An analyst who worked on the so-called Steele dossier — the salacious, largely unverified collection of former President Donald Trump’s links to Russia — was arrested on a federal indictment Thursday, a senior Justice Department official confirmed to NBC News.
Igor Danchenko, who’s been described as the dossier’s primary researcher, was arrested as part of an investigation by John Durham, the special counsel appointed by Trump’s Justice Department to investigate the origins of the Russia probe.
Danchenko is expected to appear in federal court in Virginia Thursday afternoon. The exact charges are unclear.
Danchenko is the second person to be charged in recent months as part of the Durham probe. In September, prominent Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann was charged with making a false statement to the FBI. Sussmann, who shared concerns with the bureau in 2016 about communications between the Trump campaign and Russia, allegedly failed to disclose during the meeting that he was working for multiple clients, including Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report found the Russian government did try to interfere in the 2016 election for Trump’s benefit and that Trump’s campaign had numerous undisclosed contacts with Russians, but much of the information in the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele has largely been discredited.
The FBI used information from the Steele dossier as part of its legal argument for secret government surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, during the 2016 election, without noting any red flags about the information.
Danchenko told The New York Times last year that he’d simply passed along raw intelligence information to Steele. “Even raw intelligence from credible sources, I take it with a grain of salt,” Danchenko said. “Who knows, what if it’s not particularly accurate? Is it just a rumor or is there more to it?”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
