New Durham bombshell: FBI paid Russian accused of lying as a confidential informant against Trump

Prosecutor says Igor Danchenko, the primary source for the discredited Steele dossier, was paid by FBI as confidential human source for three years despite prior concerns he was tied to Russian intelligence services.

In a bombshell revelation, Special Prosecutor John Durham revealed Tuesday in court filings that the FBI paid a Russian businessman as a confidential human source in the investigation of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign even though it had prior concerns that businessman was tied to Moscow's intelligence services.

Durham persuaded the federal judge in the upcoming trial of Igor Danchenko to unseal a motion revealing that Danchenko, the primary source of the now-discredited Steele dossier, was paid by the FBI as a confidential human source for more than three years until the fall of 2020 when he was terminated for lying to agents.

Danchenko is charged with five counts of lying to the bureau during that relationship and faces trial next month in federal court in the Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C.

"In March 2017, the FBI signed the defendant up as a paid confidential human source of the FBI," Durham's unsealed court filing disclosed for the first time. "The FBI terminated its source relationship with the defendant in October 2020. As alleged in further detail below, the defendant lied to FBI agents during several of these interviews."
File: gov.uscourts.vaed_.515692.81.0.pdf

The revelation means that the FBI first fired former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, the author of the Hillary Clinton-funded dossier, as a human source in November 2016 for having unauthorized contacts with the news media. And it then turned around a few months later and hired Steele's primary informer to work with the bureau even after determining some of Danchenko's statements in the Steele dossier were uncorroborated or exaggerated.

Even more stunning, Durham confirmed that the FBI had concerns about Danchenko's ties to Russian intelligence a decade earlier, opening up a counterintelligence probe on him after learning he was trying to buy classified information from the Obama administration.

"As has been publicly reported, the defendant was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011," Durham wrote. "In late 2008, while the defendant was employed by a prominent think tank in Washington, D.C., the defendant engaged two fellow employees about whether one of the employees might be willing or able in the future to provide classified information in exchange for money.

"According to one employee ('Employee-1'), the defendant believed that he (Employee-1) might be in a position to enter the incoming Obama administration and have access to classified information. During this exchange, the defendant informed Employee-1 that he had access to people who would be willing to pay money in exchange for classified...

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