But the Justice Department alleged Danchenko sourced at least one accusation anonymously to the executive, described as a 'long-time participant in Democratic Party politics' who was chairman of a national Democratic political organization, state chairman of former President Bill Clinton's 19 presidential campaigns, and an adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. resident, who was an executive at a public relations firm, about allegations in the dossier. In one instance, federal prosecutors said Danchenko falsely stated that he never communicated with an unidentified U.S. Danchenko's travel is restricted to the Washington, D.C., area. He was released on a $100,000 bond and required to surrender his passport within 24 hours. His attorney said he would plead not guilty. The false statements were allegedly made on five different occasions, from March 2017 to November 2017, according to the indictment unsealed Thursday.ĭanchenko was arrested Thursday morning and appeared in court in Virginia later in the afternoon. 'Even raw intelligence from credible sources, I take it with a grain of salt,' Danchenko told The Times.Washington - A Russian analyst who worked with Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer behind a controversial dossier about former President Donald Trump and Russia, has been indicted on federal charges of making false statements to the FBI, according to the Justice Department.Ī federal grand jury charged Igor Danchenko, a 43-year-old Russian national living in Virginia, with five counts of lying to federal investigators about the sources of information he provided to Steele's firm, which was then included in the dossier passed to the FBI.

But he added that his job was just to collect 'raw intelligence' and he wasn't responsible for how Steele, who was his employer at the time, portrayed it.

However, Danchenko himself acknowledged that the claim was thin at best and that even he was skeptical of whether it was true. Steele's dossier claimed that Russian intelligence services had video evidence of the encounter and kept it as kompromat on Trump.ĭanchenko elaborated on how he came to learn that information in an October 2020 interview with The Times, saying two sources told him of rumors about a possible Trump sex tape and that two Ritz-Carlton employees later provided him with more nebulous information that he believed corroborated the rumors. Among other things, it accused Danchenko of misleading federal agents about his relationship with a Democratic operative, described in the charging document as 'PR Executive-1.' That operative is Charles Dolan, Jr., whose lawyer confirmed that his client was the unnamed executive.ĭanchenko was the source of perhaps the dossier's most infamous claim: that Trump in 2013 rented out the presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, where he hired Russian prostitutes to perform sexual acts in front of him which involved urination. It was compiled by the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele.ĭurham's indictment said Danchenko's lies 'deprived FBI agents and analysts of probative information' that would have helped them with 'evaluating the credibility, reliability, and veracity' of the Steele dossier. The indictment accuses Danchenko of lying to federal agents in multiple interviews conducted from January to November 2017, while the FBI was working to corroborate allegations in the Steele dossier, which is an explosive collection of memos alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Igor Danchenko, a Russian national who currently resides in the US, was charged with five felony counts of making false statements to the FBI, according to a newly unsealed indictment. It often indicates a user profile.Ī Russia expert who contributed to the so-called Steele dossier was arrested on Thursday as part of the special counsel John Durham's investigation into the origins of the FBI's Russia probe, The New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.

Steele dossier indictments