Arrested analyst Igor Danchenko charged with providing false information to the FBI

Russian analyst Igor Danchenko, who was arrested by the US authorities, was charged with providing false information to the FBI. About it it says in court documents.

According to the indictment, during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Russian made false statements about the sources of information he provided to the British firm that prepared the “Trump dossier” about a possible collusion between the headquarters of the former US president and the Russian authorities. The firm was linked to ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, Reuters sources said.

About the arrest of Danchenko reported edition of The New York Times. According to the newspaper, the Russian was taken into custody in connection with the results of an investigation by Special Prosecutor John Durham, who was investigating the circumstances of the surveillance of Donald Trump’s headquarters during the presidential campaign. Durham was appointed to the post of special attorney by the Trump administration.

Brookings Institution employee Igor Danchenko is a Russian citizen who, after receiving degrees from two American universities, moved to the United States. Danchenko researches the politics of Russia and post-Soviet countries. In 2006 he attracted attention, having discovered plagiarism in Vladimir Putin’s Ph.D. thesis.

Danchenko is considered the source of the “Trump dossier” – one of the main documents thanks to which the ex-president of the United States is considered closely associated with the Russian authorities.

The dossier, in particular, claimed that in late summer 2016, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen met with representatives of Russian intelligence in Prague. During the negotiations, the hiring of “loyal to the head of the Russian presidential administration” hackers was allegedly discussed.

In July 2020, the FBI, at the request of Republicans from the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, published the interrogation minutes of one of the main sources of the Trump dossier. The name of the FBI interlocutor was removed from the protocols, but two days after publication, a group of anonymous bloggers identified him as Igor Danchenko.

Donald Trump denied any connection with the Russian authorities. In addition, subsequently, some of the information mentioned in the “Trump dossier” was not confirmed during the investigation conducted by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. Igor Danchenko himself was also suspected of having links with the Russian special services, which he himself categorically denied.