Former President Donald Trump tore into the FBI Sunday over its investigation of his 2016 presidential campaign, calling it a “hoax” after a key source for the discredited Steele dossier was indicted earlier this month by special counsel John Durham.
Igor Danchenko is accused of lying to the FBI about his sources for information used in the dossier — one of whom has been revealed to be a longtime associate of Hillary Clinton.
”We’re just starting to find out. Durham is getting interesting — I wish it could have been faster, but it’s getting very interesting,” Trump told Fox News’ Mark Levin in an interview that aired Sunday.
“Russia, Russia is a hoax. They all know it was a hoax. It was fabricated, made up in order to make me look as bad as possible so she could win, crooked Hillary could win the election. They know it is a hoax, and made up,” the 45th president added.
According to the indictment, Danchenko — a 43-year-old Russian citizen living in Virginia — intentionally misled the FBI when he denied in a 2017 interview that he had spoken to Clinton ally and PR executive Charles H. Dolan Jr. about any material contained in the file.
Prosecutors say the FBI interviewed Danchenko several times between January and November of that year and was unable to “confirm or corroborate” many of the claims listed in the dossier.
In one instance, Danchenko said he got an anonymous call in July 2016 that he believed was from Sergei Millian, former head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. According to Danchenko, the caller tipped him off about a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between members of the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
The claim was included in the Steele dossier.
However, the indictment said Danchenko “never received such a phone call or such information.”
Allegations made in the dossier were used by the FBI to obtain secret warrants to spy on a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.
Danchenko is the third person to be indicted as a result of Durham’s investigation.
FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to a year of probation and 400 hours of community service in January after admitting to falsifying a document used to justify renewing a wiretap against Page.
Cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, a former legal adviser to the Clinton campaign, was indicted in September on a charge of making false statements to the FBI.
In that case, prosecutors say Sussmann told the FBI’s general counsel that he was not advising the Clinton campaign when he claimed in September 2016 that the Trump Organization could have a connection to a Russian bank.
The FBI investigated and found insufficient evidence of such a link.