A Belarus-born American citizen who is the head of a Russian-American business group was the unwitting secondhand source of key bombastic claims in the dossier about President Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The WSJ reported Sergei Millian, who reportedly claimed to have helped Trump market properties to Russian buyers, was the source for two of the unsubstantiated claims in the volatile dossier rejected by Trump and the intelligence community:
- That Russia had compromising video of Trump.
- That there was a "conspiracy of cooperation" between Russia and Trump.
The dossier, published two weeks ago by Buzzfeed, has not been verified by the IC or any media outlet but had been reportedly circulating for months.
Millian told the Journal the dossier was "fake news [created by sick minds]," and was "an attempt to distract the future president from real work" in verbiage similarly used by Trump in discrediting the documents.
The Journal reported Millian, who posted photos of himself at Trump inaugural events last week, was not a direct source to Christopher Steele, the former British spy and reputed author of the dossier, but rather his anecdotes were likely relayed to Steele through somebody Millian talked to.
Millian told a Russian news agency last year he had met Trump at the Moscow Millionaire Fair in 2007, the Journal reported.
In 2006, Millian founded the Russian American Chamber of Commerce in the USA Inc., the Journal reported.