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Sunday, May 10, 2026

FBI offered Christopher Steele $1 million to prove dossier claims, senior FBI analyst testifies - WDJT

By Marshall Cohen

(CNN) -- 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.

Auten was testifying at the criminal trial of Igor Danchenko, a primary source for Steele's dossier, who is being prosecuted by special counsel John Durham. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty to five counts of lying to the FBI about his sourcing for some information that ended up in the dossier. His trial kicked off Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia.

Durham, a Trump-era prosecutor who is looking for misconduct in the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, handled most of the in-court arguments on Tuesday and personally questioned Auten on the witness stand -- a rare move for a special counsel and former US attorney.

'Those lies mattered,' prosecutors say

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