Durham’s team says he concealed from the FBI that he was passing on the concerns in his capacity as a lawyer for the Clinton campaign. The indictment is the third criminal action from Durham.Ĭybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was charged in September with lying to the FBI during a 2016 conversation in which he relayed concerns about potentially suspicious cyber contacts between a Trump Organization server and the server of a Russian bank. Democrats have lambasted the Durham probe as politically motivated, but the Biden administration has not stopped it. Mueller ultimately found questionable ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, but not sufficient evidence to charge a conspiracy to sway the election. Trump pointed to the dossier, much of which the indictment says the FBI was unable to corroborate, as evidence of a tainted probe driven by Democrats.īut the dossier had no part in launching the Trump-Russia investigation, though a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report raised significant questions about the accuracy of the information and the FBI’s reliance on it. Trump’s Justice Department appointed Durham as Trump claimed the investigation of campaign ties to Russia was a witch hunt.

The indictment says Danchenko fabricated his account and never actually received such a phone call.īoth the dossier and the Durham probe are politically charged. That person, according to the dossier and Danchenko’s account to the FBI, told him about a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and Russia - an assertion that prosecutors say “would ultimately underpin” the surveillance warrant applications. The indictment also accuses Danchenko of lying to the FBI about a July 2016 phone call he claimed he received from someone he believed to be the president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. The indictment says that since Dolan “was present at places and events where Danchenko collected information” for the dossier, Danchenko’s deception about his relationship with Dolan “was highly material to the FBI’s investigation of these matters.” A hotel staff member revealed that Trump had stayed there, but Dolan and another unidentified person said the staff member didn’t mention any sexual or salacious activity. The indictment says Danchenko told the FBI he had collected information about Trump’s activities at the hotel from multiple sources but didn’t himself know if the sexual allegations were true.Īccording to the indictment, Dolan stayed in June 2016 at the same Moscow hotel and received a tour of the presidential suite. The charging documents also refer to salacious and unsupported sexual allegations involving Trump’s behavior at a Moscow hotel that were included in the dossier but that Trump has vigorously disputed, including in private conversations with former FBI Director James Comey. The lawyer, Ralph Drury Martin, declined to comment further on the ongoing investigation.

The individual is not named in court papers, but his lawyer confirmed his identity as Charles Dolan Jr., a former executive director of the Democratic Governors Association who advised Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and volunteered for her 2016 campaign. As the FBI worked to corroborate the dossier’s allegations, it would have been important to know the Democrat’s role in feeding information for it because it bore upon his “reliability, motivations, and potential bias as a source,” according to the indictment. In fact, the indictment says, Danchenko had sourced one or more allegations in the dossier anonymously to that Clinton associate. The indictment says Danchenko misled the FBI by denying that he had discussed any allegations in the dossier with a contact of his who was a public relations executive and longtime Democratic operative who volunteered for the campaign of Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent.

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