This is the investigation into the investigation.

The US Department of Justice on Thursday announced the arrest of a Russian analyst who was one of the sources of a former British spy who compiled unverified information during the 2016 campaign linking Donald Trump to the Kremlin.

Igor Danchenko, 43, was charged with perjury by a grand jury that accuses him of lying to federal investigators five times in 2017, about "the sources of certain information he provided" to the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, according to a ministry statement.

Arrested Thursday morning, this former Russian business consultant within the Brookings Institution think tank, must be presented during the day to a federal judge in the state of Virginia.

Special prosecutor

The lawsuits against him are part of an investigation led by Special Prosecutor John Durham, appointed at the end of Donald Trump's term to shed light on the origin and handling by the FBI of "the investigation. Russian ”.

Initiated during the 2016 presidential campaign, these sprawling investigations into a possible collusion between the real estate mogul and Russia have always been denounced by Donald Trump as a "witch hunt" orchestrated by his opponents.

And for him, the “Steele report” played a major role in this saga.

Mandated by the Democratic camp during the campaign for the 2016 US election, Christopher Steele had compiled raw, unverified intelligence linking the Republican candidate to Russia.

A report published before the presidential election

His report, which contained salacious, never-confirmed accusations and others that turned out to be false - such as an alleged trip to Prague by ex-lawyer Michael Cohen - had been published by the Buzzfeed website ten days before the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2017.

The Briton had previously transmitted it to the FBI, which had relied on certain passages to put relatives of the Republican billionaire under surveillance.

But the investigation by the federal police had started earlier, on the basis of information from the intelligence services.

In May 2017, this investigation was entrusted to special prosecutor Robert Mueller who, after two years on this case, concluded that there was ample evidence of Russian interference in the election campaign but not "sufficient evidence" an agreement between Russia and the entourage of candidate Trump despite some forty contacts with Russian officials ignored.

  • Russia

  • United States

  • Donald trump

  • World