Russian analyst who was source for Steele dossier arrested and charged with lying to FBI
(CNN)Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who was a source for the 2016 dossier of allegations about former President Donald Trump, was arrested and indicted Thursday for allegedly lying to the FBI, as part of Special Counsel John Durham's investigation into the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation.
He was charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI, according to the indictment that was unsealed Thursday, and faces up to five years in prison for each count.
Danchenko was a key source of information used by former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele in a dossier that alleged Trump was compromised by ties to Russia ahead of the 2016 election. The dossier, which many of the claims in it were never proven, became one of the most controversial parts of the FBI's 2016 investigation into Trump and Russia, known as "Crossfire Hurricane," which led to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
Among the salacious claims Danchenko has said he passed on was that the Russians had a tape of Trump with women that became infamously shorthanded as the pee tape. Trump has denied such an episode ever occurred.
In a move that the Justice Department inspector general later found issues with, the FBI used Steele's dossier to obtain a foreign surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
The indictment unsealed Thursday specifically faults Danchenko for contributing information that became part of the FBI's foreign intelligence surveillance warrants on Page.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/04/politics/igor-danchenko-arrested/index.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
But this looks fairly flimsy on the surface.
https://www.justice.gov/sco/press-release/file/1446386/download
In para 10, Danchenko may have been protecting his source in the report and told the FBI the truth.
In para 12, that's going to be hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt. He says he got a phone call. They say he didn't.
That depends where he was. If he was in a hotel somewhere in say Europe, good luck with that. If the call was local rather than long distance, would he know? etc.
In para 13, the FBI reacted to the Steele Dossier before they talked to Danchenko so whatever he said to the FBI in 2017 was long after the wire taps and warrants were obtained. So what he said wasn't material to those activities. It's bullshit.
Carter Page FBI warrant was Oct 2016 - before they ever talked with Danchenko and the subsequent warrants reference other things unrelated to the Stele report that justified the warrants.
Later on they make a couple of charges about Chamber President-I. Danchenko claims who spoke with someone who he thought was Chamber President-I but he was sure. So how can they be sure he didn't speak with someone who claimed to be Chamber President-I? That's almost impossible.
At a glance, this looks pretty sketchy to me.
It is probably more for PR.
Meanwhile the other lawyer they went after re the Russian bank and Trump org, that seems to be blowing up in their face.
I get the feeling this is all about discrediting the Russia allegations in the court of public opinion (when there is a mountain of evidence of something sinister going on there).
The other thing is: this kind of intelligence is like rumormongering. It's akin to gossip. It is not precise. It's like getting witness statements to a crime - different folks see different things and can recollect differently over time.
When I read the indictments for Manafort, those were real significant crimes with a mountain of proof.
This is not nearly so clear to me that some terrible crime has occurred. And yes, I agree that lying to the FBI is a crime and if they can prove he did, he deserves what is coming to him. But this is not slam dunk like Manafort's case.
What could the Republicans say if Biden pardoned him (the thought made me chuckle) 