Russian Analyst To Face Trial For Lying To FBINews WAALI
Russian Analyst To Face Trial For Lying To FBINews WAALI https://digitalalabamanews.com/russian-analyst-to-face-trial-for-lying-to-fbinews-waali/
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Five years after the term “Steele dossier” entered the political lexicon, a think tank analyst who helped research Donald Trump and Russia will face trial Tuesday, for lying to the FBI about his sources of information.
Igor Danchenko is the third person to be indicted by Special Counsel John Durham, who has been assigned to investigate the origins of the “Crossfire Hurricane” — the label given to the 2016 FBI investigation into former President Trump’s Russia ties . It’s also the first of Durham’s cases, which delve deep into the origins of the dossier that ridiculed Trump as fake news and a political witch hunt.
Here is some background information on what the case is about.
WHO IS DANCHENKO AND WHAT DOES HIM BE PRESCRIBED TO DO?
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Danchenko, a Russian analyst, was a source of information for Christopher Steele, a former British spy paid by Democrats to investigate relations between Russia and presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The compilation of research files containing salacious rumors and unsubstantiated claims became popularly known as the “Steele dossier.” Though the dossier didn’t help launch the FBI’s investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Justice Department has relied on it when it applied for and received warrants to monitor communications from a former Trump campaign aide.
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The FBI interviewed Danchenko in 2017 as part of its efforts to verify information in the dossier.
He is accused of lying to agents about his sources of information, and prosecutors accuse Danchenko of misleading the FBI to make his own posts more credible.
WHAT DO THE PROSECUTORS SAY?
Prosecutors say Danchenko lied when the FBI asked him how he obtained the information he gave Steele. Specifically, they say he has denied relying on a Democratic agent, Charles Dolan, a public relations executive who volunteered for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Prosecutors also say Danchenko lied when he said he got information from an anonymous phone call he believed was made by a man named Sergei Millian, a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. They argue that Danchenko knew that Millian was not a source of anonymous phone calls.
The indictment said the FBI could have better assessed the accuracy of Steele’s dossier if it had known that a Democratic agent was the source of much of its information.
WHAT DOES THE DEFENSE SAY?
Danchenko’s lawyers say the charges are “a case of extraordinary government abuse.” They note that Danchenko agreed to several voluntary FBI interviews throughout 2017. They say his answers to the FBI were all technically true.
For example, an FBI agent asked Danchenko if he had ever “spoken” to Dolan about the information that emerged in the dossier. While prosecutors have presented evidence that the two had email exchanges on subjects in the dossier, there is no evidence that they spoke orally on those subjects.
“That was a bad question,” Danchenko’s attorney Stuart Sears said at a pretrial hearing last month. “That’s the special counsel’s problem. Not Mr. Dankenko’s.”
And while Danchenko said he believed Millian was the voice on the anonymous call, he never told the FBI with certainty that it was Millian. Sears argued that ambiguous testimonies such as these were insufficient to warrant a conviction on a false testimony charge.
WHAT OTHER CASES DID DURHAM COLLECT?
Durham was US Attorney in Connecticut in 2019 when he was tapped by then-Attorney General William Barr looking into potential wrongdoing by government officials who conducted the original Russia investigation.
But after more than three years, Durham’s work has failed to live up to the expectations of Trump supporters, who hoped he would uncover wide-ranging FBI conspiracies to derail the Republican’s candidacy.
The probe turned up only three criminal cases.
The first case was against an FBI attorney, Kevin Clinesmith, who was accused of altering an email related to the surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. It ended with a guilty plea and a suspended sentence — and involved FBI misconduct already exposed by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
Last year, Durham’s team accused a Democratic attorney of making a false statement to the FBI’s chief attorney during a 2016 meeting in which he presented information about an alleged — and ultimately exposed — back-channel between a Russian bank and the Trump Organization . The trial against attorney Michael Sussmann ended in May with a quick acquittal.
Durham’s work has continued deep into the Biden administration’s Justice Department, but the Danchenko trial appears likely to be the last criminal case his team will bring. It’s not clear when Durham might provide a report summarizing its findings.
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Tucker reported from Washington.
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