US Intel Analyst Testifies: FBI Offered $1M to Perpetrator of Democrat-Commissioned Russia Hoax Against Trump

The Federal Bureau of Investigation offered former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele "up to $1 million" to corroborate the allegations made in his now-discredited dossier compiled against former President Donald Trump and members of his 2016 presidential campaign, according to an FBI analyst who testified in federal court Tuesday. 

According to the testimony from intelligence analyst Brian Auten, the agency had no solid evidence for the FISA warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in its investigation and used uncorroborated information to move forward with the probe, Just The News reports. 

Under questioning from Special Counsel John Durham, Auten testified that the dossier was used to shore up its surveillance warrant even though the FBI couldn't corroborate its allegations. 

Steele also could not prove the allegations and never received any money. 

Durham asked Auten, "On October 21, 2016 (the date of the Carter Page FISA application) did you have any information to corroborate that information?"

"No," Auten replied. 

Auten said the FBI checked with other government agencies to see if they had corroboration but nothing came back.

Auten appeared as the first prosecution witness in the trial of Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst, who is indicted on five counts of making false statements to the FBI.  

The FBI interviewed Danchenko on multiple occasions in 2017 as it tried to validate the allegations in what became known as the "Steele dossier."

That dossier by Steele — commissioned by Democrats during the 2016 presidential campaign — included allegations of contact between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials, as well as allegations that the Russians may have held compromising information over Trump.

Specifically, prosecutors say, Danchenko lied when he said he obtained some information in an anonymous phone call from a man he believed to be Sergei Millian, a former head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce.

Prosecutor Michael Keilty told jurors in U.S. District Court in Alexandria that Danchenko never spoke with Millian and that phone records show he never received an anonymous phone call at the time Danchenko claimed it occurred.

Prosecutors also say Danchenko lied when he said he never "talked" with a man named Charles Dolan about the allegations in the dossier. They point to evidence that Danchenko "spoke with Mr. Dolan over email" about very specific items that showed up in the dossier.

The FBI needed to know that Dolan was an important source for Danchenko, Keilty said, because Dolan is a Democratic operative who has worked on the presidential campaign of every Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter, and thus would have had the motivation to fabricate or embellish allegations against Trump.

"Those lies mattered," Keilty said.

Third Person to Be Prosecuted by Durham

Danchenko is the third person to be prosecuted by special counsel John Durham, who was appointed to investigate the origins of "Crossfire Hurricane" — the designation given to the FBI's tainted 2016 probe into Trump's alleged Russia connections. 

As CBN News reported in May, Hillary Clinton personally agreed to release information to a reporter in the 2016 presidential campaign about a supposed connection between Donald Trump's campaign and a Russian bank, even though the Clinton team wasn't completely confident the story was true.

That was the testimony from Robby Mook who was Clinton's former presidential campaign manager in 2016.

Mook made that statement during the criminal trial of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. The Sussmann case was a part of Durham's inquiry into what actually happened during the Russiagate investigation of the Trump campaign that year. 

Sussmann was later acquitted of lying to the FBI when he pushed information meant to cast suspicions on Donald Trump and Russia in the run-up to the 2016 election.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News at the time, former President Trump blasted the politically motivated Russia investigation, saying the false accusations did permanent damage to his reputation.

"This is one of the greatest political scandals in history," Trump said. "For three years, I had to fight her off, and fight those crooked people off, and you'll never get your reputation fully back."

Mueller Report: No Evidence of Any Election Conspiracy Between Russia and the Trump Campaign

As CBN News reported in 2019, after a three-year investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller released his report that found no evidence of any election conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it found plenty of evidence that Russia did try to interfere for its own purposes.

Mueller said Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military stole private information and released it to interfere in our election and damage a presidential candidate. And a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation as well to interfere in our political system. 

Time Magazine later reported in July 2019 that Mueller's investigation cost the U.S. government somewhere between $32 million and $35 million. 

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