Special Counsel John Durham has unsealed yet another federal grand jury indictment, this time charging the top researcher for ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s now-discredited dossier with repeatedly lying to the FBI during the Russia collusion investigation that dogged Donald Trump’s presidency.
Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley calls the arrest a ‘seismic development’.
…Potential apex targets range from Steele himself to Clinton general counsel Marc Elias to other campaign officials. It is not clear that Durham has evidence against those figures but there is every indication that he is not done by a long shot with his investigation.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) November 4, 2021
The FBI arrested Igor Danchenko as a part of Durham’s investigation into “Crossfire Hurricane” and is the third arrest by Durham who is moving closer to the prosecution stage of his investigation. Durham has been criticized as painfully methodical, but he is also widely credited with being a relentless and absolutely apolitical prosecutor.
The indictment says Danchenko made false statements in March, May, June, October, and November of 2017.
“The June 15, 2017, false statement count alleges that Danchenko denied that he had spoken with a particular individual about material information contained in one of the Company Reports when he knew that was untrue,” Durham’s office said. “The March 16, 2017, May 18, 2017, Oct. 24, 2017, and Nov. 16, 2017, counts involve statements made by Danchenko on those dates to FBI agents regarding information he purportedly had received from an anonymous caller who he believed to be a particular individual, when in truth and in fact he knew that was untrue. The information purportedly conveyed by the anonymous caller included the allegation that there were communications ongoing between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and that the caller had indicated the Kremlin might be of help in getting Trump elected.”
