Former House Speaker Gingrich Says FBI Should Be Broken Up Over Russiagate

Last week saw the start of the trial of Igor Danchenko, a Russian-born US resident and analyst earlier revealed to be the primary source behind the opposition research dossier compiled by a former British spy for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. Danchenko is charged with repeatedly lying to the FBI.

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich has accused the current crop of Federal Bureau of Investigation leaders of being “the most corrupt” in history, and suggested that the domestic security service may need to be broken up to avoid a repeat of Russiagate – the debunked conspiracy theory that Donald Trump colluded with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“This is the most corrupt FBI leadership in American history. And there’s going to have to be a commission or something to look at it, and potentially it’s going to have to be broken up into two or three different agencies. This is really serious stuff because these guys have the power to put you in jail,” Gingrich said, speaking to Fox News on Monday about the Danchenko trial.

Suggesting that FBI Directors James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Christopher Wray had “perverted” the US criminal justice system by going after Trump in spite of a lack of compelling evidence, Gingrich alleged that the agency has shown unacceptable levels of bias in probing Trump while “protecting” Clinton and Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, despite their own shady and potentially illegal activities.

“I don’t know what will happen in a jury trial like that,” Gingrich said, referring to the Danchenko trial, “but I think it’s very clear from the evidence that’s been unearthed that the FBI at the very top had gone crazy. They were doing things that – how can you go out and actively try to undermine the president of the United States the way they did? Just as they went out to protect Hillary Clinton and they’ve gone out to protect Hunter Biden.”

Danchenko’s trial began last week, with closing arguments and jury deliberations kicking off on Monday. One of the five charges of lying to the FBI was dropped last week after District Judge Anthony Trenga concluded that Danchenko’s answers to an FBI interviewer about a conversation he’d had with a Democratic operative was “literally true” and not worth sending to the jury.

The remaining four charges allege that Danchenko had made a series of false statements about July 2016 communications he purportedly had with Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman and Trump contact. The FBI says Danchenko lied to them about speaking to the businessman regarding Trump’s alleged Russia-related activities.

Secret Source

The trial revealed that Danchenko had been paid over $200,000 by the FBI for his services as a confidential informant between 2017 and 2020, and that the agency put in a request for an additional $346,000 payment at the end of that period which was ultimately denied. FBI Special Agent Kevin Helson, Danchenko’s handler, maintained that the analyst had proven an invaluable source of information and suggested that his loss as an informant harmed US national security, with the FBI setting up a brand new unit solely on the basis of the Russian national’s information.

Danchenko served as the primary source behind the so-called Steele Dossier, an infamous collection of wacky and raunchy allegations about Donald Trump’s alleged ties to the Kremlin. The claims include the infamous allegations that the billionaire was compromised by Russian intelligence, which was said to have filmed him watching a pair of prostitutes urinate on a bed in a Moscow hotel room in 2013. Trump spent years denying this specific claim, joking in 2021 that he was “not into golden showers.”

Judge Trenga prohibited the "pee tape" portion of the dossier from being brought up at the Danchenko trial, citing the “danger” that the information might “confuse” the jury and cast “unfair prejudice” against the defendant.

Special Counsel John Durham, the former United States attorney tapped by Trump in 2020 to investigate the origins of Russiagate, sought to have the raunchy information from the Steele Dossier included to demonstrate Danchenko’s propensity to make false statements.

The dossier was compiled as an opposition research document for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele. Despite the outlandish nature of many of its claims, the FBI ended up using it to assist in secretive preliminary probes against Trump from 2016 on, including in at least one wiretap against a Trump associate. The FBI moved forward even as other US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “expressed concerns” about the document’s sourcing.

The Steele Dossier ultimately snowballed into Russiagate, a conspiracy theory alleging that Trump colluded with Russia or was some kind of agent of the Kremlin. Russiagate ran well into Trump’s presidency, and helped push the Republican, who campaigned on improving ties with Moscow, into a series of provocative anti-Russian actions ranging from new sanctions to sending weapons to Ukraine, bombing Syria, and pulling out of strategic treaties to “prove” that he was not in cahoots with the Russians.

In 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrapped up a three-year-long, $32 million probe into Russiagate, concluding that there was no evidence of collusion of any form whatsoever between the Trump campaign and Russia.