GOVERNMENT ARRESTS IGOR DANSCHENKO, "PRIMARY SUB-SOURCE" FOR CHRISTOPHER STEELE'S FAKE "DOSSIER"

Durham is coming? For real?

Authorities Arrest Analyst Who Contributed to Steele Dossier

Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst who worked with Christopher Steele, the author of a dossier of rumors and unproven assertions about Donald J. Trump, was taken into custody as part of the Durham investigation.

By Adam Goldman and Charlie Savage
Nov. 4, 2021, 9:43 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities on Thursday arrested an analyst who in 2016 gathered leads about possible links between Donald J. Trump and Russia for what turned out to be Democratic-funded opposition research, according to people familiar with the matter.

The arrest of the analyst, Igor Danchenko, is part of the special counsel inquiry led by John H. Durham, who was appointed by the Trump administration to scrutinize the Russia investigation for any wrongdoing, the people said.

Mr. Danchenko, was the primary researcher of the so-called Steele dossier, a compendium of rumors and unproven assertions suggesting that Mr. Trump and his 2016 campaign were compromised by and conspiring with Russian intelligence officials in Moscow's covert operation to help him defeat Hillary Clinton.

The people familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity because the indictment of Mr. Danchenko had yet to be unsealed. A spokesman for Mr. Durham did not respond to a request for comment.

...

The inspector general report also said that a decade earlier, when Mr. Danchenko worked for the Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington think-tank, he had been the subject of a counterintelligence investigation into whether he was a Russian agent.

In an interview with The New York Times in 2020, Mr. Danchenko defended the integrity of his work, saying he had been tasked to gather "raw intelligence" and was simply passing it on to Mr. Steele. Mr. Danchenko -- who made his name as a Russia analyst by exposing indications that the dissertation of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia contained plagiarized material -- also denied being a Russian agent.
"I've never been a Russian agent," Mr. Danchenko said. "It is ridiculous to suggest that. This, I think, it's slander."

I think it's Count One.

No just kidding, I have no idea what's going on. Maybe he was put into protective custody. (Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself.)

Maybe this line explains the arrest. We saw a prior indictment of Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussman for lying about who his client was when he passed false information to the FBI.

And Danschenko similarly claimed he had no idea who he was working for, but was merely a "nonpartisan researcher:"

Mr. Danchenko said he did not know who Mr. Steele's client was at the time and considered himself a nonpartisan analyst and researcher.

But I don't know.

Update: Techno_Fog thinks the charges might be about Danschenko's denials about being in contact with Russian intelligence agents. Specifically those in the SVR (successor organization to the KGB, I think taking over the KGB's foreign operations), GRU (Russian Army Intelligence), or FSB (also a successor organization to the KGB, I think mainly taking over the KGB's domestic security/repression function).

So... interesting, maybe.

I gotta ask:

Is Steele next? And what about -- Hillary?

Are the walls closing in? Are we reaching the end of the line?

Maybe AllahPundit will have solid speculations in his write-up of this.

Just kidding, of course. This is a prime John Sexton material.

And we don't want AllahPundit writing it up. He'd smear it with his greasy Bulwark/Salon spin and suggest that this is all Trump's fault, somehow, or that Durham is corrupt.

GOVERNMENT ARRESTS IGOR DANSCHENKO, "PRIMARY SUB-SOURCE" FOR CHRISTOPHER STEELE'S FAKE "DOSSIER"&bodytext=Durham is coming? For real? Authorities Arrest Analyst Who Contributed to Steele Dossier Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst who worked with Christopher Steele, the author of a dossier of rumors and unproven assertions about Donald J. Trump, was taken into...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 11:09 AM

| Access Comments