A senior FBI analyst testified in court on Tuesday that the FBI promised Christopher Steele $1 million if he could support the claims contained in his now-famous dossier.
Steele was unable to produce any evidence, but FBI analyst Brian Auten claimed during the trial of Igor Danchenko, the main subject of the dossier, that the bureau had set a $1 million price on confirming the outrageous claims in the dossier.
According to the report, Auten claimed that he and several FBI officials met with Steele in October 2021 and made a $1 million offer to the former British spy in exchange for information corroborating the dossier. Years after using the allegations in the dossier to obtain FISA warrants to monitor former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, the FBI made its offer.
Referencing the date the first FISA application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was filed, Durham asked Auten, “On October 21, 2016, did you have any information to corroborate that information?”
Auten responded “No.”
According to CNN, the analyst said Steele never received any money because he could not “prove the allegations,” but Steel’s reports were eventually compiled into the dossier, which BuzzFeed News first published in January 2017. As Auten testified, the FBI offered Steele “up to $1 million” for proof substantiating allegations made in a series of reports to the bureau over several months in 2016.
The final trial in special counsel John Durham’s inquiry into the roots of the Trump/Russia connection hoax before Durham publishes his final report is Danchenko’s, who has entered a not-guilty plea to lying to the FBI.
Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty, admits to changing an email that was used to obtain a FISA warrant against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Durham has received one guilty plea from Clinesmith. Michael Sussmann, a former Clinton campaign attorney who was found not guilty of lying to the FBI in May by a Washington, D.C., jury, was the target of Durham’s dismissal.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the top Republican, said in July that Auten was involved in stifling a probe into Hunter Biden during President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, according to FBI whistleblowers.
Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray received a letter from Grassley that states,
“[I]n August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by a FBI Headquarters … team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease. Based on allegations, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation.”
Sources: Dailywire, Nationalreview, Cnn,
