‘Steele dossier’ analyst investigating Trump charged with lying to FBI
Global News
A Russian analyst who contributed to a dossier of Democratic-funded research into ties between Russia and Donald Trump was arrested Thursday.
A Russian analyst who contributed to a dossier of Democratic-funded research into ties between Russia and Donald Trump was arrested Thursday on charges of lying to the FBI about his sources of information, among them an associate of Hillary Clinton.
The case against Igor Danchenko is part of special counsel John Durham’s ongoing investigation into the origins of the FBI’s probe into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia had conspired to tip the outcome of that year’s presidential campaign.
The indictment, the third criminal case brought by Durham and the second in a two-month span, is likely to boost complaints from Trump allies that well-connected Democrats worked behind the scenes to advance suspicions about Trump and Russia that contributed to the FBI’s election-year investigation.
The case does not undercut investigators’ findings that the Kremlin aided the Trump campaign — findings that were not based on the dossier. But it does endorse a longstanding concern about the Russia probe: that opposition research the FBI relied on was marred by unsupported, uncorroborated claims.
The five-count indictment accuses Danchenko of making multiple false statements to the FBI when interviewed in 2017 about his role in collecting information for Christopher Steele, a former British spy who was paid by Democrats to investigate connections between Trump and Russia.
Danchenko, a U.S.-based Russian who’d specialized in Russian and Eurasian matters as an analyst at the Brookings Institution think tank, was a significant source for Steele as Steele compiled his dossier of research. That dossier, the target of intense derision from Trump, was ultimately provided to the FBI and used by federal authorities as they applied for and received surveillance warrants targeting a former Trump campaign aide.
According to the indictment, Danchenko repeatedly lied to the FBI about his sources of information and that deception mattered because the FBI “devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations” in the dossier and had “relied in large part” on that research in obtaining the surveillance warrants.
A lawyer for Danchenko had no immediate comment.
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