The FBI has been accused of botching a counterintelligence investigation into the alleged main source of disgraced ex-spy Christopher Steele‘s anti-Trump dossier.
Igor Danchenko, a U.S.-based Russian lawyer charged with five counts of making false statements tied to what he told the bureau about the anti-Trump dossier, was the subject of an investigation from 2009 to 2011 before it was wrongly closed, special counsel John Durham charged in a new court filing.
“The defendant was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011,” Durham told a federal court this week. “The investigation into the defendant was closed in 2010 after the FBI incorrectly believed that the defendant had left the country.”
STEELE DOSSIER SOURCE BECAME PAID FBI INFORMANT
The special counsel said the counterintelligence investigation should be allowed in as evidence at the trial.
“The Government should be able to introduce evidence of this prior counterintelligence investigation (and that facts underlying that investigation) as direct evidence of the materiality of the defendant’s false statements,” Durham told the court. “Such evidence is admissible because in any investigation of potential collusion between the Russian Government and a political campaign, it is appropriate and necessary for the FBI to consider whether information it receives via foreign nationals may be a product of Russian intelligence efforts or disinformation.”
WHO IS IGOR DANCHENKO, THE STEELE DOSSIER SOURCE CHARGED BY JOHN DURHAM?
The accusation came as Durham also claimed Danchenko was a paid informant for the bureau, long after he had been accused of lying about the Trump dossier.
“From January 2017 through October 2020, and as part of its efforts to determine the truth or falsity of specific information in the Steele reports, the FBI conducted multiple interviews of the defendant regarding, among other things, the information that he had provided to Steele,” Durham told the court Tuesday.
“In March 2017, the FBI signed the defendant up as a paid confidential human source of the FBI. The FBI terminated its source relationship with the defendant in October 2020. The defendant lied to FBI agents during several of these interviews.”
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Danchenko has lived and worked in the Washington, D.C., area for many years and allegedly relied on a network of Russian contacts.
The trial is slated to begin next month, with Danchenko pleading not guilty.
