Chris Lange, FISM News
An FBI analyst testified on Tuesday that the Bureau offered to pay ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele $1 million if he could produce evidence to back allegations in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
The bombshell admission was given under oath by FBI analyst Brian Auten in the trial of Igor Danchenko, the source of Steele’s now infamous and hence disproven dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
Danchenko, a Russian information analyst, pleaded not guilty last year to a felony count of lying to the FBI. His trial began Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, with Judge Anthony Trenga presiding over the case.
Under questioning by Special Counsel John Durham, Auten said that he and other agents met with Steele in October of 2021 with the million-dollar offer for proof of the dossier’s unsubstantiated claims, according to Fox News — something Steele was unable to produce.
The Bureau used the dossier to obtain FISA warrants to surveil former President Trump’s campaign and, following his 2016 victory, the White House.
“On October 21, 2016, did you have any information to corroborate that information?” Durham asked Auten, referring to the date on which the first FISA application to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was filed.
“No,” Auten responded.
He went on to testify that the FBI also sought the help of other intelligence agencies to see if they could offer anything to corroborate the dossier’s contents, which also failed to yield any results. Auten acknowledged that the fake dossier was used as the basis of the original FISA application as well as three subsequent renewals.
Judge Raymond Dearie, the special master appointed to review documents seized in the FBI’s August raid on Trump’s Florida residence, signed off on the final warrant to surveil Page. At the time, Dearie sat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court.
Auten said Steele never received any money from the Bureau because he could not “prove the allegations,” according to CNN.
Auten’s name may sound familiar to some. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter in July of this year to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray asserting that Auten was involved in suppressing a probe into Hunter Biden’s foreign business investments during his father’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Citing whistleblower statements, Grassley wrote that, “in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by an FBI Headquarters … team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.”
The Senator went on to state that, “Based on allegations, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation.”
Danchenko’s trial is the last scheduled in Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion sham before he submits his final report on the findings.
The probe has thus far yielded mixed results. Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to a single felony count of making a false statement in August 2020, admitting that he falsified an email used to obtain surveillance warrants against Page. In May 2022, a Washington D.C. jury acquitted Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman of a felony count of lying to the FBI.
Durham concluded in a February 2022 court filing that Clinton campaign lawyers had paid a technology company to “infiltrate” servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the White House, in an effort to establish an “inference” and “narrative” to present to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia. Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr appointed U.S. Attorney Durham as special prosecutor to investigate the origins of the Trump/Russia hoax in December 2020.