Beth Van Duyne

The Russian émigré who acquainted the world with the salacious rumor of Donald Trump's unverified encounter with full-bladdered sex workers says Americans missed a darker figure lurking behind the former president. Igor Danchenko, the primary source behind the notorious Steele Dossier, remains deeply concerned about the significance of Trump's "pee tape" story and what it means for his potential reelection, Rolling Stone reported Monday."It sounds like this stupid college prank," he said. "But it also symbolized to me — at the time, certainly — this sort of strange, perverted closeness that Trump, before he became a candidate, established with certain important politically-exposed individuals in Russia.”Danchenko gave an in-depth interview to Rolling Stone on the explosive dossier about Trump's alleged ties to Russia and the reactions from Americans he found baffling. Buzzfeed first published the 35-page Steel Dossier in 2017, just 10 days before Trump would take office. Many of the unverified rumors were collected by Danchenko during about a half-dozen trips to Russia in 2016, he told Rolling Stone. Danchenko, who worked for a business intelligence firm at the time, didn’t know his work was financed by the Democratic National Committee, nor did he predict Attorney General Bill Barr would declassify reports from his subsequent FBI interviews and effectively out him as a government informant, Rolling Stone reports. ALSO READ: Inside the Democratic National Convention corporate moneyfest“I’m chained to this dossier, to Trump,” Danchenko said. “And I can’t unlink myself from it.”The most memorable rumor outlined in the dossier takes place two years after former President Barack Obama humiliated Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner and motivated him to run for president.The rumor goes that Trump, staying in a Russian Ritz-Carlton for a Miss Universe pageant, hosted oligarchs and sex workers in his presidential suite."According to Danchenko, several sources in Russia — sources he still won’t reveal — told him rumors about what Trump did next," Rolling Stone reports. "He instructed the sex workers to pee on the bed."Trump denied the rumor in a press conference by pointing to his understanding of Russian surveillance and his fear of germs. No evidence has ever surfaced to substantiate the claim. But Danchenko's boss Christopher Steele added this rumor to an eponymous dossier and sent it to David Kramer, an aide of Sen. John McCain, who leaked it to Buzzfeed without the informant's knowledge, according to Rolling Stone. The Russian émigré was outraged that the document was published "unsanitized" because his personal goal had not been to provide the news cycle scandals, but to better inform the American public about its ascendent leader, Rolling Stone reports.“There’s a serious national-security issue here, a serious investigation," he said. "[But] it’s just, ‘Who is going to publish the bigger scoop with the most likes and retweets?'"Danchenko regrets the inclusion of the pee tape rumor, which Rolling Stone posits "hijacked the dialogue of serious allegations about Russian influence with huge geopolitical importance."Americans, distracted by the salacious scandals Danchenko still believes were correct, forgot about one important person: Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I still think there’s some leverage they hold against Trump," he said. "You want to call it pee tape? Call it pee tape.”

Kamala Harris' campaign taunted Donald Trump and his "handlers" in a dispute over the rules for their upcoming presidential debate.The former president has suggested he might not take part in the Sept. 10 debate because he doesn't believe ABC News would be an impartial host, and his team would like for the microphones to be muted except for when it's a candidate's turn to speak – a condition that the Harris team rejects, reported CNN.“We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates’ mics should be live throughout the full broadcast,” said Brian Fallon, the Harris campaign’s senior adviser for communications.The campaign spokesman then goaded the Republican nominee by casting doubt on his ability to behave himself onstage.“Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own," Fallon said. "We suspect Trump’s team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don’t think he can handle himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button."ALSO READ: Donald Trump exploits AP photo error for new $99 'Save America' bookThe Trump campaign has argued that it was agreeing to the same guidelines as the previous debate, with President Joe Biden, where microphones were muted unless a candidate was taking their turn to speak.“Enough with the games. We accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said in a statement.

Juleanna Glover, the CEO of corporate consultancy Ridgely Walsh, recently took a look at former President Donald Trump's campaign spending reports and delivered a stark warning to anyone who has forked over significant sums to his reelection bid.Writing in the New York Times, Glover makes the case that giving money to Trump is a highly risky investment, given where donors' money has been going."Anyone who has spent time reviewing Donald Trump’s campaign spending reports would quickly conclude they’re a governance nightmare," she contended. "There is so little disclosure about what happened to the billions raised in 2020 and 2024 that donors (and maybe even the former president himself) can’t possibly know how it was spent."Drilling into specifics, Glover said that an analysis of Trump's 2020 campaign expenses showed that large sums of money went "into a legal and financial black hole reportedly controlled by Trump family members and close associates" and she says that this year's campaign is shaping up to be largely the same.ALSO READ: Trump drastically inflates annual Fentanyl death numbers: fact checkIn 2020, notes Glover, roughly two-thirds of all money spent by the Trump campaign was shoveled into American Made Media Consultants, a Delaware-based firm whose first president was reportedly none other than Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of the former president who has since been installed in a leadership position at the Republican National Committee.Given this, it's little surprise that the same pattern that governed the Trump campaign's spending in 2020 is now being replicated this year."This election, the Trump campaign and four of its PACs have paid Red Curve Solutions, another private company, at least $18 million," writes Glober. "The Campaign Legal Center says Red Curve appears to pay Mr. Trump’s legal bills and then gets reimbursed by the PACs. (The law is murky on what types of legal bills can be paid by campaigns, but some are allowed.) The head of Red Curve also serves as the treasurer for the Trump campaign as well as the affiliated PACs. What percentage of donor contributions go to lawyers defending Mr. Trump? It’s impossible to know."Read the full piece at this link.