According to Special Counsel John Durham’s report, Irish-born public relations executive and Clinton supporter Charles Dolan was the likely source of the infamous ‘golden showers’ rumor about Donald Trump in the discredited Steele dossier, which ended up in the FBI director’s very awkward briefing on potential ‘kompromat’ days before he took office.
Durham’s 300-page report includes new information regarding the likely source of the debunked salacious claim, as well as a detailed map of how the material came to light.
Who is Charles Dolan?
Charles Dolan is a public relations executive who was named in the prosecution of Igor Danchenko, was acquitted after Dolan’s office brought allegations.
Dolan is Irish. Dolan was reportedly the likely source of the famed “golden showers” allegation about Donald Trump in the debunked Steele dossier, according to the Daily Mail in 2023. This allegation was included in the FBI director’s embarrassing briefing on potential “kompromat” days before he assumed office.
Dolan reportedly took a tour of the Moscow Ritz Carlton in 2016 and talked with important staff members there, according to John Durham’s 300-page investigation.
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“I’m in Russia making plans to be adopted in the event that this mad man [Trump] wins the election”, Dolan wrote in an email to a friend in Moscow.
Durham’s four-year inquiry came to the conclusion that there was no collusion and that the FBI never had solid justification for looking into Trump’s ties to Russia before the election. The charges were circulated to the media and seized upon by Democrats and detractors despite the absence of supporting evidence.
The sharp study also claims that the FBI continued to offer Igor Danchenko, a Russian national and the dossier’s main source, $300,000 even after determining that his testimony was unreliable in an apparent effort to buy his silence.
Additionally, Steele was given up to $1 million for the now-debunked claims of what Durham refers to as Trump’s “salacious sexual activity” and any connections to Vladimir Putin.
The study continues by identifying Dolan as a sub-source of information for Danchenko, a Russian specialist who gave information that ended up in the Steele Dossier and sets out the information route that led to the assertion about the golden showers.
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The astonishing assertion that Trump stayed in the same presidential suite when in town for the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant at the hotel where President Barack Obama had been in 2009 is tracked down and debunked in the article over the course of around six pages.
Durham’s detectives link the information to Dolan, who traveled to Moscow in June 2016 in advance of a gathering there called “Inside the Kremlin” on behalf of the Young President’s Organization.
Igor Danchenko, who was cleared of accusations of lying to the FBI as one of several Durham prosecutions that failed, was already working with Dolan at the time.
An acknowledged “primary source” for the dossier is Danchenko.
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Danchenko ‘forwarded’ information to former British intelligence officer Chris Steele, who put together what is known as the Steele Dossier on Trump, according to email traffic Durham examined after speaking with Dolan and Danchenko.
Dolan mentioned seeing “intelligence guys” and having “meetings with the Kremlin” in an email from April 2016.
Despite having lunch together in Moscow on their trip in June 2016, the story emphasizes that Danchenko did not stay at the famed hotel.
He advised the Clintons and afterward worked for Kglobal in addition to Ketchum public relations. ‘Trump’s reported lurid activities at the Ritz Carlton Moscow,’ a section of the book, includes a description of the incident. ‘U.S. Person-1’ was a source of information who accompanied Dolan on a tour of the hotel’s Presidential Suite.
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During an interview with Durham’s team, Dolan’s own recall was described as “inconsistent” and “vacillating.” He claimed he had no “specific recollection” of mentioning Trump and the Presidential Suite to Danchenko.
Durham points out that Dolan arrived back in Washington, D.C. on June 15, 2016, and that only a few days later, on June 20, Steele included in his report a claim that Trump engaged in “salacious sexual activity” while a guest at the Ritz Carlton Moscow.
The conclusion is that between the two, Dolan appears to be the more plausible source of the charges since, according to Durham, it was Dolan, not Danchenko, who actually engaged with the hotel personnel mentioned in the Steele Reports.
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Dolan stated during Danchenko’s 2022 trial that he told a lie to the Russia expert concerning the firing of Paul Manafort, the former chairman of the Trump campaign after Manafort’s lobbying activities and connections to a Kremlin-backed political party were made public.
He promised to “dig around” and made a reference to a Republican friend, but he later acknowledged in evidence that he had taken information from news stories and chosen to “embellish” it.
