Special Counsel John Durham revealed part of the story behind the infamous “pee tape” allegation on Thursday, deep in his indictment against Russian-born, U.S.-based researched Igor Danchenko, a primary source for Christopher Steele’s “dossier.”
The “dossier” was used as the basis for claims that then-candidate Donald Trump had engaged in “Russia collusion.” And its most salacious accusation — which many Democrats believed — was that Trump had hired prostitutes on a visit to Moscow to urinate on a bed in the presidential suite of a hotel where he had been told that President Barack Obama had once slept.
The search for the “pee tape” consumed the media; impeachment investigator Daniel S. Goldman once claimed, falsely, it existed.
But Durham’s investigation turned up the back story.
The indictment relates that in June 2016, a person referred to as “PR Executive-1” — now confirmed to be communications executive and Clinton associate Charles Dolan Jr. — and “Organizer-1” visited Russia to plan an October 2016 conference, where they would meet with senior Russian officials and even visit the Kremlin itself. Dolan stayed at the Moscow hotel in question; Danchenko was in Moscow but did not stay at the same hotel.