Russian national Igor Danchenko, the alleged main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier who undermined the dossier’s explosive collusion claims, faces a jury this fall after being charged with lying to the FBI.
Danchenko was indicted last year with five counts of making false statements to the bureau, and special counsel John Durham said the comments were about the information provided to Steele for the dossier. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty.
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The Department of Justice’s watchdog concluded the Russian lawyer undermined Steele’s unfounded claims of a “well-developed conspiracy” between former President Donald Trump and Moscow.
Danchenko was interviewed by the FBI in January, March, and May of 2017. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Danchenko’s January 2017 interview with FBI officials “raised doubts about the reliability of Steele’s descriptions of information.” FBI notes showed Danchenko told the bureau he “did not know the origins” of some of Steele’s claims and that the most salacious allegations may have been made in “jest.”
The Russian lawyer grew up in Perm Oblast in Russia, and he attended Perm State University and, later, the University of Louisville and Georgetown University.
Danchenko has lived and worked in the Washington, D.C., area for many years and allegedly relied on a network of Russian contacts but undermined key collusion claims when interviewed by the FBI.
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Fiona Hill, who worked at the Brookings Institution with Danchenko for years before joining Trump’s National Security Council, introduced Danchenko and Steele a decade ago. In her 2015 book, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, Hill said Danchenko “provided us with a wealth of insights into and information about” Putin.
Durham’s indictment also claimed the Steele source lied about Sergei Millian, an American citizen born in Belarus who moved to the United States in the early 2000s and founded a trade group called the Russian American Chamber of Commerce in the USA. The prosecutor said Danchenko falsely told the FBI that, in late July 2016, he had received a phone call in which Millian told him about a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between Trump and Russians.
Durham also discovered that Danchenko was investigated by the FBI in 2009 as a possible “threat to national security,” according to documents declassified by then-Attorney General Bill Barr.
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The dossier was created after Steele was hired by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was itself hired by Perkins Coie and Marc Elias, the general counsel for Clinton’s campaign.
Steele was working for Putin-allied oligarch Oleg Deripaska before, during, and after his time targeting Trump in 2016. Deripaska had paid Steele to investigate Paul Manafort after accusing the Republican operative of stealing millions from him, and Steele sought help from Fusion in early 2016. The firm soon hired Steele to conduct anti-Trump research.
