Republicans want answers on the FBI’s alleged decision to make Igor Danchenko a paid informant for years despite him allegedly lying to agents repeatedly and after he had been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) pressed FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland for answers on the alleged yearslong relationship the Justice Department and FBI had with the main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump and Democratic-funded dossier.
“This extraordinary fact pattern requires additional information from the Justice Department and FBI relating to why Danchenko was placed on the payroll and paid by the taxpayer to assist in the federal government’s flawed investigation into President Trump,” Grassley and Johnson wrote Monday.
DURHAM WANTS DANCHENKO LIES ON ‘PEE TAPE’ SOURCING TO BE USED AT TRIAL
The letter was sent after special counsel John Durham claimed in a new court filing that the Russian lawyer was cashing a check from the FBI.
“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,” Durham wrote ahead of Danchenko’s trial.
Durham also highlighted that Danchenko was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011, and he revealed this month that the bureau had apparently botched that inquiry when “the investigation into the defendant was closed in 2010 after the FBI incorrectly believed that the defendant had left the country.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
An FBI summary of the Danchenko counterintelligence investigation showed proposed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act targeting of Danchenko was withdrawn in 2010 after the bureau concluded the future Steele source was no longer in the country, which was incorrect, according to Durham.
Danchenko faces trial in October for allegedly lying to the FBI. The Russian lawyer has denied the charges against him.
