Most of the important claims in the dossier — a series of reports written by Mr. Danchenko’s employer, Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent — have not been proven, and some have been refuted, including by Mr. Mueller. F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Danchenko several times in 2017 when they were seeking to run down the claims.
The first false statement charge in the indictment concerns Mr. Danchenko's interactions with what the indictment describes as a public relations executive with strong ties to the Democratic Party.
The indictment said Mr. Danchenko falsely told the F.B.I. that he had not discussed the claims in the dossier with the public relations executive. But, the indictment said, the executive — who in his professional career frequently interacted with Eurasian clients, with a particular focus on Russia — was a source for some of the claims, including gossip about the ouster of Paul Manafort as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman.
The indictment did not name the executive, whom it linked to the dossier in several other ways. It said the executive had lunch with Mr. Danchenko in Moscow in June 2016. At the time, the executive was staying in the same Moscow hotel where the dossier claimed that Russian intelligence made a blackmail sex tape involving Mr. Trump and prostitutes.
The executive toured the presidential suite, the indictment said, and a hotel staff member told him that Mr. Trump had stayed there — but the executive and another person on the tour told the F.B.I. that the staff member did not mention any salacious activity.
Given that the executive was present at places and events where Mr. Danchenko collected information for the dossier, the indictment said, the researcher’s “subsequent lie” about that executive’s connection to it “was highly material to the F.B.I.’s investigation of these matters.”
The other four false-statement charges concern Mr. Danchenko’s claims to the F.B.I. about purported interactions with Sergei Millian, a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, as a potential source for the dossier. (The indictment did not explicitly name Mr. Millian, who has previously said that Mr. Danchenko reached out to him but that he never responded or spoke with the researcher.)