# Igor Danchenko **Igor Danchenko** is a Russian-born, Washington-based analyst who was [[Christopher Steele]]'s **"Primary Sub-source,"** the main collector of the material in the [[Steele Dossier]]. He matters to this KB because the right's case that the Russia investigation was a hoax depends on him. The prosecution meant to prove that case against him ended in acquittal. ## What he told the FBI In January 2017 the FBI interviewed him over three days. He described his "sources" as a loose circle of friends and acquaintances he talked with about current events, not a network of informants. He called much of what Steele wrote up "word of mouth and hearsay" and said the famous kompromat allegations were rumor he had passed along without verifying. The Justice Department inspector general, [[Michael Horowitz]], used those interviews in his December 2019 report. The report found that the FBI kept relying on the dossier in the [[Carter Page]] surveillance renewals after its own sub-source had undercut it. Sen. [[Chuck Grassley]] later released declassified footnotes on the same point. The FBI then kept Danchenko on as a paid confidential human source from 2017 to 2020. ## The Durham prosecution Special counsel [[John Durham]] indicted him in November 2021 on five counts of lying to the FBI. The main charge was that he had invented a July 2016 phone call with a person he believed was [[Sergei Millian]]. The *Washington Post* then corrected or withdrew stories naming Millian as a source. At trial in the Eastern District of Virginia, the judge dismissed one count, and on **Oct. 18, 2022** the jury acquitted Danchenko on the other four. It was Durham's second trial loss, after [[Michael Sussmann]] (May 2022). The only conviction the Durham inquiry produced was an FBI lawyer's guilty plea for altering an email. ## Why the acquittal matters now Durham's final report (May 2023) harshly criticized the FBI's handling of the dossier. But the only jury to hear evidence about its primary source found no crime. The right's counter-narrative kept the criticism and dropped the verdict. In 2025–26 the dossier story was revived as part of the [[Grand Conspiracy Probe]] in Fort Pierce, Florida, which treats [[Crossfire Hurricane]], the Mueller investigation and later probes as one continuing plot against Trump. Danchenko is one of the connecting threads in that theory. The theory also has to get past a jury's rejection of the claim at its center. ## See also - [[Steele Dossier]] · [[Christopher Steele]] · [[Fusion GPS]] · [[Crossfire Hurricane]] - [[John Durham]] · [[Michael Sussmann]] · [[Sergei Millian]] · [[Michael Horowitz]] · [[Carter Page]] - [[Grand Conspiracy Probe]] · [[Trump-Russia Arc Timeline]]