Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who contributed to a dossier of Democratic-funded research into alleged ties between Russia and Donald Trump, has been indicted on charges of lying to the FBI about his sources of information.
The case is part of the ongoing investigation special counsel John Durham is conducting to determine the origins of the FBI's probe into whether Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia had conspired to tip the outcome of that year's presidential campaign.
J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department attorney who now serves as general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, says these indictments have been revealing.
"It shows that the Russian collusion narrative that the mainstream media … was pushing was part of a criminal conspiracy, with the victim being the president of the United States," Adams submits. "It was a criminal conspiracy, and that's what we're learning by these indictments."
But Adams says the criminal conspiracy extends much further.
"We read in one indictment how the law firm Perkins-Cooey was able to intercept private internet traffic, and they called it their toolbox," the attorney references. "We still haven't seen any indictments from that, but we know that that's a shady deal if there ever was one. It was a big, giant law firm intercepting private internet traffic, and they talked about it. The FBI knows who did it; the FBI knows who built this toolbox, and I hope there's going to be more indictments."
This is the third criminal action brought by Durham following the September indictment of Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer accused of making a false statement to the FBI during a 2016 meeting, and a guilty plea last year from an FBI lawyer who admitted to altering an email related to the surveillance of the Trump aide, Carter Page.
