Special Counsel John Durham says Igor Danchenko’s lies materially affected the Russia collusion probe, including misleading agents about his relationship with Russian government officials and a PR executive.
Special Counsel John Durham on Thursday unsealed a federal grand jury indictment charging the primary source for the now-discredited Steele dossier with repeatedly lying to the FBI during the Russia collusion investigation that falsely tarred Donald Trump’s presidency.
The 39-page indictment alleges Russian analyst Igor Danchenko misled the FBI about his contacts with Russian government officials and a Democrat-connected public relations executive, falsehoods that materially affected the FBI’s investigation and its representations to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get warrants targeting Trump’s campaign and one of its advisers.
“All of DANCHENKO’s lies were material to the FBI because, among other reasons, (1) the FBI’s investigation of the Trump Campaign relied in large part on the Company Reports to obtain FISA warrants on Advisor-1, (2) the FBI ultimately
devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations contained in the Company Reports, including the reliability of DANCHENKO’s sub-sources; and (3) the Company Reports, as well as information collected for the Reports by DANCHENKO, played a role in the FBI’s investigative decisions and in sworn representations that the FBI made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court throughout the relevant time period,” the indictment charged.
You can read the full indictment here.
Among the charges, Danchenko is alleged to have injected information from a Democrat-connected public relations executive into the dossier and failed to tell the FBI about it.
