him for the dossier project.
According to Danchenko, Galkina was a source for three separate allegations that appeared in the dossier, which Steele compiled on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Danchenko said Galkina provided the information that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen visited Prague in August 2016 to meet with Kremlin officials to discuss paying off hackers. The allegation fueled speculation for years that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to influence the election.
Special counsel Robert Mueller debunked the allegation in a report he released in April 2019, which said that Cohen has never visited Prague.
Galkina also told Danchenko that Trump campaign aide Carter Page met secretly in Moscow in July 2017 with a Kremlin official named Igor Diveykin to discuss the exchange of blackmail material related to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The FBI cited the information in its applications for FISA warrants against the former Trump campaign aide.
Page has vehemently denied meeting Diveykin.
The special counsel’s report said investigators found no evidence that Page or any other Trump associates conspired with Russians in 2016.
The Justice Department inspector general (IG) blasted the FBI for relying on Steele’s information for the FISA applications. A report from the IG said that the FBI failed to verify Steele’s allegations and also had evidence that Steele doubted the veracity of some information in the dossier.
Danchenko also told the FBI that Galkina was the source for the dossier claim that Gubarev used his web companies to aid the Russian hacks of Democrats’ computer systems during the 2016 election.
Gubarev sued Steele in the United Kingdom over the claim and filed a lawsuit against BuzzFeed for publishing the dossier in January 2017.
BuzzFeed News paid $4 million to a consulting firm, FTI Consulting, to try to validate the dossier’s claims about Gubarev. The report found no evidence to support Steele’s allegations.
BuzzFeed has not reported on the developments regarding Steele, Danchenko or other dossier sources.
