An indictment returned in federal court on Thursday casts doubt on the sources of a series of salacious and largely discredited reports about former President Donald Trump and Russia that the FBI ultimately used in support of a counterintelligence investigation into his 2016 campaign and associates.
A Russia analyst who served as a central source for a dossier of opposition research material about Mr. Trump compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele was arrested and charged with lying to the FBI on Thursday, according to an indictment unsealed in Virginia federal court. He appeared before a judge on Thursday and was released on bond.
Russian-born Igor Danchenko was charged with five counts of making false statements to officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the sources of the information he helped compile for Mr. Steele. As part of a counterintelligence probe into whether Mr. Trump or any of his associates had links to Russia, Mr. Danchenko sat for numerous interviews with FBI officials in 2017 as they tried to corroborate allegations made in the dossier.
The 39-page indictment also states that several key pieces of information in the dossier—purportedly a private intelligence product compiled by a retired British MI6 agent with deep ties to Eastern Europe—weren’t collected from Russia but were sourced to chatter and gossip circulating in American political circles.
The charges against Mr. Danchenko stem from the probe by special counsel John Durham, who was tapped by Trump administration Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to review decisions made by intelligence officers and law-enforcement officials during the investigation into whether Mr. Trump and his campaign associates received any assistance from Russia during the 2016 campaign. An FBI attorney who prepared a surveillance application, as well as an attorney who specializes in cybersecurity, have also been indicted by the special counsel’s office on charges of making false statements.
Mr. Steele was hired by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research firm founded by former Wall Street Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, who were initially hired to do research into Mr. Trump by Republicans opposed to Mr. Trump. After Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination, Fusion sought Democratic funding to continue their research. After winning a contract with a law firm representing the Democratic Party, they hired Mr. Steele to investigate Mr. Trump’s Russia ties.
The indictment is here.