Republicans slam FBI after report claimed they offered retired British spy $1m for evidence on Trump

Republicans have criticized the FBI after an analyst alleged that the Bureau offered retired British spy Christopher Steele $1 million in cash to prove the lecherous charges in his infamous “Dirty Dossier” against former President Donald Trump.

FBI surveillance analyst Brian Auten testified that the agency made the offer in 2016 at a meeting in the United Kingdom — but didn’t hand over the money because Steele couldn’t substantiate the evidence.

The 35-page file Steele wrote claimed the Kremlin had compromising evidence against Trump — including videos of him engaging in sexual activity at a Moscow hotel.

Rep. Jim Jordan described the revelation as a “disgrace,” while others criticized the FBI for being too involved with politics.

“You can’t make this up. But I think it just underscores how indifferent and political the FBI has become,” Jordan told Fox Business.

The revelations “further confirm what we all know, which is that the FBI is now purely political and going after their political opposition,” he said.

Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. wrote “what a shame” on Twitter, while Senator Marsha Blackburn wrote: “The FBI reportedly tried to pay out $1 million to corroborate the reports about President Trump made up by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Senator Chuck Grassley said “The effort the FBI has gone to at the taxpayers’ expense to justify their investigation into the Trump campaign is simply astonishing and downright frightening.

“Now we know that the FBI offered to pay a former British spy $1 million to substantiate those rumors, which they couldn’t because they weren’t true,” he added.

The House Judiciary GOP’s Twitter account quoted a line in the testimony that said, “Steele never got the money because he couldn’t prove the charges,” adding on Twitter: “Well, duh.”

At the time of the meeting, agents were looking for allegations that the Kremlin had compromising videos showing Trump engaging in sexual activity at a Moscow hotel and allegations that he was in contact with Russian officials before the general election.

There were also outrageous claims made by Democrats for Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign, and the claims on the file have since been debunked.

Steele wrote the 35-page document alleging the Kremlin colluded with Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 after his private intelligence firm Orbis Business Intelligence was hired by a law firm representing Democrats.

The ‘golden shower’ file alleged, among other things, that the Russian security services could blackmail the president-elect with accusations that he paid prostitutes to pee on a bed where Barack and Michelle Obama had once slept.

The disclosure about the substantial financial incentive being offered came in the trial of Russian analyst Igor Danchenko, one of Steele’s key sources, who is accused of lying to the FBI when asked for his information.

He was charged on five counts with making false statements to the FBI about the file. Prosecutors told the court that Danchenko fabricated one of his own sources and concealed the identity of another when he was interviewed by the agency.

Special Prosecutor John Durham, who was appointed by Trump, is continuing the case in Alexandria, Virginia, the courtroom.

Auten testified that information from the Steele dossier was used in support of a surveillance warrant against a Trump campaign official, Carter Page.

Under Durham’s questioning, Auten said the file was being used to bolster the surveillance application, even though the FBI was unable to confirm the allegations.

Auten said the FBI checked with other government agencies for confirmation, but nothing came back.

In fact, Auten and other FBI agents met Steele in the UK in 2016 and offered him as much as $1 million if he could confirm the allegations on file, but it was not provided.

Durham’s years of investigation have resulted in a single conviction — of FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith for manipulating an email used to justify surveillance. The trial of Hillary Clinton’s campaign attorney Michael Sussmann resulted in an acquittal.

Steele, an ex-MI6 intelligence officer, compiled the file as a series of messages. He had been a paid FBI informant.

Prosecutors said Danchenko, a Russian analyst and researcher based in Virginia, fabricated one source and concealed another source of information as the FBI rushed to confirm information on the file in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election. They accuse him of lying to the FBI when he was questioned about information he had provided.

They also pointed to an area of ​​damage — the FBI relied on some of the information on the file to obtain warrants for phone and email surveillance from former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page, a US citizen.

They were investigating an alleged conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia — in an investigation that would make headlines.

“Those lies mattered,” prosecutor Michael Keilty said, because the FBI presented false information to a foreign intelligence oversight court.

Page was never charged with a crime.

Prosecutors say Danchenko lied when he told officers he had received information from Sergei Millian, head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. But they said there is no evidence the two ever spoke, pointing to phone records.

“This case is about protecting the functions and integrity of our institutions,” Keilty added.

“This case is about protecting the function and integrity of our government institutions,” Durham said.

Durham’s prosecutors focused on the treatment of Page, an area that has long been a focus of Trump and Congressional Republicans, and featured in a damning report by the Justice Department’s IG.

Danchenko’s lawyer objected that his client had been honest and that the FBI asked his client vague questions during their 2016 meeting.

At one point, Durham asked Auten why the DOJ opened its investigation into Russia in the summer of 2016.

But his response ran counter to Trump’s repeated claim that the investigation was based on the dirty dossier.

Instead, his response pointed to the origin of the investigation, which has been repeatedly reported: a drunken meeting in a hotel bar in May 2016 between Trump’s foreign campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and an Australian diplomat after the aide said the Kremlin was dirty. had on Hillary Clinton. The diplomat provided the information to the US