Federal authorities on Tuesday arrested Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, a Russian national who was the primary researcher for the so-called Steele Dossier – a compendium of opposition research funded by the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and used to smear Donald Trump as a Russian operative. It was also used as justification for an FBI wiretap application targeting former Trump adviser Carter Page.
According to the New York Times, the arrest of Danchenko is part of John Durham’s special counsel investigation into wrongdoing connected to the Obama administration’s Russia investigation.
Christopher Steele primary subsource Igor Danchenko indictment:
He “fabricated” the allegation that he was given info by @SergeiMillian via phone.
He lied about sources – one being a Democrat party operative/PR exec. pic.twitter.com/GZjqi3y2tj
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) November 4, 2021
Some claims from the Steele dossier made their way into an F.B.I. wiretap application targeting a former Trump campaign adviser in October 2016. Other portions of it — particularly a salacious claim about a purported sex tape — caused a political and media firestorm when Buzzfeed published the materials in January 2017, shortly before Mr. Trump was sworn in.
But most of the important claims in the dossier — which was written by Mr. Danchenko’s employer, Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent — have not been proven, and some have been refuted. F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Danchenko in 2017 when they were seeking to run down the claims in the dossier. –NYT
Danchenko, Steele’s (formerly) mysterious “Primary Subsource”, is a former Brookings Institution analyst. (Read more: Zero Hedge, 11/04/2021) (Archive)