In yet another black eye for the once-respected FBI, court testimony on Tuesday revealed that the bureau offered to pay Christopher Steele, author of the notorious dossier of lies about President Trump, up to $1 million if he could prove its allegations were true.
The revelation came during the perjury trial of Igor Danchenko, a Russian accused of lying to the FBI, whose allegations contained in the Steele Dossier partly led to the FBI’s seeking a warrant to wiretap Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
The news is the second major embarrassment for the bureau this week. On Monday, the Washington Free Beacon disclosed that FBI agents who donated to hard-left Democratic candidates ran the bureau’s censorship operation to squelch news about Hunter Biden’s storied laptop.
The latest news suggests that hate-Trump forces in the FBI were so anxious to derail his campaign that they would do anything, including paying beaucoodles of reward money, to prove allegations that were obviously false.
Auten Again
“Shortly before the 2016 election,” CNN reported yesterday, the FBI offered retired British spy Christopher Steele ‘up to $1 million’ to prove the explosive allegations in his dossier about Donald Trump, a senior FBI analyst testified Tuesday”:
The cash offer was made during an overseas October 2016 meeting between Steele and several top FBI officials who were trying to corroborate Steele’s claims that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to win the election.
FBI supervisory analyst Brian Auten testified that Steele never got the money because he could not “prove the allegations.”
Auten is the agent whom Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has accused of deep-sixing the probe of Hunter Biden’s laptop by claiming it was “Russian disinformation.”
Anyway, Steele couldn’t prove the allegations.
“Auten also said Steele refused to provide the names of any of his sources during that meeting, and that Steele didn’t give the FBI anything during that meeting that corroborated the claims in his explosive dossier,” CNN continued.
As for Danchenko, he’s on trial for lying to the FBI. He provided dirt on Trump to Steele that landed in the dossier. Having seen the dossier, the FBI interviewed Danchenko from January 2017 through November 2017.
In those interviews, Special Counsel John Durham alleges, Danchenko lied about his sources. Those lies were partly responsible for the bureau’s seeking the warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveil Page. The FBI, Danchenko’s indictment says, “was ultimately not able to confirm or corroborate” the Steele Dossier’s allegations, some of which came from a top Democratic PR man. Danchenko lied about contacts with that leftist torpedo, too, Durham alleges.
Black Eye #2 in One Week
As for the FBI, it landed in hot water on Monday when the Free Beacon disclosed the obvious bias of its agents. Democratic donors in the bureau ran the operation to censor information on social media about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The revelation today and Monday’s Free Beacon report have a name in common: Brian Auten.
In July, as The New American reported, Grassley wrote to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI chief Christopher Wray to say whistleblowers had disclosed the bureau’s attempt to squelch the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“The information provided to my office involves concerns about the FBI’s receipt and use of derogatory information relating to Hunter Biden, and the FBI’s false portrayal of acquired evidence as disinformation,” Grassley wrote:
The volume and consistency of these allegations substantiate their credibility.…
First, it’s been alleged that the FBI developed information in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s criminal financial and related activity. It is further alleged that in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by a FBI Headquarters (“FBI HQ”) 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.
Those actions comport not only with the FBI’s zeal in trying to destroy Trump via the Steele Dossier, but also with discussion inside the agency to overthrow Trump using the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment governs the removal of a president because he is mentally or physically incapacitated and cannot perform his duties.
