executive who offered the candid assessment of Danchenko goes unnamed in the indictment, but he is the longtime Democratic activist and Russia relations expert Chuck Dolan Jr., an attorney for Dolan confirmed on Thursday. And when I first met him he knew more about me than I did.” Since he told me he spent two years in Iran. The charges say that in June 2016, a public relations executive and Democratic activist with close ties to the Clinton campaign wrote an email that said of Danchenko: “He is too young for KGB. The new indictment does not allege that Danchenko was working for the Russian government or Russian interests, but it hints that he might have been. Yet Trump’s allies pointed to the closed investigation to label Danchenko a “spy” and accuse Democrats and the FBI of weaponizing Russian disinformation by deploying the dossier to obtain the surveillance warrant on Page. The probe included an examination of whether Danchenko sought to obtain classified information on Russia’s behalf, but it was closed without any findings, and Danchenko has continued to reside in the United States. Though Graham didn’t identify Danchenko when he released the redacted interview summary, the document included enough identifying information that Danchenko was quickly revealed to be the unnamed Steele source.Īround that time, Graham released another document - also declassified by Barr - that included a synopsis of a counterintelligence investigation the FBI conducted into Danchenko from 2009 to 2011. The transcript was declassified by then-Attorney General William Barr shortly before the Justice Department handed it to Graham. after the first hearing on charges Special Counsel John Durham brought over. Russia foreign policy analyst Igor Danchenko, center, leaves federal court in Alexandria, Va. Then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) released the transcript of an interview Danchenko conducted with the FBI in January 2017, in which he revealed that some of the most explosive allegations in the Steele dossier were based on hearsay and rumor. The indictment also alleges that he was working closely with at least one individual close to Clinton’s presidential campaign and that Danchenko falsely denied having contact with that person.ĭanchenko was first identified as Steele’s source amid a Senate Republican investigation that culminated in the final weeks of last year’s presidential election. Prosecutors allege that in a series of interviews with the FBI, Danchenko fabricated details and altered the sequence of key events he described that related to the so-called dossier. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan ordered Danchenko’s release on a $100,000 unsecured bond.Ī prosecutor, Michael Keilty, said that there was a plan for Danchenko to surrender on Thursday, but that because of “a press leak” the FBI arrested the defendant instead. District Court in Alexandria, Va., on Thursday afternoon, prosecutors did not ask that Danchenko be detained as he awaits trial. government gave them such credence.Īt a brief hearing in U.S. However, several claims in the dossier turned out to be false, prompting congressional, inspector general and criminal investigations into how the reports were compiled and why the U.S. Those reports, known as the Steele dossier, helped fuel the FBI probe and provided fodder for requests the law enforcement agency made to a secret surveillance court to obtain warrants to examine the communications of a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, Carter Page.
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