The FBI and the DOJ continued to work with Steele even though they had every reason to believe that his claims were highly suspected and motivated by partisan agendas.
Despite that, they were willing to throw $1 million in taxpayer dollars at him for some anti-Trump materials.
Shortly before the 2016 election, 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 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.
The funny thing here is that the FBI was trying to “verify” materials made-to-order by the Clinton campaign, likely relying on sources linked to Putin’s own intel establishment, and one hand had no idea what the other hand was doing. The FBI was trying to verify garbage manufactured to fit a Clinton campaign narrative. It couldn’t be verified because Steele was sloppy. And his sources were apparently even sloppier. The dossier wasn’t supposed to be published (the media still hates Buzzfeed for doing it) because it was so laughably bad.
Clinton’s people at the DOJ presumably understood that the dossier was garbage, but it’s possible that they didn’t. Partisan bias has a way of getting people to believe in the nonsense that they want to believe in. And instead of realizing that it was a cynical ploy to justify Watergate 2.0, they instead had people at the FBI chasing their tails trying to “prove” it was real.
Not exactly a new phenomenon in American politics, but still kind of amusing when it involves top FBI figures being dispatched to prove that stuff made up by Clinton’s smear artists was true because most of the political machine was no longer capable of even understanding that it was in the business of promoting lies and had come to believe the lies it was promoting.
Keilty said in opening statements that the trial would cover the FBI’s “troubling conduct” regarding the Page surveillance. He said the bureau “should have uncovered” Danchenko’s alleged lies, “but never did.”
Any functioning adult should have. But the FBI was in the business of delivering results for its bosses, who were in the business of delivering results for their political bosses. They still are.
Durham highlighted how the FBI kept using information from the Steele dossier to bolster its case for probable cause to secure the warrants – even after the FBI came up empty in its efforts to corroborate Steele’s claims.
Like Mulder’s poster, they wanted to believe. And they were being motivated to believe. Careers and political agendas were on the line. No need to ask why Steele would turn down $1M to prove his claims. There’s always a rationale. When you want to believe.
Algorithmic Analyst says
Historically, phony manufactured “intelligence” was the bane of the intelligence industry.
Jeff Bargholz says
Making stuff up for money. That seems to happen in a lot of operations.
Algorithmic Analyst says
Yeah, one point that occurred to me when reading the article, is that one reason making up stuff for money is so successful in such cases is that it is so hard to verify or falsify the “information”.
Jeff Bargholz says
Yes, exactly! The hucksters know they can tell exactly the lies their paymasters want to hear and make a sale even though their bullshit is unverifiable. People pay for what they want even if it’s fraudulent.
I’ve been married twice, I know.
Algorithmic Analyst says
Did they spread lies about you?
TRUTHSTRATEGY says
STEELE WAS SLOPPY????
The FBI WAS GROSSLY NEGLIGENT AND CRIMINALLY BIASED IN THE HANDLING OF THIS CONFIDENTIAL SOURCE (CS: informant) AND OVERALL INVESTIGATION.
PRISON -TIME NEGLIGENT.