Russian Born Igor Danchenko was taken into custody in Washington, D.C., and is facing five counts of “making false statements to the FBI.”
The arrest comes as Trump-appointed Special Council John Durham continues to unseal indictments.
In October, Durham’s office indicted Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann, who has ties to the Clintons.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Durham also presented arguments to a grand jury and intends to pursue criminal charges against several FBI employees.
The charges center on allegations that key officials gave false testimony during an investigation into President Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
Danchenko is tied to Christopher Steele and the now-infamous “Steele dossier.”
The “Steele dossier” controversy became the basis for the now-debunked allegations of inappropriate ties between Russia and Trump. The controversy is complex. It cost taxpayers millions of dollars and encumbered America’s political leaders with months of distractions.
Steele, a former MI6 agent, was contracted by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm, to create a portfolio of misinformation that would compromise President Trump.
The investigation revealed that Fusion GPS has ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign.
After months of investigation, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that the dossier and the DOJ and FBI investigations were “deeply flawed.” His report also notes he found no inappropriate relationship between Alfa Bank, Trump, or the Russian government during the 2016 election.
His report states:
“We concluded that the failures described above and in this report represent serious performance failures by the supervisory and non-supervisory agents with responsibility over the FISA applications. These failures prevented [Office of Intelligence (OI)] from fully performing its gatekeeper function and deprived the decision makers the opportunity to make fully informed decisions. Although some of the factual misstatements and omissions we found in this review were arguably more significant than others, we believe that all of them taken together resulted in FISA applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.
We identified at least 17 significant errors or omissions in the Carter Page FISA applications, and many additional errors in the Woods Procedures. These errors and omissions resulted from case agents providing wrong or incomplete information to OI and failing to flag important issues for discussion.”
Danchenko was an analyst who was instrumental in providing Steele with information that ultimately made its way into the “Steele Dossie.”
Durham is known for being thorough and tenacious. Many expect more indictments will follow.
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