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Danchenko confirms he was FBI informant in investigation against Trump

The Russian spy has been charged with five counts of lying to the Federal Bureau about the former president's alleged relationship with the Kremlin in 2016.

(Shinsuke Ikegame/Wikimedia)

Published by
Alejandro Baños

Amid allegations of repeatedly lying to the FBI, Russian businessman Igor Danchenko admitted that he acted as an informant for the Federal Bureau in the investigation against Donald Trump in 2016 and his alleged relationship with the Russian government.

At the time, the Federal Bureau did not give credibility to the information Danchenko gave them about Trump. However, this information was eventually included in the Steele Dossier, an investigation funded by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. The Russian spy's reports included allegations that Trump was involved in sexual activities with a number of prostitutes in a Moscow hotel, also included were his alleged links to the Kremlin.

The FBI, which did not trust Danchenko, sued the Russian spy. He will face trial in October in Virginia on five counts of lying to the FBI. The FBI noted that Danchenko received the information from his own sources, as the spy himself claimed. One of his alleged sources was Bernd Kuhlen, the manager of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Moscow, where Trump reportedly met with the prostitutes. But the attorney general in the case, John Durham, maintained that Kuhlen had nothing to do with it:

Mr. Kuhlen does not recall ever meeting or speaking with the defendant in June 2016, or at any time. He also has denied having knowledge of the Ritz-Carlton allegations at any time prior to their being reported in the media, discussing such allegations with, or hearing them.

Now, Danchenko is trying to justify his claims of innocence by pointing out that his information to the FBI is true. He also admitted that he spoke to the FBI directly about the alleged actions committed by the former president in Russia.

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FBI and Danchenko

Prosecutor Durham revealed last week, files showing the FBI's suspicions about Igor Danchenko and his relationship with Moscow's intelligence service. In 2009, an investigation was opened against him for trying to acquire confidential information from the Obama Administration, it was closed a year later. After the closing of the file on Danchenko, the Russian spy maintained his relationship with the Russian intelligence service.

Eight years later, the FBI and Danchenko began their contractual relationship. U.S. Attorney Durham has stated that "in March 2017, the FBI signed the defendant up as a paid confidential human source." But an FBI payment to the spy is recorded for the previous year.

The contract ended in 2020, when the FBI found several lies in Durham's statements, and he was fired, as Attorney General Durham noted:

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.
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