FBI Offered To Pay Steele $1M For Anti-Trump Evidence, Paid Possible Russian Spy Despite Knowing His Info Was Bad

The FBI had evidence that Danchenko was a Russian spy, and Danchenko could provide no evidence that Trump was tied to Russia. It paid Danchenko anyway to try to mount a flimsy case against Trump, the Durham report found.

The FBI offered to pay Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous anti-Trump “dossier,” up to $1 million for evidence linking Donald Trump to Russia, and paid Steele’s primary subsource hundreds of thousands of dollars even after the source was unable to provide evidence for any of his claims, according to a report from Special Counsel John Durham.

Embattled FBI agent Brian Auten travelled to Rome to meet with Steele on October 3, 2016, and made the offer despite knowing that his dossier relied primarily on one person, or “subsource.” The Bureau then paid that “subsource,” Igor Danchenko, $220,000 even after Danchenko was unable to provide evidence for a single one of his claims.

More shockingly, the FBI had significant evidence that Danchenko was, himself, tied to Russian intelligence. It had closed a counterintelligence investigation into him in 2011 only because agents mistakenly believed he had left the country.

The FBI investigated Danchenko as a possible Russian spy from 2009 to 2011 after a colleague at the Brookings Institution, the left-leaning think tank where he worked, told the FBI that Danchenko raised the prospect of paying him for classified information if the colleague joined the Obama administration. A second Brookings employee also told the FBI he suspected Danchenko of being “connected to Russian intelligence.”

It became a full-fledged investigation when the FBI realized that Danchenko was a known associate of two other espionage suspects, had contacts with known Russian intelligence offices, and had said he wanted to join the Russian diplomatic service. He also told another person that he worked on “special” matters for the Russian army, and that his Russian passport listed him as connected to the Russian military intelligence service.

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